LINES MADE BY WALKING

~ LINES MADE BY WALKING ~ A Drawing and Walking Workshop, June 2018 ~

Today was the first ‘Lines Made By Walking’ Workshop! 

The sun was very shy today, but we had a good dry and calm afternoon, and found lots to draw on our walk on Bressay. 

We started by paying a visit to Amanda Welch’s ‘Conditions’ at the lighthouse, and meeting current artist-in-residence, Vicki Fleck. It was great to hear her plans for the month, including taking a closer look at Bressay’s inland lochs. The group conversation let to some interesting thoughts on life in Bressay, and it’s hidden places. Factual maps can only tell us so much, and it’s very interesting how Amanda Welchs’s ‘transformative’ use of maps can reveal alternative aspects, as well at hint at things we can only experience by going to the real place. We also talked of Amanda’s approach to drawing, of collecting and ‘memory jotting’, and how this might inspire our own sketches out on the hillside.

Starting at the lighthouse, we then made our way up the dramatic hill, stopping to draw cliffs rising above us, and then the archway down below. The views here are panoramic, and it can be difficult to take it all in on paper. It became clear that focusing on particular aspects could be just as rewarding, making a series of smaller impressions which together recorded the unfolding of the journey. In the first drawing here, I was fascinated by the cliff edge which seemed to roll and fall away below like water cascading down a waterfall. Just taking that section of the cliff highlighted this. 

Later on in the walk, we faced out more towards Mainland Shetland, and I drew the distant Quarff valley, tracing the line of its dramatic silhouette. Afterwards I noticed that the following drawing below it (of the top of a crofthouse-ruin wall) also looked like a landscape. We can find interesting lines and ‘edges-of-things’ everywhere around us in the landscape, and by drawing them, we also go on little journeys. 

The participants made some great drawings on the first ‘Lines Made By Walking’ workshop, including ‘panoramas’ of impressions, each a snapshot of a scene that appeared as we walked and changed our viewpoint. Drawings ‘spill out’ into each other here in a way I think that a series of photographs wouldn’t. As well as a progression in time, and a change of locations, this series of drawings show a progression in thought. The drawer talked of ‘loosening-up’ her approach as we went along, and I think the final sketch here, a scene with many levels of depth in space, shows an opening up of seeing. 

In the second part of our afternoon, we made our way to Bressay’s Speldiburn Cafe and made ‘memory jottings’ of our journey. Here we had lots more materials to play with - papers, paints, card and glue. As a little help, I handed out some prompt cards which were inspired by the writings of Amanda Welch. When she talks about making her memory drawings, she seems to suggest a kind of emptying of the mind when making them, seeing what has planted itself there, and of recalling things usually at the edges of our noticing - a very unforced process. It’s quite tricky here, as there are questions of conscious-ness. To make a journey with the intention of making memory drawings after would make your attention to your surroundings very different. This afternoon, I tried to emphasise that the approaches we had tried out could be used on any journey, even the mundane - the commute to work, walking the dog, the way to the shops. The goal of drawing is not to necessarily always collect ‘material’ or make beautiful studies, but can be to simply notice things.