I haven't told you more about the drawings we're doing in "Religion of Trees" this time around, so let me! Last time, we sketched for the last 20-30 minutes of every second class. Students loved it but it was a costly use of time. This time I wanted quicker drawings, and more of them, so we spend only the last 5-10 minutes - but of every class - drawing. (We're using the same MUJI notebooks as last time.) Images of the drawings are gathered in a google.drive, and shared on
Instagram (where we already have 44 followers, not bad for a class of 18!). None are signed - the idea is to thrill in their number and variety. I tell the class these sketches are like our class' roots,
of which we need as many as possible going in every direction! I even found an epigraph for the instagram page from David George Haskell: "My pen[cil] scratches on milled wood, another rootlet, minding the forest."
(The Songs of Trees, 58) Each session has a prompt, announced only as we take our notebooks out, related to the day's reading. Many are conceptual but last week we went down to draw the courtyard trees. (Above! ) Today's reading included Haskell's discussion of the afterlives of trees, which continue to contribute to the forest long after they have fallen. The prompt: "At least eight of the Lang courtyard trees are dying," I said. "Find one and draw it."
