Sometimes it’s just the opposite. A superficial peace is disrupted as a deeper conflict or turmoil gets surfaced.
Years later, I learned that the same kinds of unpredictable results come about in Centering Prayer. You might end with more peace; you might end a session with unpleasant feelings surfaced. And of course the same is true in painting. It all requires trust that the process is creative and constructive.
If my purpose for automatic drawing practice has been primarily to "clear myself out" and get ready to do other artwork, I might skip looking at the drawings — and just start right in painting (or, back in 2004 — forging iron sculpture.)
Empathic Responses
For maximum progress in artistic development, put up each drawing separately. A gray background is helpful, but any background that lets you see the drawing well is fine. Then relax and let the drawing enter your awareness. Make it your goal to accept the drawing exactly as it is. You want to feel the world as the drawing feels it.
You may want to make some notes about what you notice. Or just make the empathic responses and let them go. What's important about this is that you're becoming one with the work, in a completely nonjudgmental way. Oddly enough, this gives you a sense of detachment.
Spontaneity and Empathy
It’s this rhythm — the alternation between "free working" and empathic responses — that makes for optimum artistic development. The automatic drawing, or equivalent "free working" in any medium, gives you a way to create straight from the center of yourself. Then the empathic responses give you a way to relate to your creations.
Criticizing your own creations usually leads to a more tense, rigid, and artificial way of working. In contrast, empathic responses lead you into a natural, relaxed, free way of making art. The "corrections" tend to make themselves, without special effort on your part.
In turn, this makes it easier to do automatic drawing and any other kind of spontaneous work. Oddly enough, "letting go" and working spontaneously is one of the most difficult things to do in art. Some people believe that it can only come after years of education and practice.
I believe this is only because the initial education and practice usually create a problem. Basically "the problem" is a tendency to criticize work. Then the "rules" and self-censorship have to be unlearned, in order for the work to flow spontaneously.
Ideal art education - or a cure for "critical" art education
If you can avoid this by starting your art education with automatic drawing plus empathic responses, you'll save a few years. If it's too late for that, then the same "cure" applies. Do some automatic drawings every day. You can do this anywhere because it's so portable and takes only a minute or less per drawing.
Then practice empathic responses. If you can't bear to look at your own artwork empathically, start with other objects to which you have less attachment. Do empathic responses to a dish or cup. Try empathic responses to a plant. Move on to someone else's artwork. Keep practicing till it's easy and natural.
Recommended materials
Soft drawing pencils
Any pencil or pen and blank paper will be better than not doing any automatic drawings at all. Ideally,use a very soft pencil. I like the Ebony drawing pencils, as well as the Cretacolor Monolith Woodless Pencil in 8B. Regular black Prismacolor pencils make the blackest marks. Any soft drawing pencil will be better than a standard #2 office pencil. I used 4B pencils for years, before going with the Ebony, which is more like a 6B. Now I alternate between the Ebony and the Cretacolor pencils, sometimes adding a black Prismacolor.
Inexpensive paper with a little tooth