Drawing workshop: Make your own drawing tools!

To be fair, after having made our own sketchbooks, we should have seen this one coming. The day before our drawing session, we received an email from our tutor which read "We'll be making drawing tools tomorrow as part of the morning drawing session. Please bring with you anything that can be adapted into a (new) drawing tool". Of course.

I brought a toothbrush, some string and a stick. I ended up using these: 

A toothbrush, a stick with a bit of sponge attached to it by some string, and a spongy stick thingy.
Also, a bottle of ink.

Initially it was all about getting to know the materials we were using, trying out different things to see what kind of texture we could achieve. I'm not sure I did what I was supposed to do, because I quickly just started drawing people and objects in the room but I had fun doing it and I think it helped me to break away from the way I usually draw.

The one furthest away in this picture is the first thing I did. Just a bit of fun

Then we sat in pairs and made blind contour drawings of each other. I initially found it hard to let go of the desire to achieve a good drawing but after a while frustration was replaced with hilarity at squiggly lines and odd proportions and I ended up enjoying the process quite a lot. 

I found using the purple sponge stick (honestly I don't know what they're called) easiest for this but the toothbrush made for some interesting results as it didn't hold enough ink for a whole drawing and I had to scratch the paper more and more for the lines to become visible.

I'm not sure how well I did overall, since everybody seemed to have a different approach to the exercise which made it hard to compare myself to them. However I did like drawing in a new and unfamiliar way. I think it gave me a different perspective on how I normally draw and there is something quite liberating about that.