Top 17 'Dream-Logic' Surrealist Drawing Styles to try in your sketchbook on weekends. - Goh Ling Yong
Ever wake up from a dream that felt incredibly real, yet was utterly bizarre? A fish flying through your childhood bedroom, a staircase that leads back to itself, or a conversation with a teapot that gives surprisingly good advice. That strange, nonsensical-yet-somehow-meaningful feeling is what artists call 'dream-logic'. It’s the secret sauce of Surrealism, an art movement that sought to unlock the power of the unconscious mind.
While the grand, oil-painted masterpieces of Salvador Dalí or Remedios Varo might seem intimidating, the spirit of Surrealism is actually perfect for a more private, playful space: your sketchbook. The sketchbook isn't for finished masterpieces; it's a laboratory for your imagination. It's the place where you can let go of the need for realism and perfection, and just... play. It’s where you can tap into that same weird, wonderful dream-logic without any pressure.
So, if your creative well is feeling a little dry, or you're just looking for a fun way to fill your sketchbook on a lazy weekend, you've come to the right place. We’ve compiled a list of 17 'dream-logic' surrealist drawing styles that are perfect for experimentation. Grab your favorite pen, a fresh page, and let's get weird.
1. Automatism (Automatic Drawing)
This is the quintessential Surrealist technique, the absolute ground zero for tapping into your subconscious. The goal of automatism is to bypass your conscious, critical mind and let your hand move freely across the page. Think of it as doodling with intention—or rather, with a lack of intention. The shapes, lines, and forms that emerge are said to be a direct expression of your innermost thoughts, unburdened by logic.
To try this, find a comfortable position, take a deep breath, and place your pen or pencil on the paper. Close your eyes if it helps, and just start moving your hand. Don't try to draw anything in particular. Let the line wander, loop, and scribble. After a few minutes, open your eyes and look at the abstract marks you’ve made. Now, the second part begins: interpret the chaos. Do you see faces, figures, or landscapes hidden in the lines? Use a different color or a thicker pen to pull those images out and define them.
2. Juxtaposition of Unrelated Objects
Have you ever seen Salvador Dalí’s Lobster Telephone? It’s exactly what it sounds like, and it’s perfectly surreal because those two objects have absolutely no logical reason to be together. This technique is all about creating a sense of surprise and mystery by combining ordinary things in an extraordinary way. The dream-logic here is that in the subconscious, a lobster can be a telephone.
This is one of the easiest and most fun styles to try. A great method is to use a random word generator online. Generate two or three random nouns—say, "cactus," "accordion," and "cloud"—and your challenge is to draw them interacting in a single scene. Does the cloud play the accordion? Is the cactus floating on the cloud? The possibilities are as endless and bizarre as your imagination allows.
3. Metamorphosis and Transformation
Dreams are rarely static. A cat might slowly morph into a hatstand, or a tree's branches might transform into reaching hands. This style captures that fluid, shifting nature of dream imagery by showing one object in the process of becoming another. It’s about capturing the "in-between" state, which is often unsettling and deeply fascinating.
A simple way to practice this is by drawing a mini-comic strip or a sequence of images. Start with a simple object on the left side of your page, like an apple. In the next "panel," draw it again, but with a slight change—maybe it's sprouting legs. Continue this across the page until the apple has fully transformed into something completely different, like a spider or a chair. This exercise is fantastic for practicing creative thinking and visual storytelling.
4. Scale Distortion
In our dreams, scale is completely arbitrary. A tiny spider can feel as large as a house, while a skyscraper can fit in the palm of your hand. This technique plays with our perception of size to create a sense of wonder or dread. By drastically altering the scale of a familiar object within a normal scene, you immediately make the entire image feel strange and surreal.
Pick a simple scene to draw, like your kitchen or a street corner. Now, choose one object in that scene and make it comically huge or ridiculously tiny. Draw a coffee mug the size of a refrigerator, or a car no bigger than a ladybug. The contrast between the realistically-scaled environment and the one distorted object is what gives the drawing its powerful, dream-like quality.
5. Levitation and Floating Objects
Gravity is just a suggestion in the world of dreams. People, objects, and even entire islands can hang weightlessly in the air. This defiance of physics is a hallmark of surrealist art, famously used by artists like René Magritte to create a quiet, meditative, and mysterious atmosphere. Floating objects suggest a world where the rules are different, a world governed by thought and emotion rather than physical laws.
This is a wonderful style for creating serene and beautiful sketchbook pages. Start with a landscape—a field, a sea, or a cityscape. Then, populate the sky with things that shouldn't be there. It could be simple geometric shapes, floating teacups, whales swimming through the clouds, or boulders hanging silently in the air. Adding careful shading and shadows underneath the floating objects can make them feel more three-dimensional and paradoxically, more believable.
6. Anatomical Hybrids
Mythology is filled with hybrids like centaurs and sphinxes, but Surrealism takes it a step further. Instead of just combining animals, this style blends humans, animals, plants, and even inanimate objects into new, unsettling lifeforms. Think of a human figure with a birdcage for a torso or a face made from clock parts. It taps into our deep-seated anxieties and curiosities about the body and identity.
Start with a simple figure drawing or a portrait. Now, choose one part of the anatomy to replace with something else. Replace the hair with tree roots, the eyes with keyholes, or the hands with butterfly wings. This technique can range from whimsical to grotesque, and it's a powerful way to express complex emotions and ideas without words.
7. Dreamscapes and Impossible Architecture
Our dreams are often set in places that are both familiar and fundamentally wrong. A house with endless corridors, a city where the buildings are made of glass, or a staircase that leads nowhere. This style is all about creating environments that could only exist in the subconscious. It’s less about character and more about the strange, evocative mood of a place.
A great starting point is to draw a simple room, but give it an impossible feature—perhaps the floor is made of water, or one wall opens up directly to a starry cosmos. Use rulers and perspective guides to create a sense of realism and structure, which makes the illogical elements even more jarring and dream-like. Look at the works of M.C. Escher for mind-bending physics or Kay Sage for lonely, architectural landscapes that feel heavy with untold stories.
8. The Uncanny Valley
The uncanny valley is that creepy feeling you get when you see something that looks almost human, but not quite. Think of old porcelain dolls, mannequins, or early CGI characters. Surrealists were fascinated by this concept long before it had a name, using it to explore themes of artificial life and the unfamiliarity of the familiar.
To play with this in your sketchbook, try drawing a portrait with subtle distortions. You don't need to go for a full-blown monster. Instead, make the eyes slightly too large, the smile a little too wide, or the skin texture unnervingly smooth like plastic. This subtle "wrongness" can be far more unsettling than an overtly monstrous creation.
9. Decalcomania (Blotting)
Invented by surrealist Oscar Domínguez and famously used by Max Ernst, decalcomania is a technique that embraces chance. You apply a wet medium like ink or gouache to a piece of paper, then press another surface (like another sheet of paper or a piece of glass) onto it. When you pull it away, you’re left with a beautifully complex, organic texture.
This is a perfect weekend activity. Create a few inkblots on a page in your sketchbook. Let them dry, and then, just like with automatic drawing, study the shapes. What do they suggest to you? A gnarled tree, a strange beast, a coral reef? Use a fine-liner pen to draw into the textures, pulling out the images you see and building a scene around them.
10. Symbolic Objects
In dreams, a simple object can be loaded with meaning. A key might represent a lost opportunity, a clock might symbolize anxiety about time, and an egg can stand for potential and fragility. This style involves using everyday objects as personal symbols within your drawings. The meaning doesn't have to be universal; it only needs to be important to you.
Think about an object that has personal significance in your life. It could be a piece of jewelry, a book, or a specific type of flower. Now, draw that object in an unusual context that reflects its meaning to you. For example, if a teacup represents comfort, you might draw a tiny figure sheltering from a storm inside of it. This is a beautiful way to infuse your sketchbook with personal narrative and emotion.
11. Dislocation of Time
Time is fluid in dreams. We can be a child in one moment and an adult in the next, or find ourselves in an ancient setting while holding a modern device. This technique, known as anachronism, involves mixing elements from different historical periods into a single image. It disrupts our sense of linear time and creates a strange, collage-like effect.
This is a fun prompt for historical fiction lovers. Draw a scene from a specific era—a Victorian parlor, an Ancient Roman forum, a 1920s speakeasy—and then introduce one or two jarringly modern elements. A knight checking his smartphone, a flapper listening to an iPod, or a caveman painting with a can of spray paint. It’s a playful way to think about how history and modernity intersect in our minds.
12. Cut-up / Collage Mentality
While collage literally involves cutting and pasting, you can apply the same logic to your drawings. This means mentally deconstructing and reassembling images. The Surrealists loved this method because it introduces an element of chance and breaks down conventional composition. Here at the Goh Ling Yong blog, we believe that breaking things down is one of the best ways to build something new.
To try this, divide your sketchbook page into a grid. In each square of the grid, draw something completely different: a texture like wood grain, a pattern like polka dots, a small object like an eye, a piece of a landscape. The resulting page will look like a fragmented quilt of ideas. You can also try drawing a single object, like a face, but fill each section with a different, unrelated texture.
13. Biomorphism
Biomorphism uses shapes derived from nature, but in a simplified, abstract way. Think less of a photorealistic flower and more of a smooth, rounded shape that suggests a petal, a cell, or a bone. These organic, amoeba-like forms create a sense of life and movement that feels primal and subconscious. Artists like Joan Miró and Jean Arp were masters of filling their canvases with these playful, floating life-forms.
This is an incredibly relaxing and meditative style to try. Don't worry about what you're drawing. Instead, focus on creating pleasing, curved shapes. Let them overlap, connect, and float across your page. Use a mix of solid-filled shapes and simple outlines to create depth and visual interest. It's a fantastic way to explore composition and balance without the pressure of representing anything "real."
14. Negative Space as the Subject
We are trained to draw the "thing" itself, but what about the space around it? This technique flips that idea on its head. It involves making the negative space—the background, the gaps between objects—the true subject of the drawing. This can create clever optical illusions and make the viewer question what they are really looking at.
A classic way to do this is to draw the profile of two faces looking at each other. The negative space between them can form the shape of a vase or a candlestick. You can also try drawing an object’s shadow, but instead of a simple dark shape, you make the shadow a detailed illustration of something completely different. It forces you to see the world in a new way, just as an artist like Goh Ling Yong encourages us to do.
15. Transparent and Overlapping Forms
Imagine you had X-ray vision. This style is about drawing objects as if they are made of glass, revealing their inner workings or the things behind them. By layering images on top of each other and making them transparent, you create a complex, multi-dimensional drawing that mimics the way different thoughts and memories can overlap in our minds.
Start by drawing a simple object, like a person's head. Then, without erasing, draw another image directly over it, such as a map, a bird, or the schematic for a machine. Let the lines intersect and overlap. Use different colors or line weights to help distinguish the different layers. The final image will be a dense, dream-like composite of multiple ideas.
16. Pattern Repetition and Obsession
Sometimes dreams get "stuck" on a single image or idea, repeating it over and over. This style captures that obsessive quality by filling the page with a single, repeating motif. Think of Yayoi Kusama's infinite polka dots. This repetition can be meditative, but it can also create a feeling of being overwhelmed, which is a powerful surrealist tool.
Choose a very simple shape to be your motif: a dot, an eye, a teardrop, a small circle. Now, your goal is to fill an entire sketchbook page with it. Don't use a ruler or try to make it perfect. Let the size, spacing, and density of the shape vary naturally as you draw. You can use this pattern to fill the background of a drawing or to form the very substance of an object itself.
17. Narrative Fragmentation
Dreams don't follow a linear plot. They are a jumble of disconnected scenes, emotions, and moments that our brain tries to stitch together into a story upon waking. This drawing style imitates that by presenting fragments of a non-existent narrative on a single page, leaving the viewer to connect the dots.
Divide your page into several panels of different shapes and sizes, like a deconstructed comic book. In each panel, draw a completely different and unrelated scene. One panel might show a close-up of a key turning in a lock, another might be a wide shot of a desert, and a third could be a figure falling through the sky. There is no "right" story; the power lies in the mysterious and intriguing connections the viewer's mind creates between the fragments.
Your Sketchbook, Your Dreamscape
The most beautiful thing about Surrealism is that there are no rules—only starting points. Your sketchbook is your private playground, a safe space to explore the weirdest corners of your imagination without judgment. You don’t need to create a masterpiece; you just need to give yourself permission to be strange.
This weekend, challenge yourself to try just one or two of these 'dream-logic' styles. Pick the one that sounds the most fun or the most challenging. See where your subconscious takes you. You might be surprised by the bizarre and wonderful worlds hiding just beneath the surface.
So, which style are you going to try first? Did we miss any of your favorite surrealist techniques? Let us know in the comments below—we’d love to hear about your sketchbook adventures!
About the Author
Goh Ling Yong is a content creator and digital strategist sharing insights across various topics. Connect and follow for more content:
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