Drawing as a research tool.

Abstract

Every drawing we see or make reveals something about the world. It can tell us about a moment, a time, a history, as much as about who created it and how we observe what surrounds us. Drawing is as innate as seeing, because both mature in tandem with the development of our minds. Without drawing, that is, without understanding the images as such (what makes them different from what we observe and at the same time, what makes them similar), we would hardly develop the ability to read or write, as the connections we establish through drawing are essential for those processes. Seeing something is an immediate and automatic process. Seeing something deeply requires time, it requires awareness of what is seen. In other words, drawing requires temporality, giving oneself a moment. From our childhood it demands it and can do so until the end of our lives. As Arnheim says, ‘all perception is also thinking, all reasoning is also intuition, all observation is also invention’. Drawing, in this way, becomes a transformative practice regardless of the field in which it is directed. To give a few examples: Richard Feynman, the famous physicist, took drawing workshops with models for years in order to convey complex concepts in diagrams that were as simplified as possible; Sylvia Plath found in drawing a means of expression that complemented her writing: as her hand moved across the paper, her mind opened up to new poetic possibilities. Always in tension with the other spheres of knowledge, but also always in continuous interaction, drawing makes it possible to connect that which is not always evident: it makes visible that which does not appear in a first reflection, because it is an extension of the reflective process.