DRAWING IS…

Guidance on expressing oneself artistically.

Rather than focusing on the basics of putting pencil (or whatever artistic instrument readers may prefer) to paper, comics illustrator Haidle pulls back and considers art not just as a physical exercise, but a mental one as well. She calls drawing “two-dimensional traveling”: “What you create…can be a place for you to inhabit…a feeling, a belonging.” She covers concepts such as patterns, linework, scale, and contrast (shown through tutorials), but also explores the idea of drawing as an intimate act that requires both mental clarity and physical dexterity. While her insights will enthrall the artistically minded, readers eager to start with something simpler will need to look elsewhere. Haidle’s pencil, ink, gouache, graphite, and digital collage illustrations, presented in grayscale with pops of color, are at times cluttered and marred by large scribbles of text in small font, resulting in an overwhelming visual experience. Useful exercises such as surrealist favorite the “exquisite corpse” game and using one’s nondominant hand to draw are relegated to the bottom of the page or the backmatter. With a few exceptions, such as Yayoi Kusama, Haidle generally doesn’t offer much information on the artists whose techniques she mentions. People depicted throughout vary in skin tone.

An esoteric look at the artistic process that preaches to the choir.