Drs Brew, Fava & Kantrowitz, collectively known as 123 Draw,are the founders of Thinking through Drawing. In 2018 123 Draw became 12345 Draw when artists educators Emily Sheehan and Emma Fält joined the group. In 2019 artist educator Beatriz Acevedo joined the Drawing Board. They run the TtD Symposium series, professional development courses and drawing residencies around the world.
Angie Brewis an artist, researcher and drawing teacher. She holds a Drawing MA with distinction from Camberwell College of Art, UAL, London. For her doctorate she worked in the Drawing & Cognition Project, Camberwell, researching enactive observational drawing methods and pedagogy. This resulted in a new cognitively-informed approach called 'Drawing Growth', synchronising eye and hand. Her art practice explores drawing for well-being and healing, and close observational drawing of growth processes. She is artist in residence in a community greenhouse in Brixton, London, where she leads a collaborative Drawing Growth project and a weekly drawing club. She runs an interdisciplinary research project called Drawlearn, exploring how drawing enables and enhances learning 'across the board'. During Covid lockdown she ran online sessions called Tree Meds - calming drawing meditations, and, with artists Angela Hodgson-Teall and Jen Wright, launched MinDraw, a one minute a day drawing project.
Michelle Favais a visual artist, teacher and researcher based at Loughborough University where she lectures in Fine Art, and is a member of the Design Education Research Group. She holds an MA in Contemporary Visual Arts from Falmouth University (2005). Her current doctoral research investigates the cognitive functions underpinning drawing, and the contemporary educational relevance of observational practices. Michelle has worked with UK schools and colleges to innovate curricula and teaching methods, and foster communities for pedagogic research and innovation.
Andrea KantrowitzEdD., is an artist, researcher, educator who has lectured and given workshops internationally on art and cognition. She holds a B.A in Art and Cognition from Harvard University and a MFA in Painting from Yale, and teaches at Tyler School of Art, Temple University. She has taught drawing at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and graduate courses in contemporary art at the College of New Rochelle. She has also been a teaching artist in the New York City for many years, involved in multiple local and national research projects. In 2014 she completed an interdisciplinary doctorate at Teachers College which examined the cognitive interactions underlying contemporary artists’ drawing practices. Her blog is Zyphoid.com and her own art work is represented by Kenise Barnes Fine Art.
Emily Sheehan is a visual artist and drawing teacher. She received her MFA in Visual Studies, with a specialization in Drawing and Sculpture, from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) in 2008. Since 2014, Emily has held the position of Assistant Professor of Fine Art and Drawing Area Head at Indiana University Southeast. As an educator, Emily is interested in creating creative curriculum that combines traditional academic drawing techniques with immediate, experimental, and unexpected drawing materials and methods. She develops and teaches curriculum to help fine arts students explore drawing as a tool for invention, conceptualization, and self-directed ideation, description, discussion, and problem solving. Emily’s artistic practice/research utilizes perceptual drawing (drawing from observation in a multi-sensory way) to explore the way that marks left on a page become evidence of lived experience. Website: www.emilysheehanstudiosite.com
Emma Vilina Fält (BA(Design),MA (Fine Art), FIN, s.1983) is a multidisciplinary artist working in the field of drawing and performing arts. Her work takes a comprehensive look at drawing as a means to make contact, open dialogues and collaboratively explore our experience of the world. Her participatory pieces combine live drawing, sounds, multimedia and written scores to create live acts with groups. Fälts current work and ongoing artistic research explores drawing as listening. Fält has shown her work in Finland and abroad in galleries, festivals, symposiums, museums and worked in community projects with youth in Finland. Emma Teaches drawing in Art School Maa, at the Hospital school in Kuopio, Finland and works as a visiting teacher around the world.