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Birds on a Wire

Illustrated Journals

James R. Bagnall

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Birds On A WireMy drawings don’t get any better than this.

Apparently someone thought you would be interested in glancing inside

the illustrated journals I have been keeping for the last forty years.

You are most welcome to look through them although they were never

Intended to be viewed by anyone but me.

It certainly was interesting for me to, in one sitting, revisit the

more than 3000 experiences recorded there. To select twenty drawings

for this presentation was a task of joy and unexpected difficulty.

Beyond showing the drawings it seemed to me I should try to make

some point. That point, it turns out, comes from a more extended

project titled, ”How Sketch Books Can Save Your Life”. Having taught

thousands of people to draw, and having been disappointed, not in the

level of quality attained, but in the lack of the students’ motivation to

continue drawing on their own. Most just stop. I decided to change my

focus, for a while, from HOW to draw, the easy part, to WHY to draw.

The answers to WHY are numerous and complex but an easy fit for this

format dealing with memory and understanding.

At a simple level, our brain sorts life experiences into long and short-

term memories. Eighty percent of our experience is relegated to short-

term memory while only twenty is retained in long term memory.

Three weeks from now 90% of this evening will be gone from your

memory altogether.

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This does not mean that all the information in short term memory

deserves to be stored there, with little or no access. On the contrary,

much of it is valuable and pertains to current life situations.

This is where the “Save Your Life,” idea first comes into play.

Drawing as an aid to memory. I first thought of journal drawings as

deposits in a Piggy Bank. Lately I think of the sketchbook as an

external hard-drive. It is easier to organize and has easier access.

Gradually your life is saved in the bank.

Understanding life situations and environments, is another reward

and motivator for sketchbook drawing. Drawing leads to a sharper and

more thorough understanding of any subject. Milton Glazer in his

book,

Drawing Is Thinking, writes, “I never fully understand something until I

decide to draw it.” Just the act of deciding to draw something can lead

to a clearer, sharper view and better understanding.

So: If I assume, for the moment, that I get 100% buy-in to my

argument about the value of drawing in your life then why won’t I find

all of you running home to dig out one of those unused sketch books

to start adding the first drawing to that hard-drive? It is a serious ques-

tion. The loudest answer will be FEAR.

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Most of us have a deep FEAR of not making a GOOD drawing. We

need to get rid of that fear. To do that we need only to redefine

GOOD in good drawing. Your definition probably comes from your

observation of other drawings and styles. You probably should not

expect to jump from here to there.

Judith Thruman, I think, makes a great effort at redefining GOOD:

“Good Drawings are records of being alive, of seeing something

intensely at a particular moment, and of getting some compelling image

in graphic form.”

That’s a pretty low bar! Remember, you are the only one who needs to

see these records. All you have to do is draw what you see intensely,

and your hand/brain connections will, with practice, patience and

persistence will raise the bar to where you want it to be. Chances are

v place will not be where you once thought it would be.

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From the window at my desk in china I could see a long thin wire

stretching down a deep canyon. The air was so thick the wire was

barely visible, but the birds could find it and use it as an island upon

which to land and rest. That scene is in my long-term memory and has

always fascinated me. Recently I read a quote by John Adams, which

may explain its fascination. He is writing to his grandsons who were

departing with their father for Russia:

“Remember your journals, for without them your journey will be

like birds flying through the air, leaving no trace.”

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A presentation forPecha Kucha Night

volume 18

San Luis Obispo, California2012