I've been hypnotically drawing the pentagon shape (see previous post) into masses that look like: islands, molecules, chemical structures, maps. (These are some of the things people have said when I've shown them the drawings.) When I begin the drawings, I try not to dictate where the pentagon shape takes me, and I try to disengage from thinking of it as a drawing, and more of a trace left by a specific time and place combination that I happen to be in when I make the drawing.

Loose rules of drawing a complete pentagon each time, and not going over the lines of one pentagon with another are something I try to encourage my hand to remember, without it being a priority. The form it takes looks like quite a precise drawing, with a certain amount of concentration involved, with trying to work out how the shape will not appear to have too many gaps, but the overall process is a free and intuitive excercise for me.

After a while, maybe two weeks, of drawing these masses of pentagons, I started to find it difficult to get the same feeling of freeness in the process of the drawings. I began to experiment with colour, backgrounds, and even drawing on pebbles (pictures above). I think the initial surprise at the outcome and process being on a par with each other in terms enjoyment, had gone. I was looking to push the outcome without waiting at the process stage for an organic boost. I have included below a excerpt from a statement by an artist who works in a 'stream-of-consciousness' style of drawing:

Chris Natrop: For his works on paper, each piece is spontaneously created without the use of patterns or pre-drawing—this stream-of-consciousness approach is, in fact, the crux of the artist’s practice. Graphic silhouettes emerge from a meditative-channeling activated by the repetitive practice of cutting paper. Natrop works on enormous sheets of Lenox 100 drawing paper stretched out vertically on his studio wall. Wielding a standard utility knife, he spontaneously cuts away at the paper to create a hybrid of landscape imagery. Natrop’s free-form process of “knife drawing” reveals the negative space by removing the emptiness in-between forms. Often an amalgam of things previously observed, the graphic nature of the work becomes a freeze-frame of Natrop’s own direct surroundings revealing the artist’s particular sense of place. In many cases one feature will be multiplied over and over, re sulting in a dense layering of a single element.