The Big Draw Has Come to Los Angeles

October is half over but I just learned about a fun celebration of drawing -- Big Draw L.A.   This is a month-long initiative to get the people of Los Angeles participating in art projects, by providing fun opportunities to be creative.  It’s also a way to communicate and interact with others.

Drawing, after all, helps us to see, think, invent, communicate and just play!

The L.A. event  is sponsored by Ryman Arts—a free program that teaches classical drawing and painting to talented  and motivated high school  students in southern California.  They were inspired by a very popular Big Draw event in London which was sponsored by the Campaign for Drawing.  The Campaign for Drawing was created by the Guild of St. George, a small charity founded by artist, writer and educator John Ruskin in 1871 to assist in the education of artists. A lovely chain of events!  Now there are Big Draw events in countries around the world.

Ryman Arts launched the L.A. event last year with 30 venues.  This year there are over 55. The London event has a head start of 10 years and this year they have over 1000 events scheduled.  Hopefully the Los Angeles Big Draw will be even bigger next year—as well as embracing the philosophy of the Campaign for Drawing.  Their long-term ambition is to change the way educators (and everyone else) thinks about drawing.  Since the trend now is to eliminate art classes in our schools this is a truly worthy pursuit.  The Campaign for Drawing group  believe that drawing is fundamental  for  the education  of students, and that drawing is useful  in all walks of life---a basic skill. Their hope is actually to erase the phrase “I can’t draw” from our vocabularies!

There is still time to join the fun!  Check out the Big Draw LA website……