Beans Beans They're Good for Your ...

... soul. This week our Drawing Together workshop was led by Zara Slattery from a room somewhere near Brighton. She had a bit of trouble getting into the meeting so while we waited, J suggested we should think about what we would like to be, to do well, in our next life, and then create a quick self-portrait. 

Cue my usual panic. Sometimes it's a bit boring. Anyway, I decided I'd like to be someone good at drawing, and spent much of my 3 minutes trying to reduce the size of the hand to less that that of the head. Our leader arrived, and asked us to draw beans. She drew a kidney bean. But it could be any kind of bean. We worked on a more 3-D representation. Then we had to smoosh our beans into 2-D and then 3-D shapes. I got stuck. Zara tried to help, but my mind was too resistant. Very frustrating.

Next we had to find words for emotions during a journey. In that instant of decision I could travel no further than the journey of that hour. And then we were asked to draw a 4-panel story of the beans going on that chosen journey expressing the words we had written down:

Next we had a couple of minutes to create symbols for each of the emotions. Zara talked about drawing bunnies and seagulls and I got tangled up in not knowing how to find a suitable creature let alone draw it but she gave us the out that we could also scribble so I scribbled away.

Finally we were to draw a map with a path around the outside into which our symbols would be placed to mark the passage of the journey. Then we were asked to draw our human beans in the middle of the map, going on that journey. Zara spoke beautifully about medieval manuscripts illuminated around the edges, and that led me to the memory of my favourite teacher ever, Mr Denham in the 4th year at Bousfield, who would only mark pages of homework if the margins were illustrated. I drew my path, and then it was time to add the beans:

I wanted to end on a positive note so I got my bean out of there. And then I got to see some of the drawings of others. It was another great hour in a safe and supportive place. And I'm getting better at not giving up, and having a go, although still with a bit of a hissy fit. But I like my beans! Thank you Zara & the Drawing Together team. See you in a month!