These drawings evolved from experiments with automatic drawing.

Each began with rapid, nonobjective marks made on cold pressed watercolor paper using a blue colored pencil (the “non-repro” kind favored by designers). I repeated the process using an eraser as a stylus, and reduced those marks to “ghosts,” lines of intermittent weight and resolution. Another layer of blue lines, then more erasing, then two layers of graphite lines, erasing again between each. The resulting cloud of lines suggested a complex array of overlapping shapes.

I used a layer of ink wash to further define some of those shapes, and let others remain implied. I added one or two more layers of ink wash, plus some ink lines to direct the overall composition.