Life Drawing
Tracing My Days
An independent practice–research path in drawing and daily life largely undertaken from bed
This outline accompanies my ongoing project Life Drawing: Tracing My Days, which explores drawing as a way of being present — a daily act of noticing and recording life as it unfolds. It gathers fragments of reading, reflection, and practice that shape the research, tracing how ideas develop slowly through time and attention. Like the drawings themselves, this page will remain open and provisional, changing as the work deepens.
Purpose and Orientation
This project begins as a way of living through drawing — a means of tracing the days, one mark at a time.
It is an independent practice–research path that grows from daily attention: drawing, writing, and reflecting as ways of being present.
It doesn’t aim toward a single outcome but sustains a rhythm of inquiry — noticing what unfolds when I draw, read, and reflect over time.
Each small act becomes part of a longer conversation between life and line.
Context: Living with ME
This practice grows from the realities of living with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME), a chronic illness that limits both energy and participation in the world.
Much of life with ME takes place unseen, at the edges of visibility.
Drawing becomes, for me, a quiet act of resistance to that invisibility — a way of saying: I am still here.
Each mark is evidence of existence, however small.
The pace of this work — slow, fragmentary, and sustained through gentle repetition — arises directly from the rhythms of illness.
My capacity for attention comes in small pockets of energy; these brief creative moments are both possible and sustaining.
Illness, in this context, is not separate from the art; it becomes the ground of the work itself.
Through small drawings, writings, and reflections, I trace the shape of days lived at a gentle tempo — a record of what it means to persist, to pay attention, and to remain visible.
Companions and Influences
Every independent practice needs its quiet company — voices to sit beside while I work, not to explain what I’m doing, but to remind me that I’m not alone in wondering.
The artists and writers gathered here offer different ways of noticing, recording, and reflecting through line, word, and time.
- John Berger — In Berger on Drawing and Bento’s Sketchbook, drawing becomes a gesture of empathy, a way of saying I was here, and so were you.
• Timothy Hyman — In The World New Made, he writes of figurative art as a record of experience — a way of understanding how one consciousness meets another.
• Tania Kovats — In The Drawing Book, she treats drawing as a primary means of thought — intimate, direct, and searching.
• Ellen Bell — Her diaristic drawings and short texts embody attentive persistence; she reminds me that small acts, repeated, can become a life’s work.
• Dan Price — In The Moonlight Chronicles, he documents a life lived close to the ground — drawing as both record and dwelling.
• Jason Polan — His project Every Person in New York celebrates the joy of looking — drawing as connection and curiosity.
• Anne Truitt — Daybook models a practice of steady reflection: art grounded in the rhythm of days.
• Keith Vaughan — His journals insist that doubt and honesty belong inside creative documentation.
• May Sarton — Journal of a Solitude is a reminder that solitude can be fertile ground for reflection.
• Jean-Luc Nancy — In The Pleasure of Drawing, he writes that to draw is “to expose oneself to the appearance of what is not yet.”
These companions are not necessarily authorities but fellow travellers — artists who help me think, see, and endure.
Readings and Questions
The reading that accompanies this practice is not intended to explain the drawings, but to live alongside them — widening the space of thought and deepening the conversation between image and word.
I read slowly, a few pages at a time, often with a pencil in hand.
What matters is not finishing a book, but finding a line or idea that lingers — something that joins the day’s drawing, like a quiet echo.
- John Dewey – Art as Experience — Art as lived process; every act of making an act of knowing.
- Jacques Derrida – Memoirs of the Blind — Drawing as blindness and seeing; the trace between presence and absence.
- Jean-Luc Nancy – The Pleasure of Drawing — The visible trace of thought coming into being; openness rather than completion.
- Tim Ingold – “Drawing Together” — Drawing as correspondence: being with the world, not depicting it.
- Timothy Hyman – The World New Made — Painting and drawing as empathy; art as human witness.
- Tania Kovats – The Drawing Book — Drawing as inquiry; simplicity as depth.
- Emma Dexter (ed.) – Vitamin D Series — Contemporary drawing’s evolving conversations.
- David Hockney & Martin Gayford – A History of Pictures — Seeing as continuity and curiosity.
- Keith Haring – Journals — Drawing and writing as a daily practice of reflection and activism.
Beyond these written companions, I’m also drawn to projects that give form to absence and make unseen lives visible.
The Millions Missing campaign, created by people with ME, feels close to this practice — a quiet act of presence in the face of invisibility.
Questions to Keep Close
- What does it mean to draw a life rather than to represent one?
- How can the smallest act of drawing affirm existence?
- What remains when experience becomes a line?
- Where does attention end and drawing begin?
- How do repetition and return shape understanding?
- Can a drawing think?
- What does a drawing remember that I might forget?
Methodology: Drawing, Writing, Reading
This project grows from the belief that drawing, writing, and reading are not separate acts but different movements of the same attention — ways of being in correspondence with the world.
This rhythm also respects the limits of energy — each act small enough to be possible, yet large enough to matter.
It arises from the body’s own tempo, allowing art and life to move at a shared, sustainable pace.
The rhythm of practice:
- Drawing — Begins in looking; in staying with what is before me until it becomes presence.
- Writing — Follows as reflection; the line turned into language.
- Reading — Offers conversation; ideas and voices that echo through the practice.
Together, they form a gentle loop:
Look → Draw → Reflect → Read → Return
Over time, this rhythm becomes not a method but a way of living through practice.
Documentation: Holding What Accumulates
At the heart of this project are my daily drawing sketchbooks — the quiet centre of the work.
Everything else gathers gently around them, forming a constellation of traces.
Sketchbooks: The Living Core
- The sketchbooks are spaces of attention, not outcomes.
- They hold the rhythm of days, repetition, and change.
- Occasionally, drawings may “escape” — photocopied, scanned, or shared — becoming emissaries of daily seeing.
The Ephemera Collection
- Stray drawings or test sheets.
- Written notes and reflections.
- Quotations, photocopies, or clippings from reading.
- Photographs of spaces or moments that shaped a drawing.
- Short video pieces — recordings of daily life, walking, or drawing; quiet video diaries, reflections, and captured moments of weather, light, or mood.
- Small printed or digital fragments — things gathered along the way.
The Life Drawing Journal
- A space for writing about the work, the readings, or what lingers.
- A bridge between the inward life of the sketchbook and the wider inquiry.
Field Reflections
- Seasonal gatherings of drawings, notes, and thoughts.
- Not summaries but recognitions: pauses to see what is unfolding.
Archiving with Care
- Sketchbooks remain intact and self-contained.
- The surrounding ephemera, journal pages, and recordings form a loose, living archive — a garden of fragments that can be revisited in time.
Philosophical Correspondences
This practice lives among certain ideas — not as explanations, but as quiet companions in thought.
- Walter Benjamin — The archive as constellation: meaning revealed through fragments held in proximity.
- John Berger — Drawing as recognition: an act of empathy and attention.
- Tim Ingold — Drawing as correspondence: a way of being with the world.
- Jean-Luc Nancy — Drawing as exposure: revealing what is not yet known.
Together, these voices suggest a quiet philosophy of making: that knowledge can live in fragments, that presence itself has meaning,
and that drawing — like collecting, writing, or walking — is a way of saying I am here, and so is this.
Possible Forms of Sharing
Though rooted in private attention, this work lives through quiet exchange.
Sharing is not performance, but correspondence — small gestures of connection.
- Patreon posts — brief reflections, drawings, or short films offered as field notes from the ongoing practice.
- Small editions — pamphlets or zines of drawings, writings, or seasonal reflections.
- Exhibitions — showing process rather than product: open sketchbooks, looping films, sound or text fragments.
- Correspondence — letters, conversations, or collaborations with other artists and thinkers.
- Living publication — one day, a larger book or archive that gathers drawings, writing, and video as a single continuum.
Each form of sharing remains part of the same rhythm of practice — a way of extending attention into the world, quietly and without urgency.
Continuing the Work
This practice has no end point.
It moves quietly through time, changing with the seasons and the days.
The work is sustained by returning:
One drawing.
One note.
One quiet day at a time.
To continue is itself the art — a quiet defiance of disappearance, a way of staying awake to the small evidences of being alive.
Updated: 22 October 2025
