Mindfulness & the Art of Drawing A Creative Path to Awareness

by Greenhalgh, Wendy Ann

• ISBN13: 9781782407706
• ISBN10: 1782407707
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2020-04-14
• Publisher: Leaping Hare Press

Summary

Filled with brilliant insights and creative drawing excercises, this invaluable guide to mindfulness in drawing teaches us how we can achieve self-growth and mental and spiritual development through the practice of putting pencil to paper.

In this essential work, Wendy Ann Greenhalgh explores how drawing creates a deeper connection with ourselves and the world around us, and is as natural to us as breathing. 

Through mindful creative exercises and personal anecdote, she reveals how artists can rediscover the playful pleasure of drawing, and doodlers can experience wellbeing through mark making.

Chapters in this book cover:

• Just Drawing - From our early childhood, we all enjoy the simple pleasure of making marks, and this section investigates how the act of drawing allows all of us to connect both to our minds and our bodies, making a start on the path to mindful drawing. 
• Still Life - Exploring the relationship between subject and object, this chapter teaches us how to see mindfully so that even the most ordinary and everyday can become extraordinary, and beauty can be found in all things. 
• Landscapes and Cityscapes - Whether you are lost in nature or wrapped up in a bustling city, encircled by silence or surrounded by motion and noise, this section teaches us how to develop our sense of place, including excercises on how to capture time in drawings and the Japanese art of Wabi-Sabi drawing. 
• Portraiture and Life Drawing - In this chapter, the mindfulness of drawing promises a new way of encountering the human body, and how through this natural empathy we can also develop our capacity for loving and kindness. 

With fresh materials of perception, flow, and instinct, an insightful author shares how we can all experience the mindful joys of drawing.

This book is from the Mindfulness series, a range of titles dedicated to exploring the mindful lifestyle, including The Art of Mindful Walking, The Art of Mindful Gardening, and The Art of Mindful Baking.

Author Biography

Wendy Ann Greenhalgh is a writer, artist and teacher of creative mindfulness. She runs mindfulness workshops, courses and retreats, supporting others as they get creative, explore language, write, draw, take photographs and meditate. She has practiced mindfulness in her everyday and creative life for 20 years.

Table of Contents

Prelims  pp1–7

Chapter 1: Preparing To Draw  pp8–33
How the author first started drawing as a teenager during a period of illness. Insights into creativity and wellbeing, and the joy of being in the moment with what you’re drawing. The author’s personal journey as an artist and a mark-maker.
Moving from the doing-mind to the being-mind. Looking at the commonalities between mindfulness and drawing, including: absorption, flow, being in the present moment, and a process, rather than results driven activity.
Creativity is something natural that arises out of mindfulness and drawing is something that belongs to all of us. The importance of creativity for well-being.
Mindful exercises: Mindfulness of hands and body. Coming to your materials mindfully.

Chapter 2: Just Drawing  pp34–67
How drawing brings you into your body and why this is important. How easy it is to get lost in drawing when we focus mindfully on the body and not just the mind or the eye. The beliefs we bring to our drawing; about artists and our abilities.
Becoming immersed in the moment – if drawing just draw – if walking just walk. Doodling – the most common form of mindful drawing. What happens when we doodle? What is doodling?
Mindful exercises: Drawing with the breath. Mindful doodling. 

Chapter 3: Still Life  pp68–97
Drawing is a conversation between you and what you’re drawing, we are entering into a relationship. Phenomenology. Object and subject: separation, connection and interconnection. 
Really seeing is everything in drawing. Paying attention. Learning how to see – unlearning the habit of assumption.
Self Metta: being kind to ourselves and our drawing. Removing expectations – what’s it supposed to look like? Be like? 
Mindful exercises: Learning to see whilst we draw. Drawing the hand from inside and outside.

Chapter 4: Landscapes and Cityscapes  pp98–123
Perception and perspective. Cultivating a wider awareness. Drawing as a way of entering into and becoming part of a larger space.
Drawing happening in real time. Slowing down in our quick-fix digital age. Impermanence – how things change – Wabi Sabi – ideas of beauty in small, everyday, details of life including decay.
Mindful exercises: Drawing a place you love. Being in time. Wabi Sabi. 

Chapter 5: Life Drawing  pp124–141
Connecting. The experience of seeing and being seen by another, drawing and being drawn by another.
Loving Kindness/Metta: really seeing others as an antidote to objectification. Celebrating the beauty in others.
Not just life drawing but drawing for life – how regular mindful drawing can transform.
Mindful exercises: Self Portrait. Portrait. Drawing crowds.

Endmatter  pp142–144