Latest required reading!

So after discovering Lynda Barry's drawing lessons on radio the other day, I had to go on, and I found her book Syllabus. It's the process, and the lined workbook, she used to create the syllabus for a course she teaches at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.  I wish she'd been doing that when I was there (!).  And even though you're only reading her syllabus, it's so full of information and prompts and general massive energy that it's worth working through just for fun for yourself.  Not as good as being there, but a good facsimile.

She understands about bringing drawing back into your life -- we all drew once upon a time before inhibition set in -- as opposed to Learning To Draw solemnly.  She knows the difference between rendering -- copying exactly what's there -- and drawing as art.

Anyway, she also indicates that a big part of her own impetus came from reading Iain McGilchrist's The Master and His Emissary.  I found I can't get my hands on it locally, only available to specific students enrolled in special course at local college.  

However, he did write a little ebook which condensed the main gist of it, and I bought that for my Kindle.  It's about the length of a magazine article, but packed with great insights and arguments, and well worth reading.  He discusses the concept of the split brain, and the differing functions of right and left, and how it's much more complex than the popular features about it would have you think. And he's both a scholar in literature and in neurology, a wonderful brain at work.

So this is where we are today, in reading terms:

The convergence of art and literature taking place right before yur very eyes!  I really encourage you to take a look at either or both of these great reads.