Drawing Your Own Path

"Drawing Your Own Path is a smart, subtle, sophisticated, compassionate, radically eye-opening and mind-altering guide to creative and artistic liberation. Thank you, John Simon!"—Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

"John F. Simon, Jr., widely recognized as an early pioneer in the use of computer-generated imagery in contemporary art, has turned his attention to the act mark-making as a doorway into self-awareness and the essential touchstone of visual creativity. He leads us through a sequence of meditative drawing exercises, and shares insightful, touching anecdotes of his many years of experience as a practicing artist."—Peter Halley, Artist

"The mysteries of the mind and universe are coupled with a very practical guide to drawing. It is an unlikely but wonderfully fruitful combination, a step-by-step approach to awareness and art."—Lawrence Rinder, Director, UC Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive

"John’s marvelous artwork emerges from a deeply inspired and intuitive unfolding. His gift of finding one’s own creative process is beautifully transmitted in this delightful guide."—Jon Bernie, Ordinary Freedom

"Drawing Your Own Path is an invitation to those who have never drawn before and a warm, informative, intelligent and lovely book to read. It offers refreshing, new ways to look at and experience the steps to make drawings today."—Sharon Louden, Artist, Editor of Living and Sustaining a Creative Life 

Drawing Your Own Path is an account of how multi–media artist John Simon’s daily drawing discipline became a meditation practice, and how that meditation illuminated his creative source. A practical guidebook full of Simon's own art, Drawing Your Own Path offers meditators an alternative path to ‘just sitting’ and offers artists a way to mindfully examine and deepen the source of their creative ideas. Readers are guided through thirty–three meditation and drawing exercises, exploring concentrated looking, mindful sketching, and improvisational awareness, all designed to help practitioners discover the vast creativity within themselves and in their daily lives.Chapter One: Wrong Question, Right Answer



Exercise 1: Getting right into it



Exercise 2: Watching your hand



Exercise 3: Marking practice



Chapter Two: Realistic Drawing



Exercise 4: Picking an object to draw



Exercise 5: Attentive looking



Exercise 6: Noticing awareness



Exercise 7: Marking from the sense of sight



Exercise 8: Simple rendering



Exercise 9: Try perspective



Exercise 10: Working inward



Chapter Three: Systematic Drawing



Exercise 11: The circular arrow - a visual mantra



Exercise 12: Improvising between two points and finding the world in between



Exercise 13: Thought as art



Exercise 14: All four pixel images



Exercise 15: Book of compositions



Chapter Four: Improvisational Drawing


Exercise 16: Going outside the box


Exercise 17: Not breath awareness


Exercise 18: Growing improvisation


Exercise 19: Chasing the Coltrane Effect


Exercise 20: Drawing to reveal inner conditions


Exercise 21: Noticing Intuition


Exercise 22: You are the universe drawing


Chapter Five: Reading the Drawings



Exercise 23: An exact physical description



Exercise 24: Feeling the meaning



Exercise 25: The story we tell ourselves



Exercise 26: Connecting our story to a larger story



Chapter Six: The Search for the Source of Creativity



Exercise 27: Priming the source



Exercise 28: Embedded sources



Exercise 29: Sitting still at the origin



Exercise 30: Mindful of the path



Chapter Seven: Meta-Drawing



Exercise 31: Sharing with yourself



Exercise 32: Sharing with a trusted friend



Exercise 33: Sharing with the worldJohn F. Simon, Jr. is one of the pioneers in the development of Software Art. His seminal work "Every Icon" was included in the 2000 Whitney Biennial. In October 2005 the Whitney Museum of American Art and Printed Matter published Simon’s artist’s book and software CD, Mobility Agents, and in 2011, Simon collaborated with Icelandic singer Björk to write an app for her album, Biophilia, the first app album ever created.

Simon’s artworks can be found in the permanent collections of The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, Collezione Maramotti, The Brooklyn Museum, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art and The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others. Simon currently lives and works in Sugar Loaf, New York.CHAPTER 1: Wrong Question, Right Answer

With the crowd at my art opening thinning, heading to the after–party, hors d’oeuvres finished, compliments paid, big sales closed, the staff starting to unwind, a visitor to the gallery approached and began to tell me about how strongly he reacted to the work. A was a software engineer with a flair for graphics who always wanted to pursue art, he loved visiting art galleries and museums, but couldn’t decide if he was an artist. He had no desire to switch careers since he was in high demand and well–paid as a programmer. Knowing there would never be enough time to devote to making art, he disparaged initiating his own creative projects since he was sure his beginner’s flailing would be a waste of time. He was looking for me to give him a reason to justify spending more time on a growing passion that could yield no predictable professional results.

Maybe he thought I had a secret because at some point he stopped and asked me directly, "If I want to make a good drawing, do you have any tips for how I should go about it?"

Ego–inflated from my opening night, flattered by his question and slightly tipsy from the wine, I began to pontificate. I gave him my views on how one would make a good drawing only to hear all my theories second–guessed in my mind as quickly as they were spoken. The generalizations I made to him about color and composition kept missing the point. I flailed, sputtered, and eventually realized, but not until almost ten years later, that the answer to his question was in the question itself.