In the Zone, published Nov 07 Australian Artist Magazine

In the Zone. Anne King.

Athletes talk about ‘being in the zone’ when they feel their bodies can go on for ever; they are ‘charged’. The same can happen when drawing and you can choose to take yourself there. While in the zone your focal power will be extremely strong. You will work intuitively, without criticizing your work. Using predominately the right side of the brain you will tap into your intuitive side, and be able to create drawings with great feeling.

Speed drawing is one way to get ‘in the zone.’

Drawing at speed, you have no time to listen to the ‘inner critic’. It is like taking a short cut; your eye and hand communicate instinctively, and after twenty minutes of fast drawing exercises, you will find that you are drawing better than ever. Your eye-hand co-ordination will become fine-tuned, and you will be drawing naturally, without tension. That is the time to start the long drawing.

It is referred to as right brain drawing (think flowery letter R) as opposed to Left brain drawing. In fact you use both sides of your brain when drawing, but using predominantly right brain will get you into the zone, whereas the left brain is more logical, and its interference will constrain your drawing with its need for perfection. How many times have you looked at a drawing and admired the ‘feeling’ conveyed, even though a line here and there may be wrong? That drawing with feeling was done more with the right brain than the left. The object of the speed drawing exercise is to override the left side of your brain.

To speed yourself into the zone ideally you need a model to hold quick poses for you. This isn’t possible for most of us, so set up a still life of varying shapes and sizes, overlapping each other and on different levels, so that your eye has to travel around the set in all directions. Don’t worry about making it pretty, this is just an exercise.

Set up your easel and have plenty of newsprint and charcoal handy.

Get a kitchen timer, and work out a 30 - 45 minute programme for yourself. Write it down and stick to it, as though you were in a class. Try to work loosely, keeping your charcoal on the paper as much as possible, and your eyes more on the set-up than on your paper.

Hold your charcoal in the palm of your hand, arm outstretched, as though the charcoal is an extension of your arm. Keep your eyes moving quickly over the whole set up. You are aiming to get the whole thing down even in the one minute exercises. Don’t worry about the drawings ‘looking good’, they will be little more than scribbles at first. You are drawing for your own benefit, to achieve the zone. Once there, you can get out your good paper and really go for it.





An example of a programme might be:

5 x 1 minute drawings,
5 x 3 minute drawings,
1 x 5 minute drawing,
1 x 20 minute drawing.

Of course you can come back into the last drawing and work on it at length, but having that initial 20 minute limit forces you to keep up the speed and stay in the zone, so that the feeling of the work is maintained.

After 20 minutes of constant drawing, you stand back and have a good look at the work. This is the time to analyze the drawing and discover what needs ‘working up’, what should be ‘knocked back’, and where to highlight with white pastel.

Doing this exercise two or more times a week will move your drawing skill ahead noticeably. Reading isn’t enough, only by doing the exercise will you discover quite how powerful it can be. Working at speed challenges your spatial perception, fine tunes your eye-hand co-ordination and by-passes the critical side of your brain. When all these are achieved, and you are working hard and fast, you will be in the zone!