Drawing Plants & Mindfulness by Ruth Rosengarten
These drawings began with a Zoom workshop on drawing plants and mindfulness run by the London Drawing Group. All drawings are on A3 cartidge paper.
In the first drawing I used two water based felt tipped pens, first one, then the other. This first page consists of two drawings, one superimposed on the other. With my eyes closed I used my non-dominant hand (left hand for me) to feel carefully around the foliage of a plant I had on my table (you may not guess but this is a large peace lily!) and draw the plant from touch alone, twice.
Read: Hair, An Essay by Ruth Rosengarten
I am thirteen, and this is Johannesburg. Everyone praises my long, auburn hair. Titian, some call it, though it will will be several years before I learn that Titian is the name of a painter; that many voluptuous women in his paintings have rich red tresses. I love my hair, but it seems old fashioned: the wavy ponytail, the wayward fringe. It’s the 1960s.
I scour magazines when I can lay my hands on them: Cosmopolitan, Elle. With my pocket money, I have started buying Jackie, a magazine that gets flown in all the way from London, which already occupies a big place in my imagination. There are pull-out centrefolds of singers and bands I’ve never heard of. Longingly, I examine fashion models parading pixie cuts. I hanker for their doe-eyed, skinny loveliness, the edginess of their hairstyles, the crisp geometry of their short dresses. Especially, for the boys they surely attract.