Read an Excerpt

1. Play

First and foremost, for children at least, drawing is a form of play – a spontaneous, imaginative act that amuses and delights. Children’s ignorance of traditional rules is indulged by adults because we recognise, if only dimly, that play is a valuable part of their growth. It is precisely at the point that drawing ceases to be seen as play (and becomes instead another form of work) that most of us drop the habit.

 
This book holds a different view: that play is a valuable, meaningful and therapeutic act at any age. An early proponent of this view was the pediatrician and psychologist Donald Winnicott (1896–1971). Winnicott recognised the vital role of play in psychological and emotional development – for adults as well as children. In his 1971 book Playing and Reality, he wrote, ‘it is in playing and only in playing that the individual child or adult is able to be creative and to use the whole personality, and it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self.’

 
Winnicott is the inventor of the ‘Squiggle game’ – an activity he developed for parents to play with their child, which we have included in this section.

 
In the following exercises, you’ll be discovering yourself through the act of spontaneous, unconscious creativity – what Winnicott called ‘desultory formless functioning’. Here especially, we want you to abandon any thought as to the quality of your work; it should only feel enjoyable, irreverent and fun.  

 
Donald Winnicott’s Squiggle Game

Turn the squiggles on the page below into drawings, incorporating the squiggle into the design. Think about what the shape of the squiggle suggests to you. Might one of them look like a mouth? The brim of a hat? An elephant’s trunk? Try to go with your very first spontaneous impression.

 
Draw Like a Child

Near the end of his life, observing children’s artwork on a tour of a primary school, Pablo Picasso remarked ‘At their age, I knew how to paint like Titian. It’s taken me a lifetime to remember to paint like a child.’

On this page, you are encouraged to draw like a child. You are allowed to:

• Use a crayon, felt tip or coloured pencil.
• Ignore any notion of scale and perspective.
• Colour outside the lines.
• Be ruled only by the limits of your imagination.

Turn off all the lights. Spend two to five minutes drawing in complete darkness. Attempt a portrait from memory, or simply draw whatever comes to mind.

 
Turn on the lights. See what your mind’s eye has produced.