Last weekend I bought a sketch pad and a pencil set and have been drawing again. Though I majored in art many years ago, I am way out of practice and feel like a kindergartener learning to draw for the first time. My efforts do not bring the aesthetic rewards I get with writing, my sense that “Yeah, this is working. I love this.”
But I want to see if I can apply what I know about getting past block in writing to visual art, particularly setting limits to entice myself into wanting to draw longer. In writing, forcing myself to write always failed, but if I forbade myself to write longer than 15 minutes, I was always left wanting to write more.
Limiting my drawing time has another plus. I have been reluctant to draw because I worried that art would take over and shatter my focus on writing, which is still what I care about most, so for now I am limiting my drawing to a half hour a day.
When I draw, the old feelings I once had about writing are cropping up: “This is a waste of time. You are bad at this. Focus on the things you are good at. Everyone else is way ahead on you on this.”
When I have those kinds of thoughts, I am doing what I did many years ago when I was blocked with writing: I am arguing back with them. I want to reclaim the freedom to fail. I want to be able to make mistakes. Unlike with writing, I have no professional aspirations in visual art. My goal is to regain my love of art, which I lost so long ago at age 13.
Shortly after I turned 13, depression swooped in from a shadowy place in the sky and struck me down. I stopped doing the things I had enjoyed most as a child. I stopped singing. I stopped writing for fun. I stopped drawing. And I had not only enjoyed them; I had gotten a lot of praise for them and had even been accepted in in a “Project Challenge” program for art.
Before adolescence, writing and art had gone together like the illustrations of my old fairy tale books had gone with written stories. Drawing and writing had woven their way through my creative life, though words came to be my favorite medium.
But beneath the shadow of adolescent angst, those days appeared to be gone. It seemed to be all I could do to get up in the morning and go to school. After three years I recovered from my depression but did not recover creatively. I was way out of practice and had seemingly more important concerns.
At fifteen I made an identity out of excelling at school, but abandoning creativity had drained color from my life. I wrote only when I had to and no amount of praise from teachers encouraged me to write on my own; rather, the praise intimidated me by creating high expectations. I was always beginning stories but never finished them. I feared writing because I feared disappointing. I had occasional moments where “inspiration” would strike but they were like snow in the South. Those unpredictable “flurries” happened to me, and only rarely; they were not something I did.
To motivate myself I enrolled in a high school creative writing class and dropped out after the first week. Creativity was not something I knew how to control; there were no reliable rules; I felt unsafe.
Similarly I enrolled in an art class, hoping to recapture the creative thrill I remembered, but by then it seemed too late. Other students had kept drawing long after I had stopped and most were far ahead of me.
I would look at the art supplies with a nostalgic thrill and remember the fun I used to have with them. But when I sat down to draw, my skill did not equal my enthusiasm. Drawing hurt, just as writing hurt because I felt pressured to be “good.”
In college a new shockwave of depression left me pining for art again. I went so far as to change my major to art, even knowing I would lose my treasured straight A average, which I promptly did.
I learned a lot about creativity as an art major but could not seem to recover my childhood love of art. I did not have the sense of owning it that I had known as a kid, and was always comparing myself unfavorably to the better artists. Everything I did in college I did for a grade. I learned many interesting techniques but had no sense of artistic freedom.
After college I dropped art altogether, because art did not seem to be my talent anymore; writing was.
But even writing was always a stop-and-go effort. My path was cluttered with fears of being trite; self-indulgent; sentimental; or silly. I was chronically blocked, but somehow through all that I managed to write my first novel after college. Even then, writing came with the risk of terrible mood crashes.
Everything came to a head during the severe depression I wrote about in A Trail of Crumbs to Creative Freedom. The depression followed a manic episode that led to the worst case of block I had ever experienced. I locked down completely and thought I would never enjoy writing, or anything creative, ever again.
At that time I felt most keenly that loss long ago when I had given up on the creative activities I had most loved. After one particularly painful day, straining to write a new novel, my sense of loss took the form of terrible hurt, rage, and rebellion. “Critics are stupid,” I thought. “This is my writing. If I want to be trite, or self-indulgent, or sentimental, I will be. I am going to write whatever and however I like.”
It was one of the few true “epiphanies” I have ever had, and it ended my block for good. But although I regained my love of writing, sometimes I still missed art. Not the art of my college years where it was all about pleasing teachers, but the art of my childhood where I used pencils, crayons, and markers as a way to explore the world.
As before, I would become excited whenever I saw art supplies but became crest-fallen when I realized how out of practice I was, and that I lacked the skill to do anything amazing with them. So I have decided to use the same principles I outlined in A Trail of Crumbs To Creative Freedom to recapture my connection with visual art.
As I do with writing, I give unconditional praise at the end of my 30 minute session, if only to say, “Good effort” or “One of the lines you drew was interesting. I like it.”
It feels good to draw. I have been living with the belief that because I gave up drawing at 13, it was too late for me to pick up on it again, but my experiences with writing have convinced me otherwise. I wonder why our culture gives only children free reign to experiment and fail.
Children are given the freedom to mistakes and are praised for most every artistic thing they do, which encourages experimentation and learning. But as adults we rarely give ourselves the freedom to start fresh. There is a feeling that as adults we must have a set path, and that what we are, or are not, has already been determined, and that we must live with it or risk looking silly.
But it should always be okay to be a beginner. The freedom to make mistakes should not be a privilege restricted to early childhood.
After drawing for a week, I now look at my sketchbook and the pencil set I bought and instead of feeling sad that I am not “good” enough to use them, I am starting to feel excited about the possibilities that consistent practice will bring.
As for my worries about “art taking over,” I am starting to relax. While writing may be my main passion, it is not such a jealous lover that it will begrudge me spending a half hour a day with an old friend. Writing knows I will never leave it.
That there is not even a chance.
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