"Automatic Drawing" is a kind of yoga for artists, as with regular yoga, you practice to loosen the body and relax your mind and spirit. Automatic drawing, or "free drawing" as it’s sometimes called, does the same for the artist self.
By saying that I mean it's both relaxing and freeing. These types of drawing exercises help explore concepts of inner plurality, visualising various states of emotion and identity through automatic drawing practice. I've talked before about the importance of sketching daily! As a form of embodied cognition, ideasthetic imagining is a generative process, producing narrative ideas by “writing back” to an event in the past. The aim is to produce a narrative artefact that showcases the fractured, pluralistic nature of identity.
In this weeks blog post I’m going to explain what automatic drawing is, some techniques to show you how you can do it and I’m even going to give a little rundown of the history behind automatic drawing.
So it all begins with Surrealism, which is a movement in visual art and literature, which was super popular in Europe between World Wars I and II. Surrealism stemmed from the Dada movement, which before World War I produced works of anti-art that deliberately defied reason; but Surrealism’s emphasis was not on negation but on positive expression.
The movement represented a reaction against what its members saw as the destruction wrought by the “rationalism” that had guided European culture and politics in the past and that had culminated in the horrors of World War I.
According to the major spokesman of the movement, the poet and critic André Breton, who published The Surrealist Manifesto in 1924, Surrealism was a means of reuniting conscious and unconscious realms of experience so completely that the world of dream and fantasy would be joined to the everyday rational world in “an absolute reality, a surreality.” Drawing heavily on theories adapted from Sigmund Freud, Breton saw the unconscious as the wellspring of the imagination. He defined genius in terms of accessibility to this normally untapped realm, which, he believed, could be attained by poets and painters alike.
One strategy surrealists used was automatic drawing.
Automatism refers in general to a complex sequence of behaviour carried out in the almost complete absence of conscious awareness. The concept originated in the context of nineteenth century psychopathology, and often referred to actions carried out under the influence of hypnotic suggestion or to fugues or escapist episodes of which the normal personality had no recollection. In Pierre Janet’s work L’Automatisme psychologique (1889), there is a distinction between total and partial automatism: in the latter, a part of the mind is split from conscious awareness but still accessible
Looking at two ends of a spectrum- which we can refer to as unity and disintegration, with late nineteenth century philosophers seeing the former as ‘psychological strength’, the latter as ‘weakness’ (Bacopolous 2012)
The ritual importance of the Surrealists’ initiatory experiment with automatic writing is not to be underestimated. Derived from the language of madness and made into one of exaltation, this method opened new literary paths. (Bacopolous 2012 p269)
On a blank piece of paper, have students draw continuously for several minutes without thinking about what they are going to draw. Let their hands flow freely over the paper without self-censorship so let the subconscious take over. Hopefully, by freeing yourself from planning and censorship, your true psyche can be revealed.
The computer, like the typewriter, can be used to produce automatic writing and automatic poetry. The practice of automatic drawing, originally performed with pencil or pen and paper, has also been adapted to mouse and monitor, and other automatic methods have also been either adapted from non-digital media, or invented specifically for the computer.
For instance, filters have been automatically run in some bitmap editor programs such as Photoshop and GIMP, and computer-controlled brushes have been used to "simulate" automatism.
Automatic Drawing – Continuous Line – Blind
Im going to explain a little experiment you can perform at home which will allow you to create a unique artwork by using automatic technique. For this you'll need to gather some materials
- an artist’s journal, unlined notebook, or piece of paper
- pencil/pen/marker of your choice
Put yourself in a receptive frame of mind, draw without thinking, and avoid conscious control over the image. Keeping your pencil on the paper can help the flow.In fact, automatic drawing is a sort of accelerated or intensified doodling in which unexpected and unpredictable images can be made to and used as the basis for visual play.
- Sit comfortably with your pencil and paper in hand
- Close your eyes and breathe deeply
- Draw one continuous line moving the pencil without conscious thought
- Draw until your pencil falls of the edge of the sketchpad
Reflections on the Exercise
This is a very relaxing technique to do, especially when I find myself with not enough time to do my usual drawing exercises so this is a quick way to not get out of the habit.
The critical modes of thinking and analysis we build over time ensures that the less competent we feel, the less likely we are to continue.
Therefore, it is important to introduce drawing to adults in a way that facilitates a sense of engagement and play, bypassing their assessment and outcome modes of thinking.
With Surrealist automatism, or automatic drawing, I believe that there is a possibility of achieving this.
I hope that introducing drawing practice using automatic drawing will take the focus away from the expectations of outcome and onto the joy of the process itself, a necessary element in setting up a practice that will continue into the future.
Are you familiar with automatic drawing or is this your first time reading out about it? Let me know of any similar drawing exercises that you practice along with the benefits that it brings with it! I'm sure it can't hurt to try it out!
Cai Nai
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