Prompt #10 - Intuitive Drawing

Learn to listen to your gut

Last week, we focused a lot on the brain and its never ending mission to solve all our problems. So this week it’s time to take our attention away from the busy brain and move it to our intuition.

Intuition means understanding something without the need for conscious reasoning. Knowing something without needing to think about it.

Often I find that my first instinct, my intuition, is right when I’m faced with a situation where I’m not quite sure what to do. But then I often go ahead and ruin it by playing out the various possible scenarios in my head, and then trying to make the “smart” decision.

Our intuition is based on the many experiences we’ve had in our lives so far. Even though you can’t always go through the entire back log of your life to consciously figure out if a decision is right or wrong, your body and mind remember. So if that objectively great idea somehow just feels wrong to you, it’s probably a good idea to listen and figure out why.

This week, we will nourish our relationship with our intuition, make it stronger and help it grow.

The Activity: Listen to your gut and create an intuitive drawing

Choose any medium you like. Spread your colours, pens, or markers around you so you can easily access everything. Feel free to listen to some music.

Step 1 - Get out of your head

Once you’ve gathered all your supplies, close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. Try and focus on how the breath feels in your body, especially in your lungs and stomach.

Step 2 - Follow your gut

Start drawing without trying to figure out what it is you’re creating. Just let your hand move across the paper, reach for different colours, create different shapes. Don’t think about what it should look like, or which colours you should combine for it to look good. Your hand moves towards the green? Take the green! Put it on the paper and see what it wants to do.

Continue until your page is filled or your gut tells you you’re done.

Step 3 - Admire your work

Have a look at your work. This is your intuition at play, or your gut, or your subconscious, or whatever you want to call it. It wants to say thank you for taking off the breaks, and letting it run free for a bit.

The more often you do this exercise, the easier it’ll be to not think about it and to let your intuition do the drawing.

My Example

Welcome to my subconscious. I started out making the blue S line in the center, and the pink and yellow lines to the right of it. Those are some of my recurring doodle moves. I started adding some shades, and different colours.

As I moved along, I managed to let go more and more. Some unusual (for me) colour combos came up, wild triangles started appearing, a half-tree, and whatever this feathered thing with a tongue is on the left. (If I had a therapist, I would probably talk to her about that).

Am I particularly in love with the aesthetics of this drawing? Not really, but that’s not the point. I managed to surrender control, and let my intuition take over for a bit.

Turns out, she’s pretty cool to hang out with. I think I’ll call her Betty.