Ritual:The daily picture

This exercise is a strange variant of automatic drawing. In fact I invented it before I ever heard about automatic drawing, or magick. Basically, it's painting the same motif daily and see how the picture changes.

Way back when it helped me to get more relaxed about technique and perfection in painting, and it taught me how to express emotions in pictures. After some training in magick i refined it to the form I present here and used it successfully for several purposes.

Probably i'm the only one who is nuts enough to get something out of it, but who knows?

Things it can be used for

Refining artistic skills

getting insight into unconscious emotions
getting in contact with spirits or other supernatural beings
whatever you want to use it for

Technique

Required experience

This is only for folks who enjoy painting or drawing, and have some basic skill in it; being a beginner in magick is ok.

Required time

30-60 minutes daily for at lest 2 weeks (missing a day occasionaly is not a problem)

Required materials

painting or drawing equipment that allows for small, fast sketches
a means to store the pictures orderly, and a diary if you don't have one anyway
something you want to paint; use actual things, no photograph
optional: any altar equipment/ Magickal Weapons you may want to use to give the rite some dignity, or need for banishing

Procedure

Have your workspace and painting material prepared; set up altar equipment if you want to
Do whatever you want to mark this as magickal working, and get into the right state of mind; Light gnosis is best, too deep gnosis might prevent you from painting.
paint your chosen motif. (the same every day) Don't give too much heed to technical perfection, just do it. Try to maintain a somewhat altered state of mind. Don't think about other things.
banish, or mark the end of the working any way you chose
keep the pictures dated and numbered (if you did more than one in the same session). Keep a diary on how the exercise went, and your daily life / other magick stuff you do

Repeat this every day with the same motif. If you feel like trying out different perspectives, painting materials and such do it, but don't strive for perfection. As you get to know your motif drawing/painting will become effortless. But don't do it on autopilot, keep looking at your motif and working with it. If your pictures start looking less and less like the real thing that's fine, if they just show the real thing more clearly that's fine, too. Sometimes these two are the same.

After a few days it should be easy to shut down your internal chit-chat and really concentrate on the exercise.

After some time, go through the pictures and compare them with the diary. You might find meaning in them, at least in the later ones. They should become a kind of a mirror of your emotions, or something else that is meaningful.

Advanced variations

To get in contact with an entity, paint something that represents this entity, or something the entity is supposed to inhabit. I got in contact with a plant spirit that way. Something along the lines of "Genie in a bottle" should also be possible.

Doing this with a life animal can be fun and teach you much about that animal. But make sure the animal is comfortable with the sessions.

Try something that will change slightly over time: a plant, a flower, a burning candle, a rotting fruit...

Paint a motif over and over again for hours in a ritual setting, This can also be embedded in another ritual for whatever purpose. For me, that often gets really intense.