After a day outside plein-air painting, the artists of the Old Lyme group in Connecticut would gather in Florence Griswold's parlor and play the "Wiggle Game.
Wiggle drawings were produced in a drawing game where one artist would draw a series of disconnected curving arcs at random, then hand off the half finished drawing to another artist who had to incorporate those lines in a funny, irreverent, or satirical cartoon.
Such drawing games were common amusements in the evenings in art colonies and art schools at the turn of the 20th century. They are a good challenge for each artist's visual imagination, and a welcome change from painting and drawing what you see in front of you.
More examples at the Florence Griswold Museum website.
3 comments:
This is wonderful! Looks so fun and really challenging...I will try it :)) In " The Natural Way to Draw" Kimon Nicholaides suggests an exercise where you take one of your drawings,turn it upside down and then use it as a starting point for another drawing from your imagination .And Leonardo talks about seeing scenes and figures in whorls of marble as inspiration.
Also,doing that research for historical painting..(or any painting for that matter) also sounds fun and challenging .I've been trying to research exactly what a knight in the 13th century might wear on his off day
What a perfect way to wrap up a sketching day - I love this :)
Interesting!
I once saw a chinese artist start a traditional ink/watercolor painting in a similar way; he first made a random swirl of three loops in the middle of the paper, with a brush loaded with diluted ink -similar to what one would do to clean a brush.
And within a minute or two, he had turned this into a classical painting of three women in traditional dress discussing something in the middle of a street.
I thought this is a great way to get started, if you are stuck, or lacking subjects to paint. Get the creative juices flowing, so to speak.
Thanks for the posting.
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