Visual Vocabulary: Melding Drawing & Writing

What are your favorite ways of communicating your creative ideas?  Some creatives have a strong preference for communicating via either visual or written means, feeling they convey their thoughts more clearly through one method or the other.  I’ve always loved both drawing and writing and have integrated both in my creative work.

“Creative Writer”, 5 x 5 inches, textile painting, © Ayn Hanna

Although my college degrees are in the Visual Arts, the creative writer within was strong enough that I also completed a creative writing minor as an undergraduate.  I’ve loved books since my parents first put them in my hands and have created some of my own with my original prints and writings. 

“NYC Journal”, Artist’s Book © Ayn Hanna

Books, the small treasures we can hold and touch, filled with visual images and story.  Remember your favorite books from childhood?  I was lucky to have great English and Writing teachers through my high school years, teaching me a love of reading and writing.  

“White Typewriter”, lithograph, © Ayn Hanna

Of course “back then” we captured our musings on typewriters, those magic metal machines.  My love of writing included a love of the machines themselves, the shapes, all the moving pieces and parts, their role in the creative writing process.  In grad school, I completed a series of works – both 2 and 3 dimensional – focused on the noble typewriter.

“Typewriter”, monotype, © Ayn Hanna

Bronze Typewriter, © Ayn Hanna

In more recent years, my melding of drawing and writing coupled with my graphic coaching, recording, facilitation and my years of experience creating business presentations has led me to new exciting explorations and study in the visual display of (all types) of information – in a sense mapping – ideas, places, plans, dreams, etc, and using this in my creative work.  My series of personal badges is one example of this personal visual “mapping”.

Combining these various interests and aspects helps me engage both sides of my brain.  A focus on visual display of information – of mapping things, making abstract ideas visual – is a way to communicate ideas creatively with both pictures and words.  What could be better than a pencil (or thread), an idea and a blank sheet of paper (or some fabric)?