felicity truscott art: 5 senses workshop Touch

Touch was both the first and the last of the 5 senses workshops with the Naked Eye drawing group and produced some really lovely work. (I ran a Touch workshop last year as a space filler for Jo Kori with her Naked Eye drawing group who meet every fortnight at the The Beacon, Hastings.

We handled various objects brought in and described them to each other to practice articulating the feel and sensation of what we were holding without looking at the objects.

This was later translated into marks, so for example surfaces described as furrows, edges, thin lines, rough patches, heaviness, holes and indentations were then created by mark with materials including plaster on board and charcoal. Another exercise was pure contour drawing and drawing from touching the profile of the face without looking.

I've been really grateful for the opportunity to run these workshops in experimental mark making using the 5 senses as a point of departure. It's been a learning curve for me to test them out. My thanks go to the very committed Naked Eye drawing group for asking me in the first place and throwing themselves into them!