This week we explored automatic drawings of two varieties – a map of our college and a partnered automatic drawing. In this activity, we were meant to have fun with our subconscious mind. In the first automatic drawing, I felt that. The automatic drawing of the school map was a fun experience. The second one was less of an experience for me. I had high expectations and the activity fell short. I felt as though instead of letting ourselves subconsciously draw, it was just a conscious effort to move a marker along a large piece of paper to get something, anything. In the end, I felt as though the map let me know a lot more than the scribbles with a partner, as it was just me and my thoughts that led the work.
The first automatic drawing I did wad the drawing of a map of my school, California state University Long Beach. Go beach! In this drawing, I started with the shape of the campus. Having looked at a map of the campus many times before, I was familiar with the Tetris-like shape of the border of the school. However, I was not sure of the exact ratio of upper to lower campus and I did my best of estimating that. The first thing I drew after the border was the engineering buildings. Being a computer science major, I spend most of my classes over the years in the engineering buildings, so I am most familiar with those. I also frequent the Outpost for snacks, so that came in next. After that, I started filling in the secondary buildings that I could remember. Most, if not all, were buildings I have been in, mostly by having classes in them. The strangest part was drawing the buildings I didn’t remember because it was difficult to estimate how many there were. Other than that, I saw my subconscious mind working to put importance on the buildings I frequented the most.
the next automatic drawing was the partnered experience. I did this experience with my partner of about 4 years, Skyler. I also employed my sister to take a picture of us starting the project. To begin, I put in a lot of effort to set up the assignment. I taped the large paper to a trifold cardboard display board for support and found a large black marker for the project. At the beginning, we were laughing and giggling at the whole set up. However, we had different views approaching this. I wanted the experience to be more automatic, a more subconscious movement of the pen. My partner treated it at a subconscious drawing, intentionally moving the pen, but not intentionally drawing one thing. In the end, we drew some swirls and ended up with a mess of lines. I didn’t feel as much of a connection with this one as I did with the first one. In the end, this experience was not a meaningful one to me.
This automatic drawing state is one that people have created great works in. Salvador Dali, one artist we discussed in class, was famous for using an almost dreamlike state to create his works of art. Through this experience, I did not feel as though I was accessing any real dream like state. Through the first art activity, I did get a glimpse at how my mind organized important locations, with the engineering buildings being the first thing I remembered to draw in. Perhaps with a longer time allotted, or a smaller marker, or a more open state of mind I could have connected with the second automatic drawing activity. However, not everything is for everyone and that is alright too. In the end, I learned something about my own mind and how I approach different activities.
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