Aim: The aim of this exercise is to open up your mind to new possibilities in terms of understanding what line can be. So often, nature does it better. This is your chance to go out and look at how drawings reflect life, and at life drawings in the observed world.

Method: Look for natural processes that produce a drawing, for example the opening of the gills of a mushroom to release its spores, the dropping of lily pollen, animals scratching against trees or footprints in wet mud. Even the silhouette of tree branches against the sky can be read as a drawing. Collect photos and sketches of nature’s drawings. If you prefer, you can do the same thing for industrial or urban processes.

Now this is a project that I absolutely love. I see lines and drawings everywhere. While lighting a fire, I see a drawing in the logs:

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As it is finally, finally allowed to walk on the beach after a long quarantine, I immediately set off. The traces in the sand and debris washed ashore show endless possibilities of lines- thin delicate lines, thick, messy lines:

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Washed up on the sand, a mixture of man made debris and sticks and stones form new drawings:

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I also find drawings in the cracks and lines and patches on stones and rocks:

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Nature really does it better!

I use Indian ink and a thin brush to draw the lines formed by grasses sticking out of the sand and their sharp shadows in my various small sketchbooks:

I have just looked at Pierrette Bloch’s abstract drawings and her repetitive use of line. I see how I can produce a collection of grass straws in a similar drawing. This is a first attempt in my A5 sketchbook:

The various shapes of grass presented like this in the form of a chart, become a new alphabet, a new language. I refine the shapes in a drawing on A4, in Indian ink:

When I place the sketchbooks in a pile, I see another pattern emerging: