Thinking About Drawing

Simon Grennan is Leading Research Fellow at the University of Chester, UK. He is an awarded scholar of visual narrative, graphic novelist and cartoonist. He is the author of Drawing in Drag by Marie Duval (2019), A Theory of Narrative Drawing (2017) and Dispossession (2015), one of The Guardian Books of the Year 2015, which is a graphic adaptation of a novel by Anthony Trollope. He is co-author, with Roger Sabin and Julian Waite, of Marie Duval: Maverick Victorian Cartoonist (2020), Marie Duval (2018) and The Marie Duval Archive (2015), co-author of Key Terms in Comics Studies (2021) and co-editor, with Laurence Grove, of Transforming Anthony Trollope: 'Dispossession', Victorianism and 19th-century Word and Image (2015), among others. Since 1990, he has been half of international artists team Grennan & Sperandio, producer of over forty comics and books (www.kartoonkings.com).

• List of IllustrationsIntroduction: what is drawing?1. ImitationThe threshold of visualisation and the problem of mediaDepiction and visualisationImitating vision and imitating drawingDigital imitationAnalogue imitationImitating experience2. MarkToneLinePlanningMappingDrawing systems representing three dimensionsTypificationWritingMark making across mediaIntroducing the body3. TraceThe surfaceThe surface of the drawing as the skin of a bodyThe surface as a visualisation of an ideaThe limits of the drawingThe significance of drawing mediaTrace, media and bodyTrace and styleTrace as evidenceMovement, mind and absenceChoreographing tracesTrace and depiction4. StoryStory and point of viewThe story of the drawingStory and styleDrawing style and character5. Drawing TodayFeelingTechnology old and newSystematic drawingsIdentity and powerTextiles and the lineConjecture and hypothesisCollaborative drawingPerforming drawingMoving drawingsContemporary drawing and public cultural institutionsSelective glossaryReferencesFurther readingIndex

This is an important summation about a lot of foundational ideas in drawing. Having a functional text, written by a practitioner, is what the field needs.