The images below are the first explorations in developing an approach to drawing which now is a core part of the art I create. This approach involves surrendering to the earth through drawing by becoming curious about what gets drawn which wasn’t consciously intended. In this way we can open up to knowing what we create to be always a collaboration between our conscious intention and the universe beyond our consciousness, maybe even allowing intention to step back and let something else take the lead.
If you’d like to experiment with this technique, here’s a simple drawing ritual:
Take a pen and paper, or anything you’d like to use for mark making. Begin, very slowly, to draw a spiral, though not a perfect spiral. As you slowly make a mark which follows itself round pay attention to the specific texture of this spiral, and the elements of its form which make it unique unto itself. That might be the way the ink bleeds slightly unevenly on the paper and creates a grained texture in the line, or any little bumps, wobbles, gaps, accidents which happen as you go. Each time you lap round the spiral accentuate the bumps, wobbles, and whatever else, which came up on the previous lap, and tune in to how you feel about them as they grow into something beyond what you intended. If I didn’t mean for that line to come out with a wobble in the middle, isn’t it interesting that it did? Where did the wobble come from? Is it my breathing? My heartbeat? A thought or feeling? Did it come from me at all or something beyond me? How do I feel about the wobble and what does it tell me?
This practice can be applied in infinite ways and provided in a group setting as a workshop, circle, 1-1 session, or you can take the technique and incorporate it into your own personal practice or facilitation. If you do I’d love to hear how that was for you, and how the practice might have grown in your hands.
