Maggie was talking about reflex drawing on her blog and it reminded me that I had done some a while ago. Although it seems very strange when you first attempt it (because you look at the object you are drawing and not at what your pen/cil is doing) it is a great way to find out about the thing you are drawing and also to loosen up at the start of a work session. The idea is to move your eye very slowly over the object and move your pen at the same speed without lifting the pen from the paper. The initial drawing may look nothing like the object in front of you but that is not important. The idea is to look and keep looking. My mantra for this is "I am not trying to make a pretty picture!" As you can tell from the photo below I do tend to look occasionally and reposition my pen if I think I am going way off course - cheating a bit I suppose.
I used this technique to explore the shapes of a still life I was working on some time ago.
I said yesterday I would post my efforts inspired by Lynda so here they are. The canvas on the left has had a layer of scrim pasted on with gesso and I have then used various texture mediums and some crackle paste. I plan to stitch into this and then paint. I had the idea of a rockface in mind as I worked. On the right I have gessoed two layers of net curtain to a block canvas and plan to apply texture mediums to break up the pattern of the curtain. I have to give Maggie Grey credit for sparking off this idea although I seem to have only latched onto the netting so far. As usual I have only retained part of an idea and run off in my own, slightly lost, direction.