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I have been trying to figure out three of them lately: the Maker, the Artist, and the Thinker – three figures who appear in a little fable I am currently writing on called Mino and the Stars. I know what they stand for and represent. I roughly know their roles in the story too, but as the writing slowly takes shape I’m getting more curious about how these figures move, how they hold their weight, how they react to their environment and shape it. So I’ve stopped writing a bit, and started drawing instead.
And I had an experiment in mind which was deliberately simple. I gave myself three criteria to work around in this initial stage of figuring out these figures which were: form, energy, and quality. I gave myself a stack of cardboard, a crayon, and as little time as possible, because the whole point for me was not to overthink and rationalize. Shaping these characters should be an open process, and the constraint would be an attempt to get out of my own way. I wanted to draw fast, draw minimally, commit to whatever appeared, and resist the urge to correct it. Whatever comes out of the hand is the thing I would have to work with.
And these rough and simple sketches turned out to hold real information that sat surprisingly right with me afterwards. I think they might’ve already been living in my mind, but this process seemed to push it all out in a very playful and effortless way. The Maker arrived round and grounded. The Artist restless and scattered, and the Thinker quietly balanced the big perspectives on their little body. Once they were on paper I could assign each one their attributes: this is their form, this is their energy, this is the quality they carry.
From drawing I moved to cardboard, and cutting the shapes out changed something. It gave the figures edges, shadow, and the materiality of things that occupy actual space. Held in the hand, turned in the light, placed beside each other in different ways, they started to feel less like sketches and more like presences. Their extra dimension added character, and they pushed back a little.What I practiced moving through this process was creating from a place that feels honest and playful.
Character doesn't always arrive through thinking. Sometimes it arrives through making, through the fast and sloppy markings, through the material, the deliberately unfinished form that leaves enough room for something to emerge. Simplicity here has not felt like a shortcut, but like a method to start figuring out these figures. Very roughly of course, but enough to write toward a new stage.