Doodle Therapy

These are some of my doodles using the Automatic Drawing Technique that I mentioned in the previous post, where I try to draw without thinking about what to draw, and let my subconscious take over. I usually spend about 20 or 30 minutes on them, and then try to decipher any subconscious meaning they might have. The deciphering happens this way - When I open my writing journal and then look back at the drawing, I write down the first 2 words or phrases that come to mind. Then, I just start writing about my day. Generally the meaning starts to come to me, but then I'll either look up the 2 words in the thesaurus or some of the images in a dream dictionary, or both.

Processing Death - colored pencil

Regeneration - colored pencil

Alienation - ball point pen

This last one, I spent several hours on, because I had found that place again, that I knew as a child, where the hours would just slip away in peacefulness. It's been years since I've felt that way while drawing, and it felt good. When it was done, I remember thinking, "wow, I had forgotten how much fun this was."

I was talking with a friend about it the next day, and we came to the conclusion that as self employed business owners, we had gotten in the habit of planning everything, including our art. It's been about 5 years since I first started trying intuitive art methods with finger painting, and I'm just now starting to break that habit of planning everything in advance. It amazes me that what I took for granted as a child, has been such a struggle to get back.