DRAWING NIGHT
2004-ongoing
The group has always been a shifting mix of artists and self-described “non-artists”, with the agreed-upon agenda being simply to make and share things that are imaginative and silly, to draw for love of drawing, good company and good food. It’s about friendship and play, as opposed to drawing “well” in any conventional sense of the word.
Typically, we start by eating and drinking. We then do timed warm-up drawings, then move on to drawings generated by words pulled out of a hat, items brought to the table, or whatever random mayhem inspires us.
Most of our drawings are collaborative, or generated by chance: this does a pretty good job of dismantling bad habits, preciousness or other ego/authorship issues. All drawings are timed, rarely lasting more than ten minutes: this removes any slowpoke wishy-washiness, and puts folks into “action” mode. We rarely take or trade our drawings: they just get deposited in the “Drawing Night” vault.