As part of my project I have been looking into different methods of mindful drawing and different meditative processes.
I found a certain affinity for this type of drawing known as a ‘Zen Tangle’, these drawings consist of loose rules or guides that inform you of what to do next. The drawing is complete whenever the practitioner feels he/she is finished.
Below are a couple of very short videos of a couple of the drawings that I have done.
Part of the process to making the vessels for my project is burnishing. Burnishing is where the platelets of the raw clay are compressed using a tool to create a reflective surface.
I find the process while time and energy intensive is also very therapeutic; the repetitive nature of the process definitely helps.
Below is a short video of me burnishing one of the bowls.
So the other week, my fiend Richard and I set about making a kiln – we had never attempted anything like this but were confident we would at least get a couple of successful pieces fired. The below images show the pieces we were trying to fire.
Using ordinary house bricks, breeze blocks, and Richard specially-made kiln bricks we assembled a fairly small kiln, powered by a coal and wood fire beneath, and further fuelled using an air supply.
The results varied depending on where they were palced in the kiln. For instance, the bowl had fired very low, and judging by the colour, it couldn’t have been any higher than 650 degrees. While the bowl fired very low, the large tile, while looked fired, was still crumbling.
Here’s the tile after a clean and a sand down. The way the sandpaper crumbled the tile made me realise how much below temperature the kiln must have been.
The experiment was a partial success, and I felt as though with more time to prepare, more kiln bricks and longer to fire the pieces we would have much better results.
Firstly, I should apologise for not posting this on the Saturday. I ran out of daylight and unable to take a good photo of what I was drawing.
The final meditation session was calming and allowed me to focus more on the forms of the vessels that have had my attention for so long. I chose to reflect on them using drawing.
A 10-minute blind study of cylindrical vessel forms.
A 20-minute blind study of cylinder and bowl vessel forms.
Painted with slip and drawn using charcoal.
This meditation was done listening to www.asoftmurmur.com – The website produces and endless and seamless loop of natural background noises to help limit distractions. I find the website to be really useful when meditating in a place that isn’t naturally quiet.
During my meditation I found myself using excess energy on thinking about the forms I have made for my project. Whether I am capable of producing them to a high quality. I noted these intrusive thoughts and resumed my meditation, but it’s these distracting thoughts that I have chosen to meditate upon.
The drawing below began with regular dot patterns, then was overlayed with a drawing of a vessel form with my non-domiant hand. I finished the drawing by expressing a new form of Vertical Line Drawing meditation that I hope to use within my work more.
The meditation began unfamiliar as I slowly adjusted to the new visual stimulation of the lights.
A quiet concentration was formed once I began focusing more on my breathing.
I meditated for around 10 minutes before wanting to end the machine’s program.
The drawing below is a simple Vertical Line drawing to settle into. Painted with terracotta slip.
So for my live blogging task I have chosen to live blog my meditation and follow-up reflective drawing as it happens. I’m using a Meditation Machine (shown below) to accompany and aid my meditation. The machine provides strobe lighting and binaural beats to aid meditation both visually and audibly.
So my process of meditation and reflection will hopefully go like this:
As I draw down the clay, I am not critical of how the line moves and changes; acting only as a passive observer I watch the evolution of the lines on the canvas. For the brief period of the task there are no outside disturbances or distracting thoughts, only the clay, and only the line.