My first live drawing session

I've been drawing more than twenty years, but last week I drew the first time in a live session. It was a brainstorming-kind-of-workshop to generate new ideas and point of views for the future pedagogy. I sat randomly in different groups and listened the discussion trying to visualize either groups' thoughts as they were pointed out... or even better, produce new interpretations and points of view or even question their thoughts. In other words, with my drawings I tried to feed groups' thinking even further - give them nice gentle kicks in an illustrated form.

I was pretty nervous before the new experience and I even gave myself a permission to do some sketching, but in the end I drew everything without sketching. What helped me to get into nice work flow, was that I managed to lower the bar of my self critique.

Of course, when I look those drawings now, I get tempted to do some redrawing here and there, but I try to remember the different function they served.

I got a feeling that people in the workshop liked what I did, but what's more difficult to say is how much added value my work managed to produce. Actually I think it's not just what I do and draw, but also how the participants of the workshop can utilize visual stimulus in their thinking.

So, can visualization offer more than just nice entertaining for workshops, seminars or conferences? Hard to say for sure, but personally I believe in visualization. I say YES!