Tennis said he grabbed a crayon at random, and slowly started making a line on the paper. He tried not to think about where the line was going or dictate where it went. He’d just let it go, as if he was watching a bug walk across the page.

This “not thinking” thing is difficult for us humans, because we tend to make things go in patterns, or turn them into recognizable shapes. Sooner or later, he’d get the idea that his crayon “should” go left. When that happened, he’d go right. If he started to get the idea that the drawing “should” be a flower, he put down the crayon and picked up another one, then continued the drawing. He used the model pose times as the timing for his drawing, which was another element of being out of conscious control. When he was finished, he’d transition his thinking to cut the images, and assemble them into collages.

Drawing without consciously designing is called Automatic Drawing. The idea of Automatic Drawing is that you get your head out of the way, and let your unconscious self or chance circumstances take over, as if you were letting the drawing happen in front of you. Some artists who use this in their work are Andre Masson, Ellsworth Kelly, Jean Arp, Joan Miro, Pierre Gauvreau, Salvador Dali, William Anastasi, and Wolfgang Paalen.

For a session in my last Friday morning Abstracts class, we experimented with Automatic Drawing. I set up stations, each with instructions for how to make automatic marks. Below are a few examples of the drawings produced.

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Automatic Experiments in Class

Music Station

Choose a crayon for each hand. Close your eyes. Listen to a piece of music (I chose one by Nik Bartsch). As long as you hear sound, let your hands keep moving.

For this, the paper was about 48×72″. One of the artists had a different piece of music. Can you guess which one?

” load_in_animation=”none If you guessed the last drawing with the short straight marks was made while the artist was listening to a different piece of music, you were right.

Drop Pen Drawing

Stand over a piece of paper. Lower a felt tipped pen to make marks.

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Feather Drawing

Dip either end of the feather in the ink. Make marks.

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Branch Drawing

Dip either end of the branch in the ink. Make marks. [image_with_animation image_url=”14002″ alignment=”center” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”] [image_with_animation image_url=”14001″ alignment=”center” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”]

Walking Drawing

Choose a crayon. Close your eyes. Walk around the table, holding the crayon on the paper, allowing it to move with your body as you walk. [image_with_animation image_url=”14008″ alignment=”center” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”]

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Dip String Drawing

Dip a string into a cup of ink. Drop and move the string to make marks on paper.

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Abstracts

Want to try an abstracts class with me? This class is open to beginning and intermediate artists for all media and genres! This might be just the thing you need to free up your stiffening painting process. Next session starts Friday morning at 10:00am. Click here to learn more.