Sometimes I have an idea of what I want to draw, but often I just let the pen or pencil start swooping around the page. I start moving my pen or pencil around upside down on the paper - napkin, tablecloth, scrap - as thought the drawing is being made for someone sitting opposite me at the table. Here’s how she describes her upside-down process: Copyright 2023 by Joan Baez and used with permission of Godine
From Am I Pretty When I Fly? by Joan Baez. She then writes about discovering the “tightrope-walk thrill” of blind contour drawing.
I discovered the results were less restrained and more fluid, and therefore more interesting to me. Like writing backwards, using my nondominant hand opened a different compartment in my brain. Later, I began drawing with my left hand instead of my right. It’s as though the appropriate wires cross my brain when I write backwards, which allows information otherwise unavailable to surface. I still write backwards as a form of therapy when I need to get to the root of a blockage or calm the buzzing heat of a panic attack. I worked my way through the Greek alphabet: AHPLA ATEB, AMMAG, ATLED, and so on. Somewhere in my teenage years, probably out of boredom, I taught myself how to write backwards, starting with EINAOJ ZEAB, my new name. In her seventies, Baez started painting more and making collages. Decades ago, she says, she arrived “by chance” at making drawings upside down. In the introduction to the book Baez writes about her life of drawing, how she “hated school” and “drew my way through the torture.” That comes from Amanda Petrusich’s recent interview with the singer-songwriter about her new book, Am I Pretty When I Fly? An Album of Upside Down Drawings.
Make as many mistakes as you can.” When you’re trying to make it perfect, trying to make it exactly what you want it to be, then it’s time to drop it into the pool. One of my friends said, “Tell me just one thing that will last. If I’ve gotten too precise about it, the imperfection brings it to life. If I really don’t like what’s happening, I drop the drawing in the swimming pool. Some advice on the art of imperfection, courtesy of Joan Baez:
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