Drawing Your Own Path: 33 Practices at the Crossroads of Art and Meditation

"Drawing Your Own Path is a smart, subtle, sophisticated, compassionate, radically eye-opening and mind-altering guide to creative and artistic liberation. Thank you, John Simon!"-Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

"John F. Simon, Jr., widely recognized as an early pioneer in the use of computer-generated imagery in contemporary art, has turned his attention to the act mark-making as a doorway into self-awareness and the essential touchstone of visual creativity. He leads us through a sequence of meditative drawing exercises, and shares insightful, touching anecdotes of his many years of experience as a practicing artist."-Peter Halley, Artist

"The mysteries of the mind and universe are coupled with a very practical guide to drawing. It is an unlikely but wonderfully fruitful combination, a step-by-step approach to awareness and art."-Lawrence Rinder, Director, UC Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive

"John's marvelous artwork emerges from a deeply inspired and intuitive unfolding. His gift of finding one's own creative process is beautifully transmitted in this delightful guide."-Jon Bernie, Ordinary Freedom

"Drawing Your Own Path is an invitation to those who have never drawn before and a warm, informative, intelligent and lovely book to read. It offers refreshing, new ways to look at and experience the steps to make drawings today."-Sharon Louden, Artist, Editor of Living and Sustaining a Creative Life

Drawing Your Own Path is an account of how multi-media artist John Simon's daily drawing discipline became a meditation practice, and how that meditation illuminated his creative source. A practical guidebook full of Simon's own art, Drawing Your Own Path offers meditators an alternative path to 'just sitting' and offers artists a way to mindfully examine and deepen the source of their creative ideas. Readers are guided through thirty-three meditation and drawing exercises, exploring concentrated looking, mindful sketching, and improvisational awareness, all designed to help practitioners discover the vast creativity within themselves and in their daily lives.