{"id":4049,"date":"2012-05-14T10:39:03","date_gmt":"2012-05-14T10:39:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meeseeks:5080\/blog\/?p=4049"},"modified":"2024-07-18T14:08:57","modified_gmt":"2024-07-18T14:08:57","slug":"why-draw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/2012\/05\/why-draw\/","title":{"rendered":"Why draw?"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><\/blockquote>\n<p>Why do we draw?<\/p>\n<blockquote><\/blockquote>\n<p>Here\u00a0is a first list\u00a0of reasons for drawing:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>To observe<\/li>\n<li>To record some real phenomenon, such as a scene or a person&#8217;s face<\/li>\n<li>To play<\/li>\n<li>To explore, to follow a line<\/li>\n<li>To think<\/li>\n<li>To capture some essence of an object being drawn<\/li>\n<li>To become one with the object being drawn<\/li>\n<li>To communicate something, for example, an emotion, a mental state, an idea, a thought, an inference, . . .<\/li>\n<li>To express some prior internal emotion or mental state<\/li>\n<li>To express some internal emotion or mental state concurrent with drawing,\u00a0something that arises in the act of drawing<\/li>\n<li>\u00a0To invoke some emotion in the drawing<\/li>\n<li>To provoke some emotion or mental state in the viewer of the drawing<\/li>\n<li>To inspire viewers to action, as, for example, in political posters or satirical cartoons<\/li>\n<li>\u00a0To achieve some internal emotion or mental state by drawing &#8211;\u00a0 for instance, to seek to become calm, to seek to enter a trance, to seek to be in the moment<\/li>\n<li>To better know oneself<\/li>\n<li>To seek mastery of the skills and arts of drawing, to train oneself in these arts, to undertake a <em>practice<\/em> (in the Zen sense of that word)<\/li>\n<li>To pray<\/li>\n<li>To communicate with non-material (spirit) realms<\/li>\n<li>To achieve or to progress towards religious salvation<\/li>\n<li>To provide soteriological guidance to others, as Shitao and his Buddhist contemporaries believed they were doing in China of the early Qing Dynasty (See:\u00a0 Hay 2001).<\/li>\n<li>To pass the time.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>More on drawing-as-thinking <a href=\"http:\/\/meeseeks:5080\/blog\/2011\/01\/drawing-as-thinking-part-2\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>.\u00a0 For comparison, some reflections on the purposes of music <a href=\"http:\/\/meeseeks:5080\/blog\/2010\/08\/what-is-music-for\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>, and on music as thought <a href=\"http:\/\/meeseeks:5080\/blog\/2011\/05\/music-as-thought\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>References:<\/strong><br \/>\nJonathan Hay [2001]: <em>Shitao: Painting and Modernity in Early Qing China<\/em>. New York: Cambridge University Press, Research Monograph Series.<\/p>\n<blockquote><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why do we draw? Here\u00a0is a first list\u00a0of reasons for drawing: To observe To record some real phenomenon, such as a scene or a person&#8217;s face To play To explore, to follow a line To think To capture some essence of an object being drawn To become one with the object being drawn To communicate [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-hands","p1","y2012","m05","d14","h10"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4049"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13027,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4049\/revisions\/13027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}