On Saturday May 22 I held a three hour workshop with Dinah Lone in the British Music Experience at the 02 Arena. The workshop explored drawing and doodling as a visual shorthand to communicate ideas. The workshop began by drawing visual hints to popular song titles as the audience guessed the answer. An exercise in how little may be required and what few clues are needed to recognise the subject of a drawing.

This was followed by ‘Visual Association’, a 20 minute exercise in which the group drew themselves as a tree, shoe, animal, chair, spectacles, sweet, hat and flower. An exercise encouraging playful/inventive responses to description rather than a precise portrayal of how things look.

The group where then asked to produce a sketch idea for a personalized guitar or customized microphone expressing one of the following: happiness, sadness, surprise, disgust, anger, fear. the half hour project tests the idea of what a familiar object should look like and explores shared meanings in key words of expression.The examples illustrate a sad guitar, a guitar of surprise and a sad microphone.

The previous exercises led to a one hour project to produce a radio station poster. Each member of the group was asked to visually represent a genre of rock music and to invent the station name and frequency. Examples shown include a Punk Rock station, a Gospel station and Electronic Rock station.

The final presentation.