Josh Armitage Pt. 2: Secrets of Seeing

Part 2.  Taj talks creativity with  London-based drawing teacher, Josh Armitage. Josh shares some of the drawing secrets he's collected over the last 10 years teaching drawing to hundreds of students. 

Josh's website:
JoshArmitage.co.uk
For London Drawing Group classes:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/london-drawing-group-11407647443
Taj's website:
TajBaker.com

Transcript

Taj: Welcome to Playful Presence, conversations about creativity, mindfulness, and play. I'm your host, Taj Baker. I'm an artist, meditator, and coach. The idea behind this podcast is that these conversations with working creatives will give you tips and tricks and new perspectives to aid you in your creative journey and in your life in general.

If you'd like to get my newsletter, you can go to tajbaker. com. 

This is the second part of my conversation with Josh Armitage, who's a painter and drawing teacher in London. In part two, we talk about a series of drawing classes that Josh has been teaching called Secrets of Seeing, and he shares some of the secrets with us.

So I hope you enjoy the second part of my conversation with Josh Armitage. 

Taj: So you have a series that you're teaching through London Drawing Group called Secrets of Seeing, and I'm curious about how that idea came about? 

Josh: So the idea was to do a short condensed kind of course based on the drawing course that I conducted at Kingston School of Art.

I suppose I was doing that for about six or seven years. And so to condense it and to make it accessible for a wider audience and to be shared in a relatively short amount of time. But the core idea of it is to Boost people's confidence pretty quickly by sharing quite simple ideas that I gathered together through the art school drawing course to share those really simple ideas to try and Make people realize that they do have What it takes to be able to draw things if they want to or to be creative and that it's actually not something that involves talent that it's something that anybody can do and gain enjoyment from and that There's many different ways to do it as well.

The reason why it's called Secrets of Seeing was because the main idea was that there was a lot that I'd been taught in the drawing classes that I'd never heard, even in any other art school, been taught and It seemed a shame to confine that to an art school that you had to pay to go to, and it was for a relatively small amount of people.

It seemed good to try and share that with as many people as possible, and also looking at other drawing courses online, some cover this stuff, but It's not commonly taught, really, so I just wanted to share it as widely as possible and it fit very closely with London Drawing Group's aim to be as accessible as possible and to be a sort of accessible international art school, almost, that both professionals and beginner learners could all gain something from.

Taj: Yeah, it's been a wonderful resource for me for the last few years, being able to just go online and take part in a class that's based in the UK and have the recording, even if the time difference, you know, makes it difficult to attend live and the quality is just amazing of all the classes on there.

Josh: Well, thank you. Yeah. I mean, it makes us very happy to hear that people are enjoying it. And we're always blown away by how many people join us from different places. I can't thank Francis, obviously Francis Stanfield, who started it with Lucy and Louisa. I can't thank them enough for having us also involved in it.

All the work that they put in, specifically through the lockdown as well, to be able to deliver it online. It's a really fun thing to be a part of. And we hope it keeps growing as well. We keep trying to make it better each time. And yeah, it's fun. Would 

Taj: you be comfortable sharing a couple of the secrets with us?

Josh: Yeah, let me have a look if I've got some written down. So let's see. Just bear with me one moment. Sure. I have all of the classes sort of archived, so I can access everything very quickly. Usually. It's funny because I should be able to just reel these off out of my head, but they're always specifically tailored for each sort of individual class.

So, from one of the classes I've found, this is about drawing spaces and places where you might be standing, like, so rooms and things like that. So one, for instance, is perspective is an illusion. So, I alluded to this earlier, but how artists see is actually in flat shapes, all interlink, like a jigsaw puzzle.

Simple ideas like that are not just talked about. You know, even in art school, it's not really talked about very much. So simple things like where you stand makes a difference. So often you might start drawing something from observation and the picture that comes out is not very satisfying and it's got nothing to do with you or your ability to draw or your ability to see.

It's just because you haven't tried to stand in a different place or change your perspective. Simple things like this that are quite obvious, but yeah, it makes a huge difference when someone's finally shown that. Also, we have two eyes, and that isn't always helpful. We have binocular vision, so we're seeing from two different directions at the same time.

Because we're looking in two different directions at the same time, there's a discrepancy between what is in front of you, and what might come out on the paper that you're drawing on. You can see that if you close one eye, and then close the other one, and close the other one intermittently, so look through your right eye, and then your left eye, and then your right eye, you'll see that the image in front of you sort of shifts slightly.

Strange things like that can really affect the way that you're seeing what's in front of you. It, it, it makes it difficult to measure things and see things as isolated objects and it has all sorts of effects on how we see. So, small ideas like that are built into every class that I do. And some of them are quite well known and some of them are things that I've come across by Doing the classes with multiple students over a number of years and you discover these little kind of tricks to make things easier.

So they're not very complicated and that's why I like it.

Taj: them. You know, I'm just thinking that having two eyes is how we see depth. Yeah. And I'm thinking that a beginning drawing exercise, I don't know if you've ever tried this with people, is to have them close one eye because it flattens the world out. It makes it a little bit easier to see the interlocking shapes. 

Josh: Yeah, exactly. So we're always doing things like this, getting people to close one eye, trying to get them to also understand both the depth of their vision and also the width of it. So if you stick both arms out to your left and right, and then wiggle your fingers and you move your hands.

Sort of forwards until you can see your fingers wiggling in your peripheral vision People don't realize that that's their vision is actually quite wide. They've got a huge cone of sight It's a little bit blurry on the left and the right but You know, a lot. And one thing that we often do when we start to draw from observation is focus.

Because we have the ability to both focus and see things in a wide field of vision. We get a confusion between those things. So if, for instance, in a life drawing class, the focus is often a figure, a person, people will make the person bigger than it is relative to the rest of the page that they have to draw on because they're focusing on that object.

So when we focus, we actually enlarge things. And when we soften our gaze and we don't look at anything in particular, you start to be able to see more that's in your field of vision. So yeah, you can overcome all of these things simply by practicing drawing quickly and drawing a lot, but it does help.

Taj: Now we're going to take a very short break for me to tell you a little bit about coaching. People often want some kind of a change in their lives. Maybe you're wanting to start a creative journey, or you're a creative who's blocked or needing a new direction. Imagine that there's all these different parts inside of you with different desires and wants.

And some of these parts are completely on board with moving toward change and maybe one or more of them isn't quite so sure. It's like when I used to be uncomfortable putting my face in the water when I would go swimming. I would just do the backstroke or the sidestroke. I was finding workarounds so that I wouldn't have to face my discomfort.

But avoiding that discomfort kept me limited in terms of what I was able to experience and do, and that's no way to live. I'll never forget the first time I went snorkeling. So not only was I able to put my face in the water and still breathe, But I suddenly saw all the beauty under the ocean's surface, and it was such a revelation.

I went from feeling tense when I would swim, to feeling totally relaxed and supported by the water. It was like I was flying. And that's how I see coaching. We address the part of you that has ambivalence or reluctance to move forward. And once we really get to know what will help that part to feel safe and heard, And on board with your dreams and your aspirations, it's amazing how things just begin to flow and become easier.

And going back to that ocean metaphor. What opens up when you let go of that fear is your creative voice, your unique point of view, your authentic self. And that is as beautiful and magical as the ocean sea life that I saw for the first time when I tried that snorkel mask. A beautiful world opens up when you let go of a fear and suddenly you have the tools you need to move forward with a goal.

You're no longer moving toward your goal as if you were driving with one foot on the gas and one on the brake. Instead, there's flow and ease around it. Although there's going to be moments that are challenging, where you have to do some hard work, there has to be fun and play and creativity. As part of the process, or else, for me at least, it's just not going to happen.

If you'd like to explore further and see if you and I would be a good fit for coaching, I would like to offer you a free online coaching session. So you can go to TajBaker. com to book your free session. Now let's get back to the conversation. 

Taj: Another tool is to actually cut out a frame, you know, to have a piece of cardboard.

Josh: Exactly. Yeah. A viewfinder. Yeah. 

Taj: And that way you can look at how this subject relates to the edge of the paper. And proportions helps a lot when you first start trying to frame something in that viewfinder and then see, okay, this is how I could fit this on my paper. Yeah. And you do something similar, don't you, where you have people draw a rectangle on the piece of paper. 

Josh: Exactly. So we do that for a number of reasons, which is often one of the things that I get asked about quite a lot that came directly from my teacher, Martin Morris. And the reason we do that is because it has many functions. Actually, it's actually a very clever device, which seems simplistic.

And sometimes people find it a little bit. Distracting, or maybe they can't get into why we're doing it. So I have to explain how useful it is often. It's great for thinking about the edge of the picture that you're making. So when you're drawing. You're not just trying to draw a single object in the middle of the page in isolation, floating.

That's not satisfying. Often what people want to be able to do is draw everything that's in front of them. But if you don't think about the edge of the page, then it's almost like a no man's land. It's kind of like the edge of the page doesn't even really exist. So putting a box on your page, a square or a rectangle, solidifies it in your mind that that is the edge of your picture.

Anything in your picture isn't going to go beyond that line. So everything that you'd want to draw has to fit inside the box. So it starts to make you think about scale. It makes you think about where you want to put something as well, whether you want it to be in the middle, or off to the right, or the left.

You can then play with balance and different ideas about composition. 

Taj: Something about the act of drawing that rectangle on the page, for me, Makes me start to frame what I'm looking at, my subject in the same way, like in my mind's eye. It's a really interesting little trick. 

Josh: Yeah, it's very clever. For such a simple thing, it really changes the way people draw.

And it also helps, funnily enough, with the artist flipping into the mode of thinking that everything is flat. So, how depth is actually an illusion, like how much floor is between me and the thing that I'm drawing. Also, it makes you think about drawing other things in the room, like the edge of the floor, or maybe a door or a window or whatever else is in front of you, because you want to fill up that space with information.

Taj: Wonderful. Yeah. I think it's also really helpful to draw from photographs, just start to get an idea of how things interlock. And then like we were talking about the bicameral vision, giving us this distorted view of when we're looking at something in reality, one eye, but also. Making sure that you're holding yourself still so that you're having the same perspective whenever you're looking at your subject.

Josh: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. So, if you wanted to come out looking how you're looking at it, then that is very important. I always say, it's funny, like, you can always throw on top of that, but also, there are no rules again, so You can also move around 

Taj: And then the flip side is it's really fun to go to a cafe or somewhere where there's a lot of people Bring a sketchpad and a pencil and you have no control over how long your subject is going to be in that position So you have to Just grab what you can and it's very freeing.

Josh: Yeah, it's the perfect life drawing situation actually. Just drawing people as they're moving past you, a bus station or a train station or a cafe or somewhere like that. And when someone moves, not letting that worry you, just carrying on and putting something else in there. Maybe someone else comes in and sits in their place and you draw them as well.

So it goes back to that idea of you drawing an object over the top of another one. The most amazing thing about drawing is that it's very forgiving. You'll still be able to read it as probably objects in some sort of space, whether it's simple or complicated, whether there's lots of marks or not very many marks.

The brain is an amazing tool at reading that information. And even if it doesn't look exactly like the thing that you were looking at, people will see it as people in a space or a cafe or people moving around a cafe or talking up. It's really special the way that we can kind of fix it all together in our heads.

Taj: Yeah, I think it's also really helpful to break things down into geometric shapes, you know, Let's say do a whole drawing that's just circles or triangles or squares rectangles Because you start to see that the world is built of those shapes 

Josh: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah I think a nice thing to do I find is that if you want to draw an object don't draw it first Draw something that is behind it or to the left of it and don't allow yourself to draw the object that you want to draw until you've reached the edge of it.

So there might be, again, if I'm naming objects, a table, and then you have to draw all the way to the edge of the table, and then maybe there's a chair. So you draw the chair and then the clothing of the person that you wanted to draw crosses over the chair. And that's where you can start to draw the person.

You start in a strange, unusual place. Maybe like halfway down their arm or their trousers. And then it all joins together to create a kind of continuous line thing, which will look like a figure in a space next to a table and a chair. 

Taj: Yeah. I love that. What you just said is kind of a metaphor for what we were talking about earlier.

Like an object does not exist in a vacuum. It is. In relation to everything around it and in the same way, when we learn to draw, when we do one of these practices of creativity, it's not just a siloed little piece of our life. It starts to sort of have waves of effect all through our lives and we become more open and maybe seeing in new ways.

Yeah. You had asked me before we started recording about how I. I started doing this show, and I used to be an incredibly shy person. And about a dozen years ago, I finally got brave enough to take my first improv class. And in that class, the teacher said, we celebrate mistakes here. You know, if you feel like you made a mistake, you can even take a bow and everyone will clap.

That freed me up so much. It was like, Oh, I don't have to be perfect. And, you know, over time it has allowed me to experience things that I never thought I would like having a wonderful conversation with you. I originally was invited to be, because of being an improviser, I was invited to be a fake expert on somebody's radio show.

And they had this bit that they did each week. They, they would play. Music based on a theme, a couple hours of music, and then every so often during the show, they would interview these so called experts about some silly idea. So the host would give me a character name and a topic. He would interview me about it, and I just got to make up why I was passionate about pockets or trampolines or whatever the topic of the week was.

Yeah. That was. A really fun time for me to use my creativity and it made me realize, wow, I could have a show. And for me as a coach, you know, I'm a creativity and mindfulness coach. I see how people, when they start to experience creativity as a practice or deep in the practice that they already have, it really starts to have ripples in their whole life.

You know, it's like authoring your life as opposed to just sort of. Being a passenger. 

Josh: Yeah, totally. Yeah, it makes you realize that you have some ability to change things around you, even if it's just in small ways all the time. Yeah, it gives you that kind of also that freedom. And again, it comes back to confidence.

It's funny that you mentioned that you were quite shy because it's something I don't think about talking about very often, but I was really shy to before I met you. Started to teach really, but it also coincided with learning to draw and Feeling like I could finally do something and it didn't matter if I was good or bad It was more about whether I found it interesting and that it gave me some kind of confidence That I've not had before and then sharing that with people Through the teaching was the way I got confident at talking.

Yeah, it's beautiful that it can do that to you. 

Taj: Yeah, and you know, being an artist and teaching art are two very, very different skills. It's beautiful that you have both of those. Yeah, you know, being able to help other people to gain confidence in their creativity. 

Josh: Yeah, I think it's an important thing, actually, and there's that.

old fashioned sort of ideas that only are only people that teach Are people that couldn't do the actual thing that they were trying to teach if you're an artist It means you're a failed artist if you're teaching but it's not it's not at all the case and I think actually Artists are kind of made to be teachers almost they're the people that put aside or have the time to look at the world around them so they can then share that with everybody else who don't maybe they don't have the time or yeah 

Taj: time yeah as long as they are people who can let their egos get out of the way i've definitely had teachers who were more interested in hearing their voice than in sharing and helping people to see.

Yeah 

Josh: that's true but I think that's often when they are perhaps maybe misguided as well about what it is that they're doing. Yeah. That's why again it's called Secrets of Seeing. I don't think it should be secrets really and I think drawing As kind of, it was unfashionable for a long time and especially, I'm not sure what it's like in the US or other parts of the world, but in the UK, in art schools, teaching drawing became something that was not seen as any form of priority and was almost completely eradicated from the art school kind of curriculum.

And I feel very fortunate for coming across the drawing classes that I had and, and also very lucky that I can sort of share that with more people because the more. especially with people who are creative, who are painting or trying to paint, or people who are trying to make anything. I think it's such an amazing thing and such an easy thing to engage in that makes you think in a creative way and makes you, uh, see the world in a, in a really good way.

Taj: Well, I want to thank you, of course, the pandemic has had a lot of painful aspects, but one of the silver linings for me has been this international community of creative people coming together and teaching each other and learning and sharing. And I really appreciate you being part of that. Well, thank 

Josh: you.

And thanks for inviting me to be here with you. I think any way for us to share. This kind of freedom of creativity, I think is great. And I think you're right. It is amazing that we can talk to each other from so far away. And yeah, our ideas with each other, I think it's really beautiful. And I hope there are more opportunities for everybody like that.

Taj: So where can people find out more about the classes you're teaching and your work as an artist? 

Josh: So for me, either through my own website, josharmitage. co. uk. Or on Instagram, my tag is at joshua. armitage. There's also the London drawing groups website, and they're also on Instagram as well. So if you Google London drawing group, you will find the classes that we do through the London drawing group, which includes artists from around the world, lots of different places and is growing.

Their website is londondrawinggroup. com and you can find a link on the website to book the classes. Yeah, and they're also on Eventbrite. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. 

Taj: Yeah. And I will include links to all that in the program 

Josh: notes. Great. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We've got lots of great classes coming up. My next one will be in February.

A good friend of mine, Carolina is doing a class, I think this week, which is about animation, actually. Yeah. Yes. 

Taj: Would you like to leave the listeners with a little exercise to do? 

Josh: I think a great thing to try to do, which is often quite surprising, is to try to draw yourself. I think, I don't know if this was included in the, the Egyptian mask.

Episode of secrets of seeing that we did. Yes, it was. Yeah, but maybe if you have a camera phone photograph yourself in profile because you don't recognize yourself from the side often and the way I got used to drawing myself and where it finally clicked and became A drawing that kind of looked like me or resembled me was by doing that I would set up two mirrors At two different angles so I could see the side of my face In one mirror because it was pointing at the other mirror But you can just do it with a photograph of yourself and just try and copy the photograph of your profile It's often much easier than drawing a face directly a face on that's a tricky one though Hands are always something people find difficult, but if you hold your hand in a very strange position, so like maybe you put a thumb through the middle of two fingers or you kind of like scrunch it up in a strange way, and try and draw all the shapes in between your fingers and around your fingers first, it's kind of about negative space really.

Yeah, it'll start to kind of connect together. Doing it as one continuous line is a really good thing as well. Continuous line drawings are always fun. I think for people who are just starting out, you could try that also on your own face. So don't take the pencil off the paper. Just keep drawing in one line, wiggle it around all the way around the paper until you've got a picture that resembles a face.

And remember that whatever comes out. It's a drawing. It's not a photograph. It doesn't have to look like the thing that you're drawing. It just has to look interesting to you. 

Taj: I also love doing the fly in the bottle kind of drawing where You imagine that your pencil or charcoal is just hitting the sides of the object.

So it's just creating the volume and not actually the lines. It really frees you up to look at something in a new way and just, I find that anytime I get stuck with any of this, if I feel like I'm judging too much, or I don't know what to do next, just playing, just finding a way to make it fun is a wonderful direction often 

Josh: to go in.

I think the first thing I often tell my students to do is just to scribble for a few seconds. Don't draw anything, just make marks on a piece of paper and try and make as many different kinds of marks that you can make with the tool that you're holding, like whether it's a ballpoint pen or a pencil or whatever.

Try and make thin ones and then fast ones and slow ones and really light ones and then Push on really hard or like maybe make dots or flick the pen or pencil around or like kind of just see how much stuff you can make with that. And it loosens up your hand and it loosens up your arm and it allows you to hold the pencil in an unusual way.

That's not maybe automatic and you're going to make even just. doing that something quite interesting to look at. And if you can then go on to draw something from observation you're going to have that energy still in your hand and in your arm and in the way that you are making marks that you can then apply to drawing an object like a chair or a frog or a tree or a person.

Taj: Wonderful. Thank you so much Josh for your time and your insights. That's it for this episode of Playful Presence. Next time you're going to draw Try making a rectangle on your piece of paper to denote your drawing space before you start. And notice what that does to your drawing, whether it helps you to be aware of your composition, where you're placing things on the page.

Whether or not you are someone who draws, how could you use this framing as a metaphor in your life? How can you Look at things a little bit differently. Maybe it's a challenge that you've had in your life for a while. Try reframing it. I'd like to thank my guest Josh Armitage. You can find more about Josh's work as a painter at josharmitage.

co. uk To find out about upcoming classes that Josh will be teaching, go to londondrawinggroup. com or find them on Eventbrite. I'd also like to thank Robin Jackson for the theme music which he wrote and played. If you'd like to learn more about my coaching, you can go to tajbaker. com and I want to thank you again for listening.