Through Concentrated Breath (the essay)
Meditation-type drawings like those I did in Korea can be used like training in order to later work with images in the mind. I would sit in front of a blank sheet of paper. When I loaded my brush with ink, I would pull in a deep breath and close my eyes. Keeping my eyes closed, I would exhale slowly and completely. I was taking away all thought from my mind as the air exited my mouth. Once it was all gone, I was ready for the cycle.
The cycle encompassed three identical breaths. With my eyes still closed, I would inhale for about twelve seconds, hold my breath for twelve again, and let it out for another count of twelve. This was done two more times. On the third time, I would make the drawing. Each time I inhaled, I tried to summon an image in my head. When I held my breath, I would outline for those twelve counts just how I was going to go about doing the image with that particular brush that was loaded with just so much ink, and what would go first and second and so on. On the third breath, as I released, I would either blank my mind and start all over again, or if it were the third exhalation, I would make my marks on the paper. During the duration of that last exhalation, the whole thing would be finished, nothing more than a handful of strokes that to others would signify nothing.
I invented this type of drawing exercise based on what I knew about sumi painters, how they would spend long moments “becoming” what they were about to draw before putting brush to paper and executing the drawing within seconds.
Without this mode of drawing I did in Korea, I don’t think that I would have been able to deal with my current artistic work. The Cycle can serve as the base form of working with shadows behind eyelids that can strengthen your vision of mental pictures and how to deal with them in drawing or painting. Maybe this is what we mean when we say we are drawing from our imagination. With my eyes closed, the eyelids provided their own shadows not inherent to images in the mind. But they came together in the end.