What Collections do You Keep?
I started a new sketchbook workshop this week called, “Drawing Collections.” It is a sketching workshop that has so much possibility in it that I will run it again soon in the future. What do you think of when you imagine collections?
It could be a stamp collection or all of your record albums. It could be coins, bird figurines, feathers, shells, necklaces, shoes, lipstick, plants, tools, French books, maps, tea towels, heirloom tomato seeds, or spices.
It can be things that squeak, things beginning with the letters b, things that shine, or things that get rusty.
It can be any sort of thing that you want to group together with something else with a thread that has meaning only to you.
It can be a collection of things you have or things you don’t.
Go to a museum. What are the top five things you would want to have? What five things might have been curated in by mistake?
What are scenes from your favorite book, or top scenes from favorite books? How do you imagine the characters looking from the novel you’re reading now, or look up photographs to draw some of the people referred to in a non-fiction book.
Draw the weather, draw words, draw how music sounds to you, draw emotions. Can you draw a smell?
The great thing about drawing a collection is that it doesn’t have to have meaning to anyone else but you. The drawings don’t have to be realistic or fantastically rendered. As long as it has meaning to you, it’s good.
I do this kind of thing because I like to draw, but this kind of creative exercise can be done equally well with words or in your imagination. I like to record things that are interesting to me in some way or that I have an association with. Sometimes I draw things to record memories. Sometimes, I draw to then let go of things.
What kind of collections have meaning for you? What are you grouping together?
