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Faculty of Design and
Volume 10
Creative Technologies
Auckland University of Technology The Art of Research
Auckland 1142, New Zealand

Editorial / Drawing as a Research Tool:

Making and understanding in art and design practice

Maarit Mäkelä, Nithikul Nimkulrat, and Tero Heikkinen

STUDIES IN MATERIAL THINKING
[Link]

ISSN: 1177-6234

Auckland University of Technology

First published in April 2007, Auckland, New Zealand.
Copyright © Studies in Material Thinking and the author.

All rights reserved. Apart from fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism or
review, as permitted under the applicable copyright legislation, no part of this work may
be reproduced by any process without written permission from the publisher or author. For
permissions and other inquiries, please contact the Editor at <materialthinking@[Link]>

STUDIES IN MATERIAL THINKING is a peer-reviewed research journal supported by an

International Editorial Advisory Group. The journal is listed in the Australian ERA 2012
Journal List (Excellence in Research for Australia) and in the Norwegian register of
approved scientific journals, series and publishers.
Vol 10 Drawing as a Research Tool:
Editorial Making and understanding in art and design practice

Author Maarit Mäkelä / Nithikul Nimkulrat / Tero Heikkinen /

Aalto University / Estonian Academy of Arts / Aalto University /
[Link]@[Link] [Link]@[Link] / [Link]@[Link]

The Discursive Context Since 2005, The Art of Research conference series has provided a forum for sharing and
discussing research in the fields of art and design. The core notion behind the series is that
the spheres of knowledge, material thinking, and experience that are fostered through crea-
tive work have long and extensive histories, but the term ‘research’ has only been used for
less than three decades to describe the intersections between these spheres in a formal,
academic sense. The debate concerning research in this context is still very much alive as
we can see from the gradual proliferation of publications related to practice-led or artistic
research (e.g., Hannula et al., 2005; Mäkelä & Routarinne, 2006; Elkins, 2009; Nimkulrat
& O’Riley, 2009; Biggs & Karlson, 2011; Koskinen et al., 2011; Van Schaik et al., 2012).
Practices, methods, and examples relating to the discourse have started to be documented
and disseminated. This has also enabled profound and critical discussion around the topic.
The idea shared between these publications can be pinned down to the understanding of
research as a simultaneously creative and rationalizing process, at the heart of which lies the
undeniable curiosity of the artist or designer (Mäkelä & O’Riley, 2012, p. 8).
This special issue is based on The Art of Research conference that took place in Helsinki
at the Aalto University, School of Arts, Design and Architecture, 28-29 November 2012. The
topic of the conference, making, reflecting and understanding, also provides a framework for
this special issue. The theme has developed in recognition of the fact that while the power
of artistic imagination is widely recognized generally, in academia the exploration of artistic
and designerly methods of knowledge acquisition has only just begun to gain acceptance in
other disciplines and professional communities of researchers and practitioners. Building on
a contemporary discourse regarding the notion of practice-led research, the Art of Research
Conference 2012 aimed to examine the relations that can be constructed between making
and critical reflection, and how these enable artistic and designerly practices to be character-
ized as research.
Different fields of creative practice construct these relations in a number of different
ways, for example: through material or conceptual form; in methodological approach; the use
of tools and specific skills. The emphasis of the conference was to explore how these fields
might relate to and influence each other, and the selected papers in this issue acknowledge
the work currently being done to extend this exploration into other disciplines, such as medi-
cine, architecture, and education. The papers demonstrate diverse ways in which creative
practice—drawing in particular—has been adapted and utilized in the research domain of
subjects beyond art and design.

Drawing As An Activity A brief discussion on the activity of drawing within different creative disciplines of art and
design will lay the ground for our introduction to the selection of papers in this issue. It is
important to acknowledge the many varied approaches to sense-making through drawing,
including artistically oriented research, where art and design production plays a central role.
This special volume has been restricted to four authors and an editorial contribution, a limited
collection, in order to focus the range of ideas about drawing into an assertive declaration on
the material thinking and sense-making importance of drawing as a research approach in a
time when academic quality assessment regimes, technological advances, and pedagogical
shifts are threatening this traditional mode of discovery. The best value to be obtained from
this volume is to read all the papers in order of presentation, starting with the editorial text.

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Copyright © Studies in Material Thinking and the author.
Vol 10 Drawing as a Research Tool:
Editorial Making and understanding in art and design practice

Drawing, like dancing, is an exploratory, sense-making process where the observer,

and the thing or idea observed, are inextricably bound together in a physical, material space/
time relationship. Drawing is both an active and subjective engagement, valued by artistic
researchers, not only for what may finally be encrypted in the drawing, but more significantly
for the access provided through drawing to thinking that is close to the unconscious. Because
of the complex nature of drawing activity and its wide applications, the value of drawing as
a research method has only recently been acknowledged. This has resulted in fruitful and
profound discussions, that are taking place currently both inside the art and design academic
community as well as outside in the wider scientific communities.
The making of drawings has been studied within different scientific disciplines, social
sciences in particular, often with a focused interest in artists, designers, and architects as
“creative” subjects. Drawing has been seen as a tool that characterizes these disciplines and
possibly even as a mysterious gift that needs to be explained. Over the years, our scientific
understanding of drawing has become more nuanced. Studies relating to drawing range
from an examination of the social context of using drawings and models (Henderson, 1998;
Bucciarelli, 1994; Schön, 1983), psychological and cognitive approaches that connect draw-
ing processes to underlying modes of thinking (Arnheim, 1969; Goel, 1995) and drawing
research itself (Garner, 2008; Thistlewood et al., 1992).
For designers, drawing has been characterized as an emerging dialogue between the
individual and the drawing (Schön, 1983). Self-generated sketches are defined as extensions
of mental imagery, from which meanings and new insight are “excavated” (Goldschmidt,
2003). Architectural design drawings do not always depict the physical shapes to be built
(Suwa & Twersky, 1997). They may explore other designerly or aesthetic functions, such as:
people flow and the navigation of space; the ambience of natural and artificial lighting; poten-
tial ventilation; the experience of the textural environment; and the use of interior or exterior
spaces.
Research in design fields, such as industrial design, furniture and spatial design, and
service design, has been in the position to assimilate research outcomes from various other
disciplines. This unfolding of associated thinking processes has been studied within design,
where drawing is situated as part of the broader context of generative and explorative design
approaches (Lawson, 2004 and 2006; Cross, 1997 and 2006; Rosenman & Gero, 1993).
Drawing serves many purposes and takes on diverse meanings throughout a design process,
ranging from exploratory concept drawings to outcome illustrations (Lawson, 2004). It would
be a mistake to pinpoint one exact task for drawing within the design process. Design
drawing is nowadays seen as part of the overall idea-creation and sense-making of any
collaborative process in design. The term sketching is increasingly used as a metaphor for
diverse activities so that its meaning is not always limited to drawing (Buxton, 2007). Drawing
is increasingly understood in a broad sense as an activity that facilitates communication for
creative proposes.
The social scientist Donald Schön (1983, pp. 80-81) considered verbal and non-verbal
expressions as analogous: drawing and talking are parallel ways of designing, and together
make up what he calls the ”language of design”. According to Schön, drawing reveals quali-
ties and relations unimagined beforehand and, thus, the actions of hands are able to function
as experiments (ibid., p. 157). This notion has been reinforced by contemporary researchers
like Nigel Cross, whose view on the role of drawing in design thinking (2011) resonates with
Schön’s. Cross (2011, pp. 239-241) proposed that even a designer working alone can ”act
as a team of one”, talking to him or herself and thinking out loud implicitly through drawing in
the design process. The potential of drawing has also been studied by the cognitive scientist
Vinod Goel (1995) who researched how designers work and, in particular, what kind of visual
representations they generate during the design process. According to Goel, designers
produce and manipulate the representation of the artefact rather than the artefact itself: all
the reasoning and decision making is done through the construction and manipulation of models
of various sorts, including for example, different kinds of sketches and mock-ups (ibid., p. 128).

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Vol 10 Drawing as a Research Tool:
Editorial Making and understanding in art and design practice

Goel (1995, p. 134) proposes that designers are confident that there are significant
differences in the various systems of representation and that these differences affect think-
ing processes. He suggests that, in certain phases in a design process, thoughts and their
representations need to be ‘intersecting, undifferentiated and ambiguous’ (ibid., p. 189). In
addition, he implies that freehand sketches play an important role in the creative, explorative,
open-ended phase of problem solving as the sketches facilitate lateral transformations and
prevent early crystallization of design development (ibid., p. 218). Pei et al. (2010) also ob-
serve that sketches have various roles in the progressive stages of new product development
carried out collaboratively between industrial designers and engineering designers.
One of the most challenging aspects of studying creative processes is that artists,
craftspeople, and designers can have complex thoughts and beliefs about their own way of
working. They do not often know explicitly where their ideas originate from, as they may have
inherited their approaches from studio masters, colleagues, and literature. Schön (1983, p.
68) states that the practitioner construes theory out of each unique case of personal practice,
regardless of established theories. He also acknowledges that, over time, the practitioner’s
conceptual framing of his or her own work can become refined or even overturned.
Craft researcher Pirita Seitamaa-Hakkarainen (2000; Seitamaa-Hakkarainen &
Hakkarainen 2004) finds that textile artists often work to satisfy a self-defined goal and
thus characterizes the work of textile artists as a “dual space search”. While the first space
concerns the creative process of exploring the characteristic and potential material properties of
textile, the second space is related to composition, which can be considered open to more
personal, interpretative approaches. According to Seitamaa-Hakkarainen, these spaces
are explored not only through materials but also through sketching. It is likely that similar
observations might be made of other design and artistic practices. In this respect, material
exploration and personal expressions seem to form a space where the act of drawing can be
productively engaged.
The variety of contemporary research into drawing has demonstrated that drawing is an
activity that has almost boundless potential applications and roles within design and artistic
practices. However, the relationship between these three modes, drawing, design and artistic
practice, and research also raises questions about the position of drawing in research per
se and opens an interesting sphere of investigation into the ways that drawing may support
research.

Drawing as a Driving As discussed above, sketching as method of processing and communicating design ideas
Force of Artistic Research has already been examined in numerous forums. However, much of the emphasis of research
in the area has been focused on three primary uses of design drawing, i.e. concept sketching,
presentation drawing, and drawing for manufacture (Rodgers et al., 2000). Ings (2013, p. 121)
proposes that through a process of immersion the designer can also engage in a drawing
method he calls “enstasic drawing”. He suggests that in design research, enstasis might
refer to an induced interior state of selfhood where one dwells in the creative potential of
what is not yet formed (ibid.). In this respect, rather than being a form of communication,
enstatic drawing may be used to stimulate thinking, describing a state and process used
for developing creative thoughts (ibid., p. 125). Drawing in a slow, reflective process encourages
the designer’s thinking to become contemplative, so that the designer and the drawing flexibly
converse with each other to generate ideas. This conversation is metaphorical rather than
literal, as it takes place “in tone and weight, emphasis and potential” (ibid., p. 121). In this
way, thinking is not prescribed by the territorial limitations of words: images operate with a
more flexible grammar and one is able to connect possibilities in comparatively abstract and
intangible ways.
Within this concept, Ings refers to artist and design theorist Terry Rosenberg who describes
this kind of drawing process as a state “where one thinks with and through drawing to make
discoveries, find new possibilities that give course to ideas and help fashion their eventual
material or conceptual form” (Rosenberg, 2008, p. 109). Rosenberg’s view implies that drawing is

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Vol 10 Drawing as a Research Tool:
Editorial Making and understanding in art and design practice

thinking and acting between the not yet formed and the formed (ibid., p. 114). Following this
train of thought, Ings (2013, p. 121) suggests that in a state of enstasy one is not outside of
one’s self, but inside one’s self, and the drawing process is not for the creation of an image,
but for the exploration of the potential of a thought. Furthermore, Rosenberg (2008, pp. 109-112)
refers to the same state by noting that the process of drawing is simultaneously mental and
physical and that the known and the un-known are drawn to and through each other. “We are
drawn into making drawing and the drawing draws us into further thinking,” says Rosenberg
(2008, p. 110).
Painter Tarja Pitkänen-Walter (2006, p. 151) describes the same moment when painting
is considered a process, where something that is “too fragile to make it into [an] image” seeks
to find expression. To be able to achieve this moment, the artist has to develop the ability to
give up planning and give shape to something that is more heterogeneous than an already-
existing notion (ibid., p. 121). The experiences of hesitation and groping are elemental parts
of this process, where the artist as the creator of a new image has to sidestep and offer the
emergent space to a new picture that seems to be creating itself (ibid., p. 135). During this
process, the artist is guided to the source of the unconscious by unexpected, casual surprises
and sensuousness that he or she discovers, and expresses with figures, forms, colours,
structures, and textures (ibid., p. 101).
“Drawing is an example of multi-sensory thoughtful engagement with the world”, says
Susan Kozel, professor of new media who works with bodies, ideas, and technologies (Kozel,
2012, p. 209). She explains that when one encounters the unknown, one will first attempt to
describe it, rather than hold it within an existing conceptual structure (ibid.). Similarly, artist
Matt Mullican (2008, p. 8) observes that one cannot answer but only demonstrate the question
(the unknown), and the artist demonstrates the unknown through drawing. Drawing in this
sense acts as a guide for the one who draws to contemplate, describe, or demonstrate a
particular idea. In a research context, a study begins with a research question or topic that
requires appropriate methodological approaches to demonstrate and describe it before
the research findings can emerge. The methodological orientations assumed will inevitably
influence the emergence of the specific findings, the new creative interpretations and new
material forms. In the artistic research context, researchers are typically artists or designers
who possess a well-developed drawing ability. Hence, it is natural that artistic researchers
are predisposed to use drawing methods in their research processes
A skill such as drawing is not uniform and monolithic, but richly informed by our other
experiences and conceptions—all of which are brought into the drawing process. Papers in
this special issue will illuminate the richness of experiences of drawing and how drawing may
drive a variety of research projects in art, design, architecture, and education.

Papers in this Special Issue The submissions included here have been selected for their insight into ways in which drawing
as an artistic process contributes to research inquiry. Common to all the papers are:
1) the researcher’s aspiration to use drawing as a driving force of research; 2) an intention
to advance our theoretical and philosophical perspectives on different topics, and 3) work
that reflects the broader potential role of the contemporary artist-researcher. Thus our interest
is not simply to discuss how to advance the skill of drawing in the most usual sense. This
special issue does not focus on artistic outcomes as exhibited pieces, but rather on how
the process of drawing and various artefacts that entail the idea of drawing can be utilized
in the research context to enable making, reflecting and understanding of the topics being
researched in art and design and beyond.
The special issue consists of four papers that have been selected from double-blind
peer reviewed papers presented at two conferences: three papers from The Art of Research
2012 and one from the DRS Special Interest Group on Experiential Knowledge (EKSIG)
2013. These papers have been developed further by the authors, in consultation with the
journal’s editorial team, and they have undergone the Studies in Material Thinking double-
blind peer review process. The paper by Kaisu Koski is based on her keynote presentation

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Vol 10 Drawing as a Research Tool:
Editorial Making and understanding in art and design practice

from The Art of Research conference, where she discussed what might happen when the act
of drawing is utilized in the field of medicine. With this approach the paper sets the tone for
the whole special issue, as all the papers are concerned with the idea of drawing and, in par-
ticular, how the act of drawing might be utilised and applied in other domains and disciplines.
In Mapping the Female Reproduction System, Kaisu Koski shows how she utilizes
drawing in her art-based research in two ways. On the one hand, drawing is a method for
collecting data and, on the other, it is a means to elaborate and disseminate the data further.
The paper discusses a case where she collected anatomy drawings from 62 medical stu-
dents. The students were asked to visualize the female reproduction system and, in addition,
their understanding of the conception process. The enquiry resulted in a diverse collection of
students’ drawings that Koski then analyzed and clustered. These are also the drawings that
Koski ‘draws with’ in the later steps of her study.
In Koski’s art-based research, the artist-researcher goes beyond written analysis and
uses multiple forms for interpreting and making sense of the data. In the case presented, she
merged the data, i.e. student’s drawings, with her own artistic expression through drawing.
According to Koski, this provided several new interpretations or readings of the collected
images. This resulted in two animated films: one is a flythrough of students’ drawings and
the other is a cartoon-like animation that reveals the creation process based on the selected
drawings.
In her paper Reflect | React | Redraw, Judith Dobler presents work from an ongoing pro-
cess of initiating and reflecting on different types of drawing tasks. The project demonstrates
that a variety of drawing exercises can be used to examine and bring into light different
aspects of drawing—producing surprise moments for reflection and supplying the researcher
with new phenomena. Her process has qualities of a sustained inquiry that suggests different
theoretical perspectives from which to interpret the drawing outcomes. The kind of approach
being developed in this work would be valuable not only as a working method for the practi-
cally minded designer or artist, but also for the researcher who is intent on developing a
rigorous drawing, seeing and observation methodology as a component of their research
orientation.
For example, by using different modifications to the life drawing approach, the author
was able to steer the drawing tasks to fuel discussion on the nature of the human perceptual
apparatus and the role of eyes and hands in the drawing process. Repetition, superimposi-
tion, and blind drawing were some of the techniques used to tease out qualities that would
not easily reveal themselves from an examination of ordinary life drawings. Overall, this
artistic research project has demonstrated clearly how the act of observing and drawing can
become a way to examine and reflect on the nature of drawing by means of the drawing
activity itself.
In the paper Painting Architecture: Towards a Practice-Led Research Methodology,
Agnieszka Mlicka opens up a discussion on the possibility of using the particularities of a
painterly approach to examine and reflect on architectural practice and the role of painting
as a process rather than outcome. This is distinct from using drawings and paintings to
represent or generate architectural form. The investigative position is made possible by ap-
preciating architecture as a broad domain of human activity that includes various negotiations
and conflicts between live and inert constituents.
The project was actualized by the researcher’s engagement in a series of dialogical
sessions themed around architectural practice, where the painting was used as a way to both
visualize the ensuing discussion and to propel it forward. The encounters were developed
with sensitivity to the fact that “painting” can be considered in terms of artistic outcome, spe-
cific practice and material process. By bringing these aspects directly to the situation and also
allowing the painting to act as an outcome delivered to the discussants, the researcher was
able to produce experiences that helped to reflect on the painting project from these three
angles. The result is a critical examination of the ways insight can be produced through the
project and some of the challenges such an approach entails.

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Vol 10 Drawing as a Research Tool:
Editorial Making and understanding in art and design practice

Drawing is explored from a design education perspective in Mari Lecanides-Arnott’s pa-

per Drawing as “learning to see”: A strategy to locate the “white/open space” that encourages
intuitive thinking in designers. The paper focuses on verifying and demonstrating the essence
of developing drawing or “thinking through making” skills in the basic education of designers,
through an examination of a design foundation course in South Africa that Lecanides-Arnott
has taught since 2003. Through drawing, students can “learn to see” and develop the self-
awareness and self-confidence necessary for effectively participating in the iterative design
process while maintaining generative self-criticism. Lecanides-Arnott claims that when
students learn the opposing approaches of gesture and contour drawing well, they are better
able to engage effectively, not only in the subject of drawing itself but also in studio-based
design subjects that entail drawing phases for generating ideas and evaluating possible
outcomes and iterations.
The paper considers visualizing ideas through drawing as a successful strategy to locate
the “white/open space” of possibility, which encourages intuitive thinking and enables the
imaginative leaps that are so necessary for creative design action and innovative change to
emerge. It shows the way in which the novice designer’s perceptual, expressive, and analyti-
cal abilities are developed through the use of drawing as “learning to see”. Lecanides-Arnott
argues for the retention of all modes of thinking through drawing based on traditional hand
skills, new digital technologies, self-expression, and comparative analysis through the group
critique. All of these learning modes contribute to the development of critical thinking and
should remain as core ideas in design education.

Final remarks
Drawing has been one of the basic skills possessed by artists and designers throughout
history and in all parts of the world. It has played a crucial role in the creation processes of
most art and design practices. When drawing is re-examined in the research context, where
it is now being performed as a definitive activity within art and design research, it can be
understood in its functionality as a driving force that moves the research inquiry forward. The
authors of papers in this special issue have demonstrated through their research projects,
critical thinking, and analysis that drawing is valued not only as a skill or an ability needed for
their art and design practices as artist, designer, architect, or educator, but also a research
activity performed in order to investigate a research topic or to answer a research question.
Artistic research represents the voice of designers and artists who make drawings as
part of the process by which they become more acutely aware of the underpinnings of their
personal work and in turn can communicate with others these new levels of discernment. Artistic
and practice-led research can, in this sense, both supply their own fields with new knowledge and
insight and complement and challenge the views offered by other scientific domains.

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Acknowledgements We want to express gratitude to postdoctoral researcher Svetlana Usenyuk who acted as an
associate editor for this special issue thus taking care of the related peer-reviewed process
and to Sheila Christofides who has copy-edited all the manuscripts with sensitivity to the
nuances of the subject matter. Finally, we are extremely happy that Nancy de Freitas offered
us the opportunity to bring out the special issue and furthermore, for her insightful comments
that helped us to close the editorial.

Studies in Material Thinking, [Link] Page

Vol. 10 (February 2014), ISSN 1177-6234, AUT University 11 / 12
Copyright © Studies in Material Thinking and the author.
 Vol 10 The Authors
Editorial

Maarit Mäkelä / Dr Maarit Mäkelä is an Associate Professor of Practice-Led Design Research at Aalto
Aalto University / University School of Arts, Design and Architecture in Helsinki, Finland. She is also co-leader
[Link]@[Link] of the multidisciplinary research project Handling Mind: Embodiment, Creativity and Design
funded by the Academy of Finland (2013-2016). She has published her papers in different
international arenas, and is a co-editor of the anthologies The Art of Research: Research
Practices in Art and Design published in 2006 and The Art of Research II: Process, Results
and Contribution published in 2011. Mäkelä also works as an artist in the junction of ceramics
and fine art. She has had several solo exhibitions in Finland and has taken part in frequent
group exhibitions in Finland and abroad.

Nithikul Nimkulrat / Dr Nithikul Nimkulrat is a Professor of Textile Design and Head of the Textile Design Depart-
Estonian Academy of Arts / ment at Estonian Academy of Arts in Tallinn, Estonia. She earned a Doctor of Arts from Aalto
[Link]@[Link] / University in Finland in 2009. Her research interest is rooted in her textile practice, reaching
across experiential knowledge in art and design, especially the role of creative practice in
research and that of materials in creative processes. Her creative artefacts have received
awards and been exhibited internationally, while her research has been included in international
academic journals and publications. She is co-editor of the book Reflections and connections:
On the relationship between creative production and academic research (2009) and convener
of the Design Research Society Special Interest Group on Experiential Knowledge (EKSIG).

Tero Heikkinen / Dr Tero Heikkinen is a researcher at Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture
Aalto University / in Helsinki. He defended his thesis in 2013. His research concerns tools and tool-building,
[Link]@[Link] such as drawing rules, as a design-generative activity. His current interest is in examining
drawing and drawing-like activities as means to designing. Prior to studying furniture and
spatial design in Helsinki, he studied woodcraft, developing a strong material basis for his
design outlook. During his studies, he has utilized drawing and building skills in a variety of
research projects.

Studies in Material Thinking, [Link] Page

Vol. 10 (February 2014), ISSN 1177-6234, AUT University 12 / 12
Copyright © Studies in Material Thinking and the author.

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