This study investigates burning holes as a studio-based drawing practice that integrates meditative artmaking, embodied awareness, and expressive arts therapy principles. Incense sticks are used to burn holes on rice paper and fabric as drawing technique through a slow and repetitive process that cultivate rhythmic attention, sensory engagement, and deep focus. As an unconventional drawing method, burning holes has received limited research attention, particularly in examining how it can express feeling and emotion while developing awareness and mindful attention through the act of drawing. Instead of focusing only on visual outcomes, the practice emphasizes process, material engagement, and bodily presence, where heat, timing, and material resistance shaped each mark. Through repetition and focused making, burning holes becomes a mindful drawing process that supports awareness of bodily sensation, emotional shifts, and internal experience. Self-inquiry emerges as the artist-researcher reflects on felt sense and symbolic formation through the practice. Grounded in Focusing-Oriented Arts Therapy (FOAT), the study affirms burning holes as a drawing method that supports embodied awareness, self-reflection, mindful attention and symbolic meaning-making. The outcomes include paper installations, textured fabric panels, and crumpled paper structures that visually express resilience, fragility and emotional change.
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