Day 7. Splatter Face!
How surrealists PLAY, plus a brief introduction to me, WendyMac
My Great GUT peeps! HELLO.
That’s officially ONE WEEK!! WOOHOO!!! Good job everyone.
ADVANCE HEADS UP: You need some kind of liquid for today’s assignment that will leave a mark on paper when dry. It could be watercolor paint, ink, or even coffee or tea. But you want something that will make a splotch, and something to splotch with. Like a brush. Or a finger. I do not recommend toes. Go grab those things now and come back.
It has come to my attention that we have a lot of new people drawing with us. (Hi new people!!!) So I figured I’d take a moment to introduce the verrrrry serious art teacher leading this drawing/looking/loving adventure, and what DrawTogether is all about.
Yup, that’s me. Wendy MacNaughton — aka WendyMac. Well, a few years back. Today, I am an artist/graphic journalist/illustrator/educator, who also happens to be trained as a social worker. When people ask what I do, usually I just say “I draw.”
I’ve done a lot of different drawing-related things over the years: published a bunch of books you may have heard of, had a column in the New York Times, and traveled around the country drawing people (and getting people to draw each other). No matter what the form, tho, all my work boils down to one simple thing:
I explore how drawing, and the curiosity, attention, and care it requires of us, can be a vehicle for human connection.
The 30 Days of Drawing is a part of that exploration, and lives under the umbrella of a larger project called DrawTogether (aka DT). DT is essentially a great big social practice art project — a creative universe filled with videos and a podcast for kids, a non-profit to support educators to bring more art and social emotional learning into their classrooms, a physical hub in the Bay Area that hosts this IRL, and, of course, the Grown-Ups Table (aka The GUT), our program for grown-ups. The GUT is the best drawing community ever, 110K strong. The 30 Days is our annual recommitment to attention and care through daily drawing.
If you have questions about me or my work, feel free to leave them in the comments or ask me at our upcoming Ask Me Anything day. (More on that soon!)
Most important, I’m so happy you’re here.
If you’d like to introduce yourself, please head to our Introductions page and say hi, share a bit about yourself, take a look at who else is here. Everyone is kind here. If not, they get the boot.
And with that, let’s move on to Day 7.
Yesterday we played around drawing comics of our own selves and shared a bit of who we are with one another. Today, we are going to make up other people’s selves — and draw some pretty silly and completely unexpected faces.
SURREAL FACES
Did you know we’re hardwired to seek out faces? An entire region of our brains is dedicated to finding and recognizing faces: It’s called the fusiform gyrus, or “fusiform face area.” This is why we see faces in clouds, woodgrain, trees, you name it. Our brains are constantly scanning our environment for faces, so if we want to grab people’s attention, using an image of a face is pretty reliable way get it.
Today we are going to seek out faces in the most unlikely of places: abstract ink spots. Random coffee spots. Smudges and smears. Yes, friends, art can get messy.
Today’s drawing is a riff on a surrealist game called “bulletism,” invented by the mustachioed artist Salvador Dali in the late 1950’s. This “game” involved Dali firing bullets filled with printers ink at a lithographic stone (a stone used in printmaking) which created random splatter effects. He’d transform the resulting image into something unexpected, and finish the image with ink, and print the results. Here’s an example:
This reminds me of the illustrator Ralph Steadman who blows ink to make his splatter images. Below are some ink splotch drawings of dogs from his wonderful Book of Dogs:
When you see a splatter of ink, can you find a face in it? Human or animal?
Today we are going to find out.
You may want to grab a smock for this one, friends.
