This is a short, intense practical exercise designed to introduce students to the interaction of image and text; in this case beginnings of novels take over the text function and consequently trigger a process of image discovery.
The goal of this assignment is for students to overcome their fear of drawing and surprise themselves with their intuitive sketches. It is a method designed to reduce self-censorship and to reveal the power of one’s own rapid drawing.

For ten minutes each, six first sentences from famous novels are projected onto the wall. The students briefly let what they have read sink in and then begin to draw in a way that I have called “sending the hand on a journey”. In other words, this also means that no illustration or anything similar is expected, but that the beginnings of the novels act as triggers for drawings that need have nothing at all to do with what has been read.

Possible novels:

• Leo Tolstoi
  Anna Karenina
• George Orwell
  1984
• L. P. Hartley
  The Go-Between
• Franz Kafka
  The Metamorphosis
• Sylvia Plath
  The Bell Jar
• Albert Camus
  The Stranger

Karoline Schreiber, artist and lecturer MA Art Education, HKB Bern – Bern Academy of Arts.

Author’s Encouragement
This session encourages students to become aware of the power of their imagination, initiated by text.

Prior Knowledge and Preparation
The lecturer prepares the setting and an input on the drawing method/practice. In addition, she compiles the novel beginnings.
The input should be on drawing practices in which continuous production related to literature can be observed. -> for example José Antonio Suárez Londoño

Accessibility:
Assistance for Learners
To keep the exercise as simple as possible, it should be conducted in one language only.

Additional Tools

• Adobe Photoshop
• Microsoft PowerPoint
• video projector
• drawing materials, sketch-pad