This set of rooms, (90 & 90a) in the British Museum displays pieces from the largest (and greatest) collection of drawings and prints in the world.
Drawing attention: emerging British artists, an exhibition of recent acquisitions, was a pleasure to visit.
It’s reassuring that the skill of drawing, which is sometimes unfashionable, is celebrated in the work of new generations of artists.
Here is a selection of the way artists use drawing to explore ideas and themes. For some, like me, it is one aspect of their practice and often not generally shown. For others like Charmaine Watkiss, it is the very core of what they do.
Jessie Makinson creates fantastical scenarios
Looking and seeing are very different things. I use drawing not just to note ideas down but mainly to really look at something, to see it no matter how insignificant it may appear.
There really is nothing quite like that direct connection between eye and hand. Even people who claim to be unable to draw discover in my Play With Drawing workshops the fascination and joy of that experience.
Miriam de Búrca makes forensically observed drawings. This one, Long forgotten in Oughterard, is part of a series focussing on burial sites in Ireland called cillini, for those considered unsuitable to be buried in consecrated ground.
Catherine Anyango Grünewald pays homage in her crime scene transcription of the killing of Trayvon Martin.
Eric Avery and Mary Herbert draw on very different subjects
while Sin Wai Kin fka Victoria Sin‘s self-portraits are from drag makeup worn for Pride 2017.
