Beneath my writing and drawing table, sketchbooks have piled up over the years. I have maintained an ongoing ritual: I wake early, brew strong coffee, read for an hour, then, with pen in hand, take lines for walks across the sketchbook page.

Maurice Sendak, the late writer and illustrator, called these “dream pictures.”

“I have been doodling with ink and watercolor all my life,” Sendak said. “It’s my way of stirring up my imagination to see what I find hidden in my head. I recommend doodling as an excellent exercise for stirring up the unconscious, just as you would some mysterious soup, all the while hoping it tastes good.”

A quick pencil sketch in a coffee shop; an unselfconsciously drawn network of geometric patterns entangling themselves on the back of an envelope; unstudied watercolor washes bleeding into each other on a notepad, quickly done during a brief lunch break— all of these hold worlds for us to explore.

When we relax into the process, these dream pictures come to life.