There are a handful of explanations for the origin of these ink drawings, which I later titled the <Draft> and <Portrait of Draft> series. 
 
On the one hand, as I have only recently realized, the technique itself might have emerged from a rather violent incident in Johannesburg, South Africa. The technique was adopted because the simple line works that I was using back then failed to capture the intensity of the traumatic event. 

On the other hand, in my last year at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), I started using stroking as a singular technique for an experiment, in which I tried to technically withhold the learned preference for structure, clarity, and concept. That was also the time when I came across the notion of “playing” from developmental psychoanalysts such as Donald W Winnicott. In the self-imposed exercise, I put random strokes on a piece of paper without any preconceived idea. I then reacted to the strokes with additional strokes, until a clear image emerged. The first series of drawings, which I titled the <Draft> series, were 14” x 17” each.
 
This exercise was revisited in 2020 during the pandemic lockdown. This new series, titled <Portrait of Draft>, is 26” x 40” each.