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Check out This Month’s Goody, a featured article from our archives!

The Gallery page is a sampling of some of the visual art that has been featured in our zine.

Thanks go out to all our great contributors who’ve enriched and given depth and breadth to this zine. Bravo!

Scroll down to find this month’s sampling of Oldies but Goodies.

You can find guidelines on submissions on the About page in the navigation bar under the header.

let me know—either through comments or email—if you have any suggestions, concerns, problems with layout or design, find links that don’t take you anywhere or anything else that you think I need to know. If you have a suggestion for a poll, I’d love to hear it!

[-art, process, tutorial-]

by Nancy S.M. Waldman

Time:
• 10 minutes or less

Materials:
two standard sheets of printing paper torn in fourths
marker, crayon, pen or pencil

Before reading this article, do one drawing each for 8 of the following words. I’ve given you more than 8 in case you prefer not to deal with some of them but, of course, do them all if you like. The drawings must not be representational. No pictures or symbols that represent anything. Stick to abstract lines and shapes of any thickness or type. Think about the word for only a moment and then begin to draw. Make them small, make them quick and don’t think too much.

peace/tranquility
anger
nervous energy
joyful energy
hope
depression
illness
fear
loneliness
femininity
masculinity

Done?
Now here’s another thing for you to do. Take a moment to decide which one of the two shapes seen below should be named “takete” and which one should be “maluma.”

I’ll explain what these shapes represent at the end of the article.

Words dominate our worlds, and even more importantly, our thoughts. We can’t even think about thoughts without using words. This dominance of the word is one reason art, craft, pure design and music are so vital in our lives. We need the balance that wordlessness can provide. Marks—the kind that you used to do your drawings—communicate on a non-verbal level.

This little exercise is meant to increase your awareness and give you the experience of the fact that non-representational marks carry meaning that can be *read* by others.

Below is a series of drawings that roughly correspond to the ones you did. Scroll down and look at each one. Notice the energy or lack of it, the placement, direction and movement of the lines. Think about how it makes you feel or what it reminds you of. Look for similarities between your drawings and mine. Then scroll back through them and try to match them up with the list of words (some of them are used twice).

peace/tranquility, anger, nervous energy, joyful energy, hope, depression, illness, fear, loneliness, femininity, masculinity

Here they are with labels (on top):

anger	loneliness
fear	anger
tranquility	depression
nervous energy	femininity
illness	hope
joyful energy	masculinity

The interesting thing about these simple drawings is that they tend to be so similar between people. Betty Edwards in Drawing on the Artist Within shows many examples of these drawings done in her art classes. They are not all the same—we wouldn’t expect or want that, would we? And, that’s not the point. The point is that they are amazingly communicative.

You might disagree with some of my labels—maybe what I call hope looks more like femininity to you (I was interested that my joyful energy and femininity looked so similar ), or my nervous energy might look like your anger. Come to think of it, my loneliness looks pretty fearful. I trust, though, that you can look at these and at least narrow the choice down to two or three. Sometimes we don’t communicate that explicitly when we’re using words!

If I did these drawings on another day, they would likely be different. If I were feeling especially lonely or fearful or angry, the marks would be even more communicative of that feeling. The fact that my loneliness drawing incorporates a feeling of fear is interesting to me. I probably am fearful of being lonely. That it came out in a drawing that took less than thirty seconds illustrates my point in a way that my words cannot.

I’ll be posting more about what you can do with simple non-representational drawings, but in the meantime, I suggest that you play with lines, marks and the expression of emotions.

In terms of other art that you do, remember these tiny drawings. Placement on the page, the energy and speed with which lines are drawn, the direction of the lines, whether they are straight, sharp, angular, wavy, curvy, upturned—all of these things and more carry information to your viewer. Whether you work in paint or clay, fabric or pencil, make sure that you know what non-verbal message your art is delivering. Harness this information so that you can use it in your work and in viewing other people’s art.

Most of my understanding of R-mind thinking, the meaning of marks and much of the rest of what I’ve come to understand about creativity was informed by the books of Betty Edwards, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain and Drawing on the Artist Within. I consider them essential so do consider looking more closely at them when you get the chance. (I’ll be posting a full review of Drawing on the Artist Within soon.)

So what about takete and maluma, the drawings at the beginning of this article? These nonsense words and two similar drawings were used in an experiment done by Gestalt psychologist, Wolfgang Kohler in 1929. 98% of respondents labelled the angular drawing “takete” and the curved one, maluma. This was strikingly similar across cultures. We can project why this is so (the letters of takete are more angular, the sound is sharper and so on) but it continues to be a fascination that there is this kind of brain universality associated with abstract shapes and sounds when so much of what human beings have trouble with is communication. According to Wikipedia it is known as the Bouba/Kiki Effect

Other posts about Marks:
Mark my Words - a graphic reminder
Making your Mark - essay about self-promotion

[-music, art, inspiration-]

Get your brushes, paints, colored pencils and gel pens ready. When you get finished reading this article you’ll be wanting them immediately!

by guest contributor, Debbie Jensen

“Today, I find myself interested in graphic arts and multimedia; albeit with music written upon my heart and soul.”

As a very young child, I began a long journey of piano playing which has followed me all the way through my adulthood. From childhood lessons to adult lessons, and after decades of musical education which included reading notes, chords, scales, music theory, and composition, you would think I’d feel like I had achieved my musical goals. To the contrary, I still have so much more to learn! However, once any pianist reaches an expert level, it is difficult (and expensive) to find the musical instruction required to keep going. From this experience, coupled with other twist of events, I have drifted away from playing music. Today, I find myself interested in graphic arts and multimedia; albeit with music written upon my heart and soul.

Music has been one of the strongest influences to my artistic expressions and has helped me understand how to express beauty, rhythm, and movement. From my photography background (from which I photographed thousands of images), I learned the seven wonders of photography, the importance of framing and composition, and how to create emphasis. So you might wonder, how could music influence artistic expressions of a different medium?

When I used to play the piano, sometimes I would reach to fasten my seat belt, but of course, it was not there. This often happened right before I started to play, and perhaps this occurred because I felt as if I was about to travel through space. From my mind’s eye, and at the point I was lost in my music, I could easily envision colorful, geometric forms. The forms were beautiful. Other times, I would see imaginary birds flying, and possibly those birds are manifesting themselves through my graphic designs today. My sketch books are filled with endless imaginary birds; and I often wonder, where is this imagery coming from? There seems to be no end to it.

In music, the rhythm can slow down and speed up, pause or sustain a tone, leap, or even freeze for an instant; but if the rhythm breaks–sadly, the moment is lost. Is art any different? Isn’t this concept similar to what we know as a design principle? Each piece of artwork whether it be 2-D or 3-D needs to pull together as a unit and needs to have the same feeling of completeness in the same way as expected in a song; that is, at least to the point of solving all the design problems related to it.

Next time you find yourself stuck, creatively speaking, turn on music which harmonizes with the piece you are working on. Amazingly, in the way songs are written and in the way words are expressed within them, pianists vary the way they choose to strike the keys. So, why wouldn’t music influence how the artist’s brush strikes the canvas? To experience what I’m trying to convey, close your eyes and draw with your imaginary pen or brush and strike the air as the music influences you; and let the music influence how you make your abstract design. If brush strokes and lines are artists’ signatures, then why not let your signatures be influenced by audio multimedia?

© copyright 2005 - 2007
Debbie Jensen “Black and White Piano Keys Composition”