Thinking through drawing

The University of the Arts London offers lectures by professionals from different disciplines, and I am free to attend as many as I like if my class schedule allows.

This time I attended an online session called Thinking through drawing by Ilga Leimanis, who also works as an artist.

I attended this session because I sometimes feel that my creativity is limited by my sketches alone during the design production phase. Most of the time, I go to the library to look at materials or see other designers’ work at exhibitions to get inspiration, but I wanted to become more of a person who can generate ideas from within myself.

First, I learnt a simple approach from the tutor: change the way I hold the pen. When I draw with different way of holding a pen, I found that my sketches changed from the way I normally do them.

Then I developed the idea using the following key words.

ISOLATE/ FOCUS is to focus on one perspective of an idea and develop only that part of it.

And here is the sketch I created.

I was able to create new forms by changing the texture and size of the lines and ideas using LINE, which had not been part of my ideas before.

In this way, I found that by keeping a stock of keywords in my mind, I could combine them with my ideas and further develop my ideas.

I wished I had known this idea earlier in the Method of investigating I was working on. Then I might have been able to develop the CONKER symbol.

In the future, if I feel that my ideas are limited, I will try my best to look forward to expanding my ideas based on this word list.