Surreal Drawing Exercises

Here are two surreal drawing exercises that can be effectively explored in  a 75 minute class.

#1. Homage to Andre Breton

Using an exercise handout that has four square grids of equally placed dots, draw and try not to think about what you are drawing. Try to allow the drawing process to be automatic. Do this with the first three grids and then use the forth to refine the composition in a conscious way, using a more usual approach to drawing.

#2. Illustrating a random phrase

Take any passage of text and randomly underline 6-8 words, not in a row, but sporadically throughout the passage. Work out some sketches to illustrate the random phrase. Try this a few times and choose the most interesting one to develop into a larger composition.

Surrealism

Surrealism: "Pure psychic automatism by which it is intended to express (...)the true function of thought. Thought dictated in the absence of all control exerted by reason and outside aesthetic or moral preoccupations." (Andre Breton)

Presented in 1924 by Andre Breton in the First Surrealist Manifesto.

Class activity: "Exquisite Corpse" practiced by Andre Breton.
Start with a big piece of paper. The first student draws something and folds the paper to conceal most of what they drew, leaving only a few marks visible, and then passes it to the next student. The next student continues to draw from the marks left visible by the previous student and then folds and partly conceals their addition. This process is repeated for every student. At the end you can unfold the paper and present a collaboratively drawn surrealist work.

"I believe in the future resolution of these two states- outwardly so contradictory- which are dream and reality, into a sort of absolute reality, a surreality, so to speak." (Andre Breton)

There is lots of fun surrealist work to explore with students by Salvador Dali and
Rene Magritte.