​The Prohibited Line 
​
​Riina Näsi

Video recording of workshop

​What is left outside of the picture and what is revealed? What is the relationship between prohibited and formed expression?
The workshop aims to reveal the discourse behind the act of drawing. It is not an art therapy session but a research-focused attempt to clarify individual's expressive goals. With small exercises, we raise the awareness of the notion of 'prohibited' and ask what it means to the participant. We will observe the discussion that happens in our group as well as our own presence in relation to the subject - how to deal with the prohibited and what does it mean to us?

​

​Curie Scott

presentation of PhD research

Jackie Hall

On Symbolism - a talk

​Also participating:

Rebecca Chamberlain
DrawLearn

Emma Fält, performance artist
DoBeDo, Silent Drawing Party

Robin Whitmore
& The Camberwell Incredibles!

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Bios of artists, educators and presenters:

Camilla Brueton is an artist and arts professional. As the Postgraduate Community Manager, she creates a platform for cross-college and cross-disciplinary opportunities, events and networking for postgraduate taught and research students at UAL. As an artist, she is curious about how place is made and experienced. Her practice involves drawing, installation, writing and collaboration and has produced both creative and academic work that has been exhibited, published and performed.
http://cbrueton.co.uk

Rebecca Chamberlain studied for a foundation degree in Art and Design at the University of the Arts, London before moving into cognitive science. She completed her undergraduate and postgraduate studies in Experimental Psychology at University College London researching the psychology and neuroscience of representational drawing ability, before joining Professor Johan Wagemans’ lab at KU Leuven in Belgium as a postdoctoral researcher in 2013. Rebecca joined Goldsmiths, University of London, as a lecturer in 2017 and is co-director of the MSc in Psychology of the Arts, Neuroaesthetics and Creativity. 
Her research focuses on the psychology and neuroscience of the production and perception of visual art. She is particularly interested in the mechanisms by which artists acquire their expertise, and the impact of engagement with the visual arts can have on education and mental health. She is also interested in how individual differences in perception interact with learning and cognition

Melissa M Button is a visual artist and Lecturer in Painting/Drawing at the Herberger Institute of Art and Design at Arizona State University. Button received her B.S in Architecture from Arizona State University in 1994 and an MFA in Drawing in 2001. Her research has always been rooted in the collaboration of opposing ideas and has revealed unique discoveries whereupon the amalgamation of these oppositions manifested something that is greater and more infinite than the sum of its parts. Early studies in architecture became the foundation for her interest in space and an awareness of constructed realities.  The observation of something as real, is tenuous at best, as the perceptions from which we gather information are so easily coerced. Her recent work not only uses the collaboration of these conceptual ideas, but it also brings together a mix of processes that seeks to blur the boundaries beyond traditional labels.  The final works become both image and object collaborating to continually reinvent the viewer’s observed reality.  Recently, she was awarded the Glenfiddich Artist in Residence in Banffshire, Scotland to pursue 3 months of research during in 2018.   She received 2 project grants that provided funding for collaborative exhibitions in China.  Her work has been published in the Superstition Review, American Artist, and New American Paintings.  She has shown her work in the Micro Museum in Brooklyn, NY, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Fort Collins, CO, Mesa Contemporary Art Museum in Mesa, AZ, and the Bridge Gallery 798 District in Beijing, China among others.
 
Heidi Hogden is a artist and Assistant Professor of Drawing at the Herberger Institute of Art and Design at Arizona State University. Hogden received her BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2009 and a MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in affiliation with Tufts University in 2012. Her research focuses on contemporary drawing, local environments, and autobiography as a form of storytelling. She specializes in graphite drawings that look to the natural world to understand the relationship between place and identity on a symbolic level. In 2018, Hogden received an Artist’s Grant to develop her creative work at Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT, and in 2015-17 she was the Artist-In-Residence at the Windgate Center for Art and Design in Little Rock, AR. Her work has been included in the 10th International Drawing Annual (INDA 10) from Manifest in Cincinati, OH, and Studio Visit Magazine from Open Studio Press in Boston, MA. She has shown her work at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA, the South Dakota Art Museum in Brookings, SD, the Arkansas Art Center in Little Rock, AR, and the Federation Gallery in Vancouver, Canada, among others. Her exhibition record reflects both a dedication to drawing as a creative practice and an intellectual curiosity that connects the practice of drawing to larger fields of inquiry and engagement with community building projects. 

Michael G. Moore
Michael Moore holds a BFA degree in Printmaking from Syracuse University and an MFA degree in Drawing from the University of Washington. He studied Inuit carvings in Churchill, Manitoba in 1975. He traveled to Japan in 1988 and 2001, and to China in 2001. He taught at the University of Southern Maine, 1967-1992, the Callendar Park College of Education, Falkirk, Scotland, 1972/73. Michael taught Graduate Drawing at The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia from 1992-2017. He taught twelve drawing workshops at The Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, 1985-2012. Michael maintains studios in Philadelphia and Maine and has exhibited his work in a variety of solo, group, and faculty exhibitions during the past 45 years. His web site is drawingdrawings.com and his blog is drawtodraw.com. 

​Riina Näsi is a Finnish artist and art teacher. She is studying for Master´s programme in art education at Aalto University. In her research she is focusing on violence in artistic expression and didactic questions around the subject.
Riina Nasi ​

Emily Sheehan received her BA from the College of Saint Benedict in 2005 and continued her education to receive an M.F.A 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.
Emily’s artistic practice/research utilizes perceptual drawing (drawing from observation in a multi-sensory way) to explore the way marks left on a page become evidence of lived experience. Emily uses both traditional and nontraditional drawing materials, and techniques, to create works that provoke both herself and the viewer to linger in the human space between encounter and recounting where we make our world personal. Emily’s work has been exhibited nationally, in group, invitational, and juried exhibitions. Emily’s pieces included are included the private collections of The Weismann art Museum and the Target Corporation.
https://www.emilysheehanstudiosite.com/

Professor Emeritus Howard Riley PhD MA(RCA) CertDes FRSA FHEA studied at the Hammersmith College of Art, Coventry College of Art, and the Royal College of Art. He holds a doctorate of the University of Wales in the practice and pedagogy of drawing. Academic papers at: https://researchgate.net/profile/Howard_Riley
His drawings have been exhibited in Australia, Malaysia, Finland, Serbia, the USA and the UK. Riley recently retired as Professor of Visual Communication and Head of the School of Research & Postgraduate Studies (2004-2014) at the Swansea College of Art, University of Wales Trinity St David, Wales, UK. Currently he is Tutor at the Classical Education Forum, Cardiff.

Email: [email protected]
 

Seymour Simmons, III, is a Professor of Fine Arts emeritus at Winthrop University, Rock Hill, SC, where he taught art education and studio art, primarily drawing. Prior to moving to South Carolina, He taught art education and drawing at Massachusetts College of Art and did research at Harvard Project Zero. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in printmaking from Colorado State University, as well as M. Ed. and Ed.D. degrees from Harvard. His most recent research project involved creating a series of instructional drawing videos to develop visual imagination. He is currently writing a book on the theory and practice of drawing instruction. His art focuses on figurative drawing and landscapes in watercolor.

Barbara Tversky is a Professor Emerita of Psychology at Stanford University and a Professor of Psychology and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Tversky specialises in cognitive psychology. She is a leading authority in the areas of visual-spatial reasoning and collaborative cognition. Tversky's additional research interests include language and communication, comprehension of events and narratives, and the mapping and modeling of cognitive processes. Barbara received a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Michigan in 1963 and a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Michigan in 1969. She has served on the faculty of Stanford University since 1977 and of Teachers College, Columbia University since 2005. She was named a Fellow of the American Psychological Society in 1995, the Cognitive Science Society in 2002, and the Society of Experimental Psychology in 2004. In 1999, she received the Phi Beta Kappa Excellence in Teaching Award. Tversky is an active and well-regarded teacher of psychology courses at both the introductory and advanced level. In addition, Tversky has served on the editorial boards of multiple prominent academic journals, including Psychological Research (1976-1984), the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition (1976-1982), the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General (1982-1988), Memory and Cognition (1989-2001), and Cognitive Psychology (1995-2002). 




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 ​Riina Näsi "Tinder date", 2018  portraying the relationship and non-relationship in a moment of confrontation. ​

​DRAW

presentation by Camilla Brueton,

​UAL

DRAW is a postgraduate reading group at UAL, University of the Arts London, focusing on interdisciplinary approaches to drawing. Coming out of the Centre for Drawing at Wimbledon, led by Tania Kovats (MA Drawing Course Leader) and coordinated by Camilla Brueton (UAL Postgraduate Community Manager), over the past 2 years DRAW has hosted a variety of events with speakers from across the arts talking about drawing in relation to their work. From fashion illustration to the history of drawing within architecture, an analogue photocopier as a tool for drawing in graphic design to the role of drawing in surgery, how analogue drawings changed our perception of the world and now digital drawings  exist online, ebbing and flowing in real time.

Over the past 2 years DRAW has expanded knowledge and discussions around what drawing can be and the interdisciplinary relationship between drawing and practice. Taking a broad approach to what a ‘reading group’ encompasses – interpreting it as a ‘reading of a subject’,  provocations have included text, exhibitions and You-tube clips. DRAW events have been open to all UAL Postgraduate Students, UAL staff, as well as a wider community of invited alumni, practitioners and researchers in the field.
http://draw.myblog.arts.ac.uk/info/

Apologies - these presenters were unable to attend, but we hope to host their workshops in the near future.

Natasha Freeman
OtherWise

Howard Riley ​
​Drawing Rocks
 
Dr Neil Shah, surgeon
​The Knife Draws  

Here is the paper Howard was going to present:

​

​Drawing Rocks
 
Howard Riley 

Howard Riley PhD MA(RCA) CertDes FRSA FHEA
Professor Emeritus, Swansea College of Art

Contribution to Thinking Through Drawing Symposium, ‘DRAWING ROCKS! What is Drawing Good For? BFI, Southbank, London, 5-6 June 2018.

The paper begins with illustrations of Robert A. Newell’s (2005) drawings of rocks from his PhD thesis, showing how drawing can be a source of understanding and knowledge. His use of perspective together with sharp edges across the field from background to foreground affords the viewer an insight, an understanding of the dual relationship we all have with our world: we are a part of the environment and simultaneously apart from the landscape across which we gaze…
​

Drawing Rocks
 
My friend and colleague Robert A. Newell’s (2005) drawings of rocks from his PhD thesis demonstrate how drawing can be a source of understanding and knowledge beyond the scope of the scientific method: his use of perspective positions the viewer within the scene, but with tonal contrast boundaries representing the edges across the scene from background to foreground all sharply in focus in a way not possible to see with our natural perception, the viewer is afforded an insight, an understanding of the dual relationship we all have with our world: we are a part of the environment in which we survive, and simultaneously apart from the landscape across which we gaze…
The acquisition of such non-propositional knowledge – experiential understanding – is an example of what drawing can be good for.
  ​

Figure 1 Robert Newell Glaciated Rocks, Nant Ffrancon. Pencil on paper. 50.8x71.1cms

Drawing on Rocks
 
Recent research (Pike et al. 2012) posited that members of our species Homo Sapiens (or, the authors mooted, were they Neanderthals?) had been making drawings on rocks in the caves of northern Spain 41,000 years ago, 4000 years earlier than previously thought (Halverson 1992). However, research by the same team published in February this year (Hoffman et al. 2018) now dates some of those cave drawings to c.65,000 years ago, placing them firmly within the Neanderthal period, and dramatically closer to the development of speech as a codified means of communication, estimated as between 70,000 and 100,000 years ago by William Noble and Iain Davidson (1996: 217).

Figure 2 Chauvet Cave, c32,000 BP

We were certainly drawing long before we were writing; Denise Schmandt-Besserat (n.d: 6) suggests a date of c.5,000 BP (before the present) in Mesopotamia for the first writing – codified marks upon a surface - to represent speech. In fact, our facility for depiction gave birth to the very notion of written language: Davidson and Noble (1989:131) distinguish between a gesture as signal, eliciting a response in real time, and being able to see what lies behind a gesture, ‘standing in’ for such a posture:
 
Language is a system of recognizable meanings arising out of shared,
and thus repeated, signs. Language, therefore, depends upon a capacity
to perceive the gesture as having a meaning, as being referential.
Simple response to a gesture as a stimulus is not language. The achievement
of meaningful (iconic) tracing is the essential first step. (My italics).
 
The recognition that a trace resembles some aspect of the real object to which it refers allows the possibility of experimenting with the act of tracing. Through prolonged practice, a further insight arises from the recognition of depiction as depiction: that meaning might be attributed to something which does not resemble the object to which it refers; a sign which is not iconic, but quite arbitrary, a symbol. This leads to the concept of a conventional code, and opens up the possibilities of languages, where quite arbitrary sounds, gestures or marks are assigned specific meanings with the agreement of the community.
Davidson and Noble (1989) strongly support the argument that depiction is the essential first step towards written language. This is the overwhelming importance that the making of images has in human cultural history.
Yet our education system still doesn’t fully recognise the importance of nurturing drawing…
 
Drawing Precedes Writing
 
Here is a series of drawings exploring the argument that our drive for making images facilitated the emergence of writing via our innate capacity for structuring, so as to make order out of chaos, meaning out of matter.

Figure 3 Howard Riley Drawing Precedes Writing 1. Oil pastel on 180gsm cartridge paper A5 size

Figure 4 Howard Riley Drawing Precedes Writing 2. Oil pastel on 180gsm cartridge paper, A5 size.

Figure 5 Howard Riley Drawing Over Writing 1. Oil pastel, graphite, charcoal and pencil on Saunders Waterford 300gsm paper, A3 size.

Figure 6 Howard Riley Drawing Over Writing 5. Oil pastel, graphite, charcoal and pencil on Saunders Waterford 300gsm paper, A3 size.

The theme, Drawing Precedes Writing, explores a movement from chaos to order: a visual equivalent for such movement may be depicted through a familiar Western convention of picture-making; the shift from a distant background (the upper portion of the picture-plane) through a middle ground comprising a central square with complex layering, to a foreground (the lower portion of the picture-plane).
When the viewer engages with each of these drawings in more detail, then a pattern emerges which is common to all:  the central position of the square, resting on a horizontal line effectively dividing background from foreground, connotes physical stability and epitomises visual balance. Metaphorically, the square offers interpretation as representing the dependability of our innate structuring capacity; through this constant compositional structure, the variety of transformative changes from chaos to order is implied in each of the drawings. 
Language itself appears to have emerged from a background world of visual ambiguity, via our innate capacity for structuring chaos into order, and has permeated our observations of the material world to such an extent that the two have become one.  Language is the filter through which we perceive the world, it becomes transparent, interwoven with our perception of the fabric of the material world, yet its visible form – writing - remains forever arbitrary, forever open to negotiation. Thus, drawing affords –reveals - understanding, it is a source of knowledge, and a language through which knowledge is shared.
 
The three R’s revisited
 
At this point, I confess I am about to repeat myself, (see for example, Riley 2017: 280) but I plead, along with Nelson Goodman (1978: ix-x) that: “My experience with students and commentators has not convinced me that reiteration is needless.”
We have a word for being articulate with words: literacy. We have a word for being articulate with numbers: numeracy. But no widely-accepted word for an articulacy with images.
The three R’s, Reading, wRiting and aRithmetic, are generally agreed to stand for the important educational priorities of literacy and numeracy.  However, wRiting itself is implicit evidence of another faculty of educational value: our ability to inscribe marks upon a surface so as to make meaningful representations of our experiences visible to others.
It may be argued that the centrality of wRiting within the familiar mantra has usurped the cultural importance of that other faculty for which there is no name.  I first tentatively proposed visualcy 1 some time ago as being appropriate (Riley 2002: 150), and since then my case for such an invented term has been strengthened by W.J.T. Mitchell’s (2008: 11) advocacy. The neologism refers to the distinct capacity of the human mind that Bruce Archer identified as “analogous with the language capacity and the mathematical capacity for cognitive modelling” (Archer and Roberts, 1979).  Deanna Petherbridge (1991) has commented that “Drawing is the primal means of symbolic communication, which predates and embraces writing, and functions as a tool of conceptualisation parallel with language”.
In the wake of such authorities, a more balanced and coherent version of the three R’s may be proposed: Reading, Routing, and ‘Rithmetic.  According to the Oxford English Dictionary, to rout means ‘to cut a groove in a surface’.  A router is ‘one who routs out or draws forth’.  These are venerable words, redolent of a pre-industrialised era.  However, here they are revitalised, to remind us of the hand/eye co-ordination essential to much material cultural production even in this digital age of the twenty-first century, and to remind us that the language of drawing facilitates the uniquely-human aspiration to share through visual communication our physical, emotional and spiritual experiences of the world. Drawing rocks!
 
Note 1 James Elkins (2008:1-2) notes the term “…visual literacy has been in uncommon but intermittent use for over a hundred and fifty years” and reports a definition as “understanding how people perceive objects, interpret what they see, and what they learn from them.” My neologism, visualcy, embraces not only this sense of understanding, but also the facility for producing the means to understanding through the articulation of visual elements in the construction of images. This more pro-active definition is in line with Cheryl Lemke’s (2003: 15) acknowledgement of the demands of the expanded field of the digital age: visual literacy is described as “The ability to interpret, use, appreciate and create images and video using both conventional and 21st century media in ways that advance thinking, decision making, communication, and learning.” Ways of nurturing this ability, which I have described as an ‘intelligence of seeing’, are offered in Riley (2008) and Rankin, Riley (et al. 2017).

References
 
Archer, B., and Roberts, P. 1979 Design and Technological Awareness in Education,
Studies in Design Education, Craft and Technology, 12(1), p55.
 
Davidson, I. & Noble, W. 1989 The Archaeology of Perception, Current Anthropology,
30(2), pp125-155.
 
Elkins, J. (ed.) 2008 Visual Literacy, New York and Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
 
Goodman, N. 1978 Ways of Worldmaking, Indianapolis: Hackett.
 
Halverson, J. 1992 The First Pictures: Perceptual Foundations of Paleolithic Art, Perception
21, pp389-404.
 
Hoffman, D.L., Standish, C.D., Garcia-Diez, M., Pettitt, P.B., Milton, J.A., Zilhao, J.,
Alcolea-Gonzalez, J.J., Cantalejo-Duarte, P., Collado, H., de Balbin, R., Lorblanchet, M.,
Ramos-Munoz, J., Weniger, G.-Ch., and Pike, A.W.G. 2018 U-Th Dating of Carbonate
Crusts reveals Neanderthal Origin of Iberian Cave Art,  Science 359: 6378, pp912-915.
 
Lemke, C. 2003 enGauge 21st Century Skills: Literacy in the Digital Age, Naperville, ILL: North Central Regional Educational Laboratory (NCREL).
 
Mitchell, W.J.T. 2008 Visual Literacy or Literary Visualcy?, in Elkins, J. (ed.) Visual Literacy, New York and Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, pp11-29.
 
Newell, R.A. 2005 Landscape Painting: Redundant Genre or Viable Practice? PhD Thesis, University of Wales.
 
Noble, W. and Davidson, I. 1996 Human Evolution,  Language and Mind, Cambridge: Cambridge U.P.
 
Petherbridge, D. 1991 The Primacy of Drawing: An Artist's View, London, South Bank
Centre.
 
Pike, A.W.G., Hoffman, D.L., Garcia-Diez, M., Pettitt, P.B., Alcolea, J., De Balbin, R.,
Gonzalez-Sainz, C., De Las Heras, C., Lasheras, J.A., Montes, R. and Zilhao, J. 2012 U
Series Dating of Paleolithic Art in 11 Caves in Spain, Science, 336: 6087, pp1409-1413.
 
Rankin, Q., Riley, H., Brunswick, N., McManus, C. and Chamberlain, R. 2017 Talking the
Line: Inclusive Strategies for the Teaching of Drawing, Drawing: Research, Theory,
Practice 2(2), pp287-304.
 
Riley, H. 2002 Firing Practice: Drawing as Empowerment, Journal of Visual Arts Practice
1(3), pp150-161.
 
Riley, H. 2008 Drawing: Towards an Intelligence of Seeing, in Garner, S. (ed.) Writing on
Drawing. Essays on Drawing Practice and Research, Bristol/Chicago: Intellect/Univ. of
Chicago Press. pp153-167.
 
Riley, H. 2017 Drawing as Driver of Creativity: Nurturing an Intelligence of Seeing in Art
Students, The International Journal of Art & Design Education, 3(3), pp273-280.
 
Schmand-Besserat, D. (n.d.) The Evolution of Writing, available at:
https://sites.utexas.edu/dsb/tokens/the-evolution-of-writing/ (Accessed 7 January 2018).
 
- and see:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Howard_Riley

Figures 1-6: