This accessible book explains the significance of relationships between the body and the mark, visual imitation, drawing and writing and visual storytelling, providing a simple guide to these key ideas. For millennia drawing has been conceived as an exploratory activity, mediating between the vision of the drafter and what they are drawing. Drawing reveals hidden relationships, directs attention, scrutinises the material world and provides plans for further action.
The book unpacks the key ideas that have shaped the rich, complex and foundational activity of drawing. It presents an unexpected, engaging and authoritative range of illustrated examples of drawings made by culturally and historically diverse people for different purposes, with different media, in widely different times and situations.
Educator, author and artist Simon Grennan builds together concepts to create a complete guide to ideas about drawing.
By:
Dr Simon Grennan (University of Chester UK)
Imprint: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 216mm,
Width: 138mm,
Weight: 318g
ISBN: 9781350265936
ISBN 10: 1350265934
Pages: 176
Publication Date: 02 June 2022
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Primary
,
Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
List of Illustrations Introduction: what is drawing? 1. Imitation The threshold of visualisation and the problem of media Depiction and visualisation Imitating vision and imitating drawing Digital imitation Analogue imitation Imitating experience 2. Mark Tone Line Planning Mapping Drawing systems representing three dimensions Typification Writing Mark making across media Introducing the body 3. Trace The surface The surface of the drawing as the skin of a body The surface as a visualisation of an idea The limits of the drawing The significance of drawing media Trace, media and body Trace and style Trace as evidence Movement, mind and absence Choreographing traces Trace and depiction 4. Story Story and point of view The story of the drawing Story and style Drawing style and character 5. Drawing Today Feeling Technology old and new Systematic drawings Identity and power Textiles and the line Conjecture and hypothesis Collaborative drawing Performing drawing Moving drawings Contemporary drawing and public cultural institutions Selective glossary References Further reading Index
Simon Grennan is Leading Research Fellow at the University of Chester, UK. He is an awarded scholar of visual narrative, graphic novelist and cartoonist. He is the author of Drawing in Drag by Marie Duval (2019), A Theory of Narrative Drawing (2017) and Dispossession (2015), one of The Guardian Books of the Year 2015, which is a graphic adaptation of a novel by Anthony Trollope. He is co-author, with Roger Sabin and Julian Waite, of Marie Duval: Maverick Victorian Cartoonist (2020), Marie Duval (2018) and The Marie Duval Archive (2015), co-author of Key Terms in Comics Studies (2021) and co-editor, with Laurence Grove, of Transforming Anthony Trollope: 'Dispossession', Victorianism and 19th-century Word and Image (2015), among others. Since 1990, he has been half of international artists team Grennan & Sperandio, producer of over forty comics and books (www.kartoonkings.com).
Reviews for Thinking About Drawing: An Introduction to Themes and Concepts
This is an important summation about a lot of foundational ideas in drawing. Having a functional text, written by a practitioner, is what the field needs. -- Simon Downs, Lecturer in Graphic Communication, Loughborough University, UK
