Day 17: Automatic

I train for art like I train for sports, or is it the other way around? I don’t know. In any case, today’s little change was to do some timed automatic drawing. Some interval training.

When I added this to my list of things that I wanted to do this month, I added it for two reasons; the first was that although this is something I really enjoy doing on paper, it’s not something I’ve experimented with too much in the digital realm. So many options at my fingertips all at once! Where would my brain go? The second reason was that although this is something I’ve been researching a lot lately, I haven’t actually been doing as much of it as I’d like. So, in the interest of switching into production mode, here I am.

Setting a timer didn’t feel right, so I decided to use songs as the blocks of time I’d dedicate to each drawing. Initially I had considered doing this in silence so that I wouldn’t be influenced by the music, but I think this was the right call. I took short breaks between drawings to jump between genres of music depending on where my head was at after I completed a drawing. If that didn’t feel right, I let the music play on and started a new drawing.

This was a nice little challenge to give myself – I spent much more time than I had planned on it. Definitely something that is hard to stop doing once you get started.