Well that was fun.
Dispatch from our first giant IRL meet up at SFMOMA
Helllloooo Grown-Ups Table and all DrawTogether friends.
What a day it was.
I am still riding waves of joy and delight from our first MAJOR in-person gathering yesterday at SFMOMA. After years of being connected through the wonders of technology all these years, it was blast to finally meet many of you IRL, share a hug and literally DrawTogether.
A huge GUT contingency showed up — mostly Bay Area folks, but some of y’all made a pilgrimage from down South and way out East. Thanks for making the trip. If you were there and saw me getting weepy, it was probably meeting DrawTogether Kids who came to say hi after drawing together back in pandemic days. They are all grown up now, and still drawing up a storm. Time flies…
Most of all, I loved watching GUT members finally meet in person. Seeing our kind, creative community manifest in real life was so moving to see. Watching you all support and encourage each other in real life, just like you do every week online, was a dream come true. Love you, GUT peeps.
If you weren’t able to make this one, don’t worry. This is just the beginning of our in person GUT gatherings. I know we are all feeling a need to come together in person and make things, and I’m determined to make that happen however I can. It might take a minute, but there are more IRL DrawTogether creative community hangs to come. Mark my words and the pen I draw them with.
For those who couldn’t make this event, we’re going to recap the days drawing adventures so everyone can participate. No artists left behind! And if you missed it but are in the Bay Area, you can always join us in the DrawTogether Studio for in person workshops hosted by incredible artist educators — check out the calendar and sign up here.
Some major thanks:
A lot went into making this collaborative event happen. HUGE thanks to our partners at SFMOMA, particularly Kathleen Maguire and Chloe Kwiatkowski. Torryne Choate of birch put her whole heart into creating incredible Ruth Asawa-drawing-inspired floral arrangements. We bow! Huge thank you always to Ruth Asawa’s grandson Henry Weverka and Viviant Tong for supporting our celebration of all things Ruth. Also thanks Robbie Jeanne for documenting the day.
And of course the magnificent GUT team: Anne Mercogliano, Art Auntie Kathleen, Candace Chen, and
. Go Team GUT! I’d be/we’d all be lost without you.Alright, let’s do some DRAWING.
Warming Up with Ruth Asawa
To get everyone’s drawing muscles ready to look and draw deeply, we started with some warm-up drawings, all inspired by Ruth’s nature-based patterns. Before you dive into this week’s official lesson, I suggest doing each of these for a few minutes. Set a timer for 3 minutes if that helps you forget about time and just drop into the mark making.
Warm Up 1: Loops
The very first time I featured Ruth and her work was on our podcast (remember that??) I described her hanging sculptures as “drawing in the air.” This calming practice is based on the loops in her wire sculptures.
Starting in the center, draw a line of repeating loops, like a series of cursive e’s or l’s, that spirals outwards. Go slow, and pay attention to your breath. Keep drawing for three minutes, or until you take up the whole page. (I talk through the activity on the podcast if you want to give a listen!)
Warm Up 2: Branching Patterns
While Ruth is probably most widely known for her looped hanging wire sculptures, she also was fascinated by branching patterns and incorporated those into her art. We took inspiration from these sculptures just as she took inspiration from nature and her material.
Just like our first warm up, choose one spot to start and make some lines branching out. Then keep branching! And branching and branhcing. Let yourself go in different directions, and see what patterns emerge.
Warm Up 3: Waves
In our third warm up, we focused on our breath (as we did recently with artist Carissa Potter) to draw waves. Carissa has a series of breathing exercises in her new book, and I loved the one about visualizing stress flowing away from you in waves.
It reminded me of Ruth’s drawings of waves and meanders:
Draw the waves, and breathe as you draw: “With every inhale, the wave crests. With every exhale, it breaks and flows away from you.”
After you’ve finished those three Ruth-inspired warm ups, you should feel looser, more present and in sync with your pen, and ready to draw our main event. And surprise - we are doing it TOGETHER. This week’s assignment is a giant drawing collaboration!!
The Assignment: “Us” Flowers
If you’ve been with us for the Asawa series, you know that we have drawn flowers together, inspired by Ruth’s own drawings and her gardens. We continued that in person at SFMOMA, drawing the gorgeous floral arrangements created by the one and only Torryne Choate of birch. Torryne based the lines and shapes and space of the arrangements on Ruth’s flower drawings.
And for our in person event at SFMOMA, we did something extra special to put the TOGETHER in drawing: I asked Torryne of birch to make one large bouquet for all of us to collaborate on a drawing together. And Torryne knocked it out of the park. The gorgeous, GIANT arrangement not only recalls Ruth’s mark making, but she used some of the same types of flowers that Ruth grew in her garden and drew herself.
So for today’s GUT drawing assignment, I’m inviting all of us to do our own online group drawing version of this. A tech-enabled collaboration!! And while the chat is open to GUT members only, I’m opening up the instructions so we can all participate.
Step 1: Look closely and select a specific moment from this bouquet. Zoom in on different parts to see the details. What part of this bouquet calls to you? Here is a close up of one of Ruth’s drawings that I used as an example in my talk at SFMOMA - the circles parts call attention to how she used negative space, composition, her commitment to line, her patterns and textures, and her simplicity and looseness in her drawing…
These are things you want to pay attention to when you select your subject, and when you are drawing.
Step 2: Draw just this one portion of the bouquet. Rather than drawing the whole bouquet, just focus on the small area you selected. Remember Ruth Asawa’s advice to start in the center. What feels like the center of your chosen area?
Here are some photos of people collaborating on the group drawing IRL:
Step 3: Share your drawing in the chat! By sharing our specific-POV flower drawings in the chat, we will create a large floral collaborative drawing, just like we did at SFMOMA. Let’s put our drawings together and see what emerges!
All right everyone, excited to see what moment you select from the big gorgeous arrangement, and how you approach it. Do you draw in black and white, like Ruth? Or go for full color? Which medium will you choose? (Ruth used them all!) There is no right or wrong way to draw a flower. No rules in art. You just do you.
Again, thank you to everyone who helped make our first major-official in person DrawTogether GUT gathering so special. I can’t wait for more.
Everything is better… and PENCILS UP! ❤️✏️❤️
xoxo,
w
ps - a very special photo from yesterday, just to remind you how seriously we take ourselves here at the GUT:
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to DrawTogether with WendyMac to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.