You don’t have to be a professional artist to have the right to create. Spontaneous drawing doesn’t require a license to draw a line. We have our own well of images inside us which can be re-activated.
But how? To draw spontaneously, a practical method, offering suggestions and advice, allow us to overcome the anxiety of the blank page.
Through the pleasure that it generates, spontaneous drawing takes us into a secret cave deep within ourselves, and frees us from our mental and emotional strains.
Through the creation of new neurological pathways, it allows us to perceive reality as in a waking dream.
Daring to stand up for oneself where one imagined failure makes one grow.
By giving us access to parts of the brain other than those reserved for logical thought, and opening up new areas dedicated to “creating”.
Alleviating stress through drawing means that we can control stress better, by controlling the lines that we draw.
Ball-point pen, pencil, Chinese and European brushes, scraping, blowing, acrylic paint, ink…. all tools which help our drawn story to emerge.
By plunging you directly into the heart of the creative engine, Spontaneous drawing can restart the vital flows that had been interrupted, or clogged by Cartesian rational thinking. It can help recover from burn-out by reactivating the creative energy buried inside you.
Spontaneous drawing is a natural human expression, from earliest infancy and in all cultures. Our first steps take the form of scribbles as we express our burgeoning desire to live. People belittle this: a dictionary definition of scribbling is “not knowing how to draw”, whilst it, in fact, represents the very beginnings of writing.
Children soon start to use spontaneous drawing to tell themselves stories. These are a metaphor for their life experiences. I have noticed that this stage of drawing turns into increasingly repetitive stereotyped images. Children no longer dare to express themselves freely. It is generally thought that spontaneous drawing disappears around the age of 7 or 8. In fact, the first signs of the killing-off of this inner voice begin around the age of 5. A fear of doing it wrong takes hold; potential ability is snuffed out.
Spontaneous drawing survives on the margins of exercise books or the scribbles we make whilst on the telephone. This basic desire to express oneself is called “the graphic instinct”. It never dies and can be reactivated with specific “autopictographic” exercises.