Creative Journaling (5) - A Story Line

If you completed the previous Creative Journaling posting activities up to now, and I hope you enjoyed them, then you have some idea about “reading a line.”  But just in case, let me summarize a bit about lines.

From looking at the different emotional information in drawing lines, such as the differences in writing a signature, it is possible to guesstimate some of the conditions under which the signature was written.  Does it have evidence of fast speed in execution?  Slow?  Jerky?  Tension?  Arthritis?  Smooth?  Scribbled?  Splattered?  There could, of course, be many more choices.  But given the signature itself, what does it communicate to you about the person who wrote it?  What do you “read” about the line when you look at it? 

Now, turn to the previous 8-panel activity.  Each panel had a tag or label at the bottom of the space:  Anger, Joy, Peacefulness, Depression, Energy, Femininity, Illness, and a personal choice.  In our journaling group, we made copies of everyone’s panel pages (some people did more than one).  Then, everyone placed their initials on the back of each panel for identification, and we cut all the panels apart.  Next, we glued all the “Anger” panels onto one piece of paper, all the “Joy” panels on another sheet, and so on.  We then tried to “read the lines.”  What could they tell us?  Although each one expresses the individuality of the person who made it, taken all together, they also express a wide range in how the information was conveyed. 

Betty Edwards (Ref:  Drawing on the Artist Within, ch. 7, p. 77, 79.) comments, “One would expect enormous variation among the analog drawings – and in fact, no two drawings are alike.  What is surprising, however, is the structural similarity of the drawings that express a single concept, such as “Anger,” “Joy,” Peacefulness,” and so on. And this structural similarity occurs often enough to suggest that it is a shared intuition which contributes visually to our understanding of the concept the drawing means to express.  These structural similarities are most easily seen if one views a large number of drawings at once.  We have looked at a collection of “Anger” drawings. …

     you see that each drawing is unique.  Yet the drawings share a basically similar structure.  The concept “Joy” appears to generate not jagged, dark, pointed forms that almost overwhelm the format as does “Anger,” but instead light, curving, circular forms that tend to rise within the format show how master artists use the language of like to express joy.”  (She goes on to discuss in detail each of the other panels in terms of their form, structure, and visual impact.) …

     In conclusion, “I believe these analog drawings have proved to be a very valuable exercise, for they demonstrate that there is a “vocabulary”  of the visual language of drawing… to generate ideas and to overcome ‘blocks’ to writing.  Both methods apparently skim from the subconscious in R-mode fashion, skirting the rules and regulations, restrictions and censorship of L-mode thought processes…” (Ibid., p. 95.)

There is another activity which I call “Story Line” (my daughter calls it “Taking a Line for a Walk”) which is both simple and a yet a challenge, but it helps to hone the skill for leaning to read lines. 

Activity – “Story Line”:  Take a piece of paper (or in your journal, if that seems better to you).  On it, you are to draw a single, continuous line which tells a story of some sort, of your own choosing.  Then under the drawing, tell the story in words.  This can be more difficult that just drawing a line for just one feeling.  Now it needs to convey a more complex visual situation.  Again, use of pictures (flags, hearts, kites, logos, etc., are not allowed.)  Just start the story/line and do not try to visualize what’s going to happen beforehand – just take the line for a little walk.  Allow the image(s) to emerge in their own way.

I would be very interested in anyone who wants to share their experiences about the Creative Journaling project by commenting on this Cornerhouse blog site or via email..  (my email is in my profile:  sliknl@yahoo.com. 

Some Words of Encouragement:

·        “A rose is a rose is a rose.”  [Gertrude Stein]

“A line is a line is a line.”  [Cornerhouse Rules – CR]

·        You might check out the drawings of Wassily Kandinsky.  “Kandinsky wrote extensively on the ‘language’ of line.”  [Ibid., p. 76.]

·        “The first steps of a creative art are like groping in the dark…These moments are not pretty. I look like a desperate woman, tortured by the simple message thumping away in my head: ‘You need an idea.’”  {Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit, p. 94.]

·        “You must never, never, never, never, never give up!” [Winston Churchill]