Dear Wonderful Creative You,
One of the most important questions you can ask yourself is why you’re making art. What’s your purpose? What goal are you trying to meet?
Most of my students enjoy the practice of slow drawing and slow painting in my workshops each week. It provides a rhythm of creating that is predictable, sustainable, and happens in supportive community. Very often, students will ask, “I’m doing this this prompt this way.… Is that right?” The answer to that question depends on what brings you to this practice.
Some students attend simply because they need a way to find grounding and calm. Other folks are here because they love art and want to improve their skills and find their own creativity. (This in turn, brings a feeling of both joy and grounding.)
So I would ask you right now – Why do you attend slow drawing and painting? (And by the way, there’s no wrong answer.) Do you want to copy what I’ve done and sink into the moment mindfully? In this case, I would say if you feel grounded and calm, then no matter the outcome on the paper, you’re doing it right. People in this category will find it important to be more and less precise, and there’s no right or wrong about that. Or do you want to find calm through drawing and painting slowly, allowing your work to morph from my prompt into your creative vision? If your goal is to carve out your own creative path, then over time, I hope that you go from asking, “Is this right?” to asking, “Is this right for me?”
In the Gather tier of my membership, The Gathering, we’ve focused this quarter on what it means to find your voice as an artist. In addition to our workshops and journaling prompts, I’ve been infusing the slow drawing lessons with some extra nudges to help students experiment with changing my prompts using what-if questions.
One of my goals with slow drawing and painting has been to provide a flexible structure within which you can explore your own ideas. In my experience, we feel the most joy when we tap into our own creative font. The joy you feel in the process of trial and error, frustration, and discovery is what drives you to continue creating – you don’t need inspiration to get started because you’re curious and keep pushing and experimenting with new iterations of your ideas. Given that, I hope you go off script, so to speak, when we create together in slow drawing and slow painting workshops.
So as you ask yourself “what if” questions with each week’s drawing or painting, don’t dismiss the ideas that you believe are too different, weird, or off-topic. If you’re interested in developing your own voice as an artist, you have to start to trust your ideas, even the ones that seem bad.
Being an artist is about opening up the faucet of creative flow. It’s important to let everything through. Don’t edit or try to filter the ideas, let them out. You’ll see that the more ideas you welcome, the more you’ll get. When you try to filter them as they’re coming through, they get scared and stop coming. This is the inner critic at work, and it makes people think they don’t even have ideas, but I know that that’s not the case.
I’ve worked with enough students to know that some people are so quick to filter and edit their ideas that it seems as though they don’t have any ideas because their inner critic cuts them off before they can even have a fully formed thought. Those inner critics are not terrible, they’re just scared. They need your reassurance that it’s okay for them to sit back and relax a bit. Stop editing your ideas. Even if the art is “bad,” nothing bad is going to happen. The art police are not going to come knocking down your door. This is about having time for yourself to create as a self-care practice.
Let’s look at how this might translate. I want to give you an example from last week’s slow drawing. We began with the Crush pattern, which is beautifully simple and invites tons of modifications. You could easily begin by making the “Crush” pattern once, twice, or even several times as you warm up. (Yes, warming up is important, just like in sports and music.) After a while, little ideas might start to emerge as you draw. That’s when you pull out your what-if list and start noting down ideas. As you’re ready to move on to new slow drawing cards, you can experiment with these ideas and iterations. Little by little, it’ll start to take you further and further away so that your starting piece and your end point have one or two elements in common, but are quite different.
How does that kind of experimentation sound to you? Does it excite and invigorate you, or seem intimidating?
What’s your experience with trusting your voice?
I’d love to hear about your experience trusting your voice. I’d also love to know what brings you to the slow drawing practice. Tell us about it in the comments.
Creatively Yours,
Amy
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Dear Wonderful, Creative You:
Over the last two weeks, we engaged in a simple art challenge. The idea was to create for a short period of time, on a small square, every day for 12 days. You were invited to let go of perfectionism and embrace play and exploration.
So many of you reached out to tell me how powerful this exercise has been for restarting your creative engine, getting the inner critic out of the way, and finding inspiration again.
But for some of us, the voice of the inner critic was too harsh. If you found your inner critic came out swinging – comparing you to others, and telling you not to bother, I have a direct, but I hope, encouraging message for you.
Let’s think through this process of comparison. You see another person’s work, you admire it, and then you immediately engage in negative self-talk about how your art is terrible in comparison.
The inner critic is afraid – of criticism, failure, and not being accepted. If it feels right, you can internally respond: “I see you, I know you’re scared and you’re trying to protect me.” But now, let’s have the critic sit to the side for a minute while we examine what’s going on with clear, unemotional eyes.
You are comparing yourself to people you don’t know.
You don’t know how long they’ve been making art.
You don’t know how long they spent on the work.
You don’t know how long they practiced that technique.
Most likely, what you’re seeing is not that person’s first or twentieth attempt – what you’re seeing is the result of regular practice and engagement.
And frequently what I see with students is this: because they are afraid to fail, they give themselves 5 or 10 minutes, try the technique once, and then think, “See? I knew I couldn’t do it.”
So let’s think about a pretend scenario for a minute. As the newer artist, we will call you Artist #2. Artist #1 is someone who has done hundreds of hours of practice.
Let’s pretend that when you sit down to create, you and Artist #1 both sit at the same table. So in the year 2000, Artist #1 sat down for the first time, and started spending, on average, 2 hours per week making art. As of today in 2021, she has spent 2,188 hours practicing art.
Then, in August, 2019, you sat down for the first time next to her, spending on average 30 minutes per week . At this point, you’ve spent 52 hours on your art practice. Artist #1 has spent 2,136 more hours practicing than you. Let that sink in. Why do you expect your art is going to look like you’ve practiced 2,188 hours when you’ve practiced 52?
I know that sounds harsh, but I want to drive home the point.
Western culture has this myth that being an artist is about a “gift.” The myth says that yes, there’s some practice involved, but if you don’t seem to have it on the first try, you might as well give up.
That’s a load of malarkey.
Of course, there will be people who have an excellent ability to visualize and translate what they see, or traits that make them particularly well-suited to making art. But as with most pursuits – for most of us, art mastery comes through practice. That’s both the good and bad news. It’s not a lottery where you either win the gift or you don’t, you have to work to develop your art.
Your expectation that you can simply plop down for 10 minutes and create a masterpiece is unrealistic. Most of us mortals have to engage in the “w” word. There is a reason it’s called art work, but I prefer to frame it as playful practice and exploration.
The more I engage in playful art adventures, the more exciting the work becomes, the more art I make, and the more my skills and enjoyment deepen. I want to invite the same for you.
I have a free class called How to Be a More Productive Artist, and it’s purpose is to address exactly this issue – concrete strategies to help you shift limiting mindsets and creative productive habits for joyful art making. You can join here:
I’d love to hear about your experience with getting beyond comparison, and what makes you want to keep practicing art.
Creatively Yours,
Amy
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