Summary

The next few in class assignments are to practice all the skills in imaginative ways.

Start by drawing where you are paying close attention to where else your mind goes. After an hour use symbols or imagery to suggest what you’ve been thinking about and use illusionistic skills to show what’s most real to you.

This section is a chance to play with what you’ve learned, to make decisions about what’s most real in concordance with what’s most real to you. What’s most real is what we pay closest attention to. We take in more about it and see it better. By giving a sense of reality to what matters most, you create a psychological reality.

What’s real to us has many levels. In quantum physics it’s understood that the observer affects the observed. We make a choice, isolate an aspect of the whole and call it real. What we see always includes us, is a construction in our mind, a combination of the inner image we have of reality and where we are in the present. This assignment is meant to give you a chance to reflect on the many dimensions of reality coexisting in you at any one time. Illusionism can be used to stress the aspect of reality that is most real to you right now. You might be worrying about a family member, or not feeling well, or thinking about a paper you are writing or another person who is important to you. You don’t have to introduce the other levels directly but can symbolize them in any way.

Start with the room and draw it for the first hour, monitoring what else is going on in your mind. Some may end up with a drawing that’s primarily the room with the things noticed best most developed. For others the room may be a minor part of a drawing dominated by other things. Everything need not be illusionistic. Let what’s most real in the drawing reflect what’s most personally real. Include distortions in our inner mirror that show attitudes. You start with where you choose to look. Spend the first hour mapping it in a way that reflects your focus. Watch your mind and what you are thinking and feeling as you draw.

You may simply exaggerate or leave out certain things. It’s up to you whether you include other people in the room. Body language can dramatize states of mind. One student going through a bad time last semester got down on the floor and drew the pipes under the sink. You might include changes that occur over the time that you’re drawing. Think about the many things Magritte does to introduce different ideas. Could some surrealist symbol represent an ongoing issue you’re coping with? Might some shift of scale reflect a particular state of being? You don’t have to represent your psychological contents literally but can use whatever symbolism however hidden works for you.

Where it’s appropriate, use additional imagery that draws on what you’ve been doing.

Those of you who have explored odd points of view might start with the way you look at the room. How might you introduce your inner narrator? Are they using words?

When doing this drawing, it’s important to make one decision at a time. Just like with the texture gradient, you started with a plane, then a texture, then space, then identity. Whether you use a ground is up to you. If it’s been working well for you then stick with it, if not build the drawing in whatever way is most natural.