“Embodied Drawing: The Physiology of Drawing, Experiential Anatomy, and Contemplative Practice” in The Mindful Eye: Contemplative Pedagogies in Visual Arts Education

By: Brucker, J. | Dr. Michael Garbutt, ed., Common Ground Publishing, 2018.

The Mindful Eye: Contemplative Pedagogies in Visual Arts Education, released in 2018, is about how contemplative approaches can incorporate mindfulness and embodiment practices in visual arts higher education. The book features a chapter I wrote on techniques of awareness that spark student engagement in drawing and creative activity.

The section, “Embodied Practices,” highlights the contemplative dimension of bodily work and ritual in the university environment and beyond. Within this section, I wrote Chapter 4: Embodied Drawing: The Physiology of Drawing, Experiential Anatomy and Contemplative Practice. I share embodied drawing methodologies that connect physiological insights with meditative movement to create art—an essential experiential way of teaching anatomy and hand-eye coordination to art students involved in a wide range of practices.

Abstract

The Mindful Eye explores the ways in which contemplative approaches can incorporate mindfulness and embodiment practices in visual arts higher education. Currently discussed as a promising complementary vision, contemplative pedagogies are increasingly introduced across a wide range of disciplinary practices in higher education with well-demonstrated positive impacts on students’ academic performance, creativity, stress management, and sense of wellbeing. Significantly, however, ways of knowing and being that privilege attention, stillness, and an awareness of interior states have particular resonances for art and design practitioners, inspiring the development of “mindful ways of seeing” essential for co-creating a more just and sustainable future. The case studies in this book provide a critical guide to incorporating contemplative practices across a range of teaching and learning contexts, from the practice-based studio to the classroom, lecture theater, and field excursion. Covering a range of visual practices, the 13 chapters are grouped into four sections, respectively entitled Moving Images, Embodied Practices, Creative Expressions, and Contemplative Designs.