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.