Automatic Drawing?

What is automatic drawing? That might be the question on your mind. I’m not an expert on the subject but the stories of how it is done and its benefits to the creative process intrigued me. There seems to be very little about automatic drawing online and very few books that cover it but from what I learned, Automatic drawing has its origins in the early 20th century Surrealism and Dada-ist movements as a way to let go of conscious design and delve into the unconscious to create.

I first heard about it back in 2020 when watching some videos about some of the practices of the French artist Moebius (Jean Giraud). Giraud used automatic drawing as a way to relax his mind and just create. The process allowed Giraud to develop lots of interesting organic shapes some of which would appear is his published work. The legendary comic-artist Jack Kirby also used this method to meditate and create. Kirby’s lively and often chaotic compositions were often drawn in single sittings. Often automatic drawing is mistaken as doodling which is similar but doodling usually lacks the meditative element (as a doodler all throughout middle school, high school and college days I get this but this practice is different). Sometimes automatic drawing shows up as a warm-up exercise or an art therapy technique but I wanted to use it in a different way. I wondered how I could incorporate the practice into my own work.

I’ve been practicing automatic drawing as a form of meditation for a couple years now. I use it to explore intuitive art processes, meditation, and the interesting shapes that come from my unconscious mind. I've found this process requires focus but not direction, a prompt but no planning and the result is a bit unknown to me as I’m working. Getting into the flow state to meditate and let go seems to be essential and using simpler tools seems to work out best.  I started off my automatic drawing journey desperately trying to “make something“ instead of just letting go of my expectations so my early drawings were filled with faces, hands, arms, legs etc. and then slowly as I relinquished that control they turned into a strange collections of shapes, and then at some point scenes emerged without me thinking of drawing a specific scene and that was when I knew really had something.

I originally started off using brushpen, a tool I found fun to use but was not familiar with. Automatic drawing became a way to practice brushpen drawing and watercolor painting and not get hung up on perfection. I found my focus during creative ideation comes a bit more naturally now, my digital and traditional painting has improved along with my interpretation of values, volumes, color, and composition.

I currently combine reductionism, pareidolia, and automatic drawing to create scenes, starting with amorphous shapes and ending in detailed objects, figures, and sometimes a story but I leave that up you, the viewer, to author or interpret.  

My First Automatic Drawing Exercise done in Brush pen and Watercolor