I call these free-associative figures "phone doodles" because they owe their origins in part to the little meandering doodles I used to absently draw while talking on the phone. Then I began to draw them deliberately sometimes, when I was bored. Like today, when I had a lot of free time at work. I just kept making more marks and this one grew and grew, putting out buds and pseudopods like some monster plant, and I had to tape on extra pieces of paper to accommodate the growth. It ended up being 17 inches high, and I did not want to just chuck it in the trash after using up so much graphite.
The eye of hindsight notes the vaguely fractal-like character of this figure, its thematic spiky shape being repeated at ever decreasing scale.
Also, I find it interesting that the maze-like construction and multiple
outlines bear more than a passing resemblance to certain automatic
drawings that I've seen,
and also to some of the products turned out by psychiatric patients in art therapy, perhaps most famously represented by the cat paintings of Louis Wain, who is believed to have suffered from schizophrenia. Check out these samples of his work for comparison:
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