Exploring Automatic Drawing

If you’ve not heard of “automatic drawing”, it’s worth watching this video and exploring it. Skip to about the 2:00 mark, if you want to have him jump right in to it.

It was very liberating and thoughtful. It was also an interesting way to explore different shapes, to watch myself as an artist from “the outside” and see what shapes I’m predisposed to, where I’m reverting to certain habits that are lazy, what was exciting and interesting to explore that surprised me, etc.

I suppose one might consider it doodling, but doodling tends to focus on small images that you render. Comparatively, automatic drawing is meant to open it up more. Perhaps it’s like a zentangle? Zentangles are also supposed to be meditative too, but they tend to be more geometric, and about patterns that let you release the mind. Or so it seems to me…. This… seems different? LOL. It’s hard to identify exactly why though.

These two sketches were done without preliminary drawing. The first is colored pencil— which means you can’t erase. The second with pen and ink straight away, colored pencil afterwards.

It’s something to try out, in my opinion. It’s a great warm up too. A way to make marks without judgement— something that is so hard for many people. You can’t fail, which is an interesting experience to explore as an artist.