Drawing a Blank - What Am I Supposed to Do?

Prince William and Princess Kate were in Los Angeles this weekend at Inner-City Arts, a non-profit that teaches kids important life skills through art, dance and music. They joined the kids to do some painting. "William, do you know what you're doing?" Kate asked. "Start from the center." He quickly forgot: "Catherine," he pleaded, "what are you supposed to do?" William painted an abstract square, while Kate painted a red snail. 

There is a lot of pressure on you when you are making art in an art workshop, and expectations run high to do it “right.”

I notice that people who take art workshops tend to divide into two really cool and distinct groups. One group is what I would call people who consider themselves artists. They have art degrees, they’ve been working as artists and had shows, they’ve taken art classes and they work hard at developing their artistic skills and innate creative talent. The people in this group tend to have sense of confidence about their competence at making art. They are usually in my workshop to gain a new skill or hang out with some like-minded artists.

In the second group are people who tell me they have little to no previous background in art since their childhood days of coloring books or finger painting. They got dragged to the workshop by a friend, or they are really curious to rediscover that feeling of creating art that they remember enjoying as a child.

They both ask “What am I supposed to do?” when they come into the workshop.

Blogger Matt Conner of "The Rabbit Room" captured this feeling in a January 2010 blog post: “The last time I unveiled something with a wide smile and brimming confidence probably coincided with my fifth birthday. Since then, it’s been a downhill slope of fear and frustration. In the endless struggle to create beauty, I’m missing the beauty in front of me.”

Oh that dreaded downhill slope of fear and frustration. That question “What am I supposed to do?” presumes there is a right, and consequently also a wrong, way to make art.

So how do you get past “should” and “supposed to” and on to that pure joy of creative expression you see children so easily immerse themselves in? Why is that joyous place so accessible to children when making art, but denied us adults?

I believe that when making art, freedom is your friend. The freedom to create - whatever you want, however you decide, and without judgement - liberates you from the tyranny of good, right art. Kids instinctively know that, at least until they hit puberty and start to care so much about what others think.

How to you become free and liberated? Well, you can tell yourself that as you sit down to create art, you are not going to judge yourself. You can insist that your inner critic take a seat at the door while you play with your paints, pastels or sculpy clay. And that will do the trick, for about five minutes. Then, you will  forget that your inner critic was invited to sit on that stool by the door. Instead, he or she is on your shoulder cackling in your ear: “That’s horrible!” “What makes you think you can draw?” “What is that!!!?”

And there you go, back down that slippery slope toward fear and frustration. You try to pull yourself out, but it’s of no use. Your inner critic has blossomed from a little pixie into a 500-pound gorilla that is now sitting on your chest and mocking your every brush stroke. Oh my. What to do?

How about telling yourself it’s okay for today to make some bad art? What if, instead of making good, perfect, “worthy of the masters” beautiful art, you created some really bad art, intentionally. Dark, hairy, messed up colors. Paint that goes outside the lines. Colors that don’t go together. Paper stuck in the paint and brush hairs sticking straight out? Keep going. Add some more gloppy paint you should have discarded years ago. What do you see now? Add some more color to the painting. Oh, now you are starting to think you saved it - it’s looking pretty good. Mash it up with more dark paint over the masterpiece you just created.

That’s right - if you are starting to like your art, or even love it a little bit, you need to take immediate measures to destroy it. That’s what Jon Spayde, co-creator of Bad Art Night in St. Paul Minnesota, told me. He and his wife, Laurie Phillips, both artists, have been doing Bad Art Night every Friday night for more than fifteen years.

Do Bad Art Night with some friends a few times - maybe one night a week for two months - and you will start to discover something incredible. You will find that you can reliably create art without all that judgement. You will have re-programmed the synapses and neural pathways so that you can get into that creating groove that is so satsifying, seductive and soothing to your brain and body.

No longer tortured to make something “good” or “right” or both, you are liberated to just make marks on the paper, quietly contemplating what you just created and possibly find some personal meaning in it, or not.

In my circle of accomplished and new artist friends, we get together two times every month to intentionally create “bad art.” We’re not really creating art that is bad, in fact, quite the opposite. Some of the art is so good it could be in shows. Some of it has been. But we have liberated ourselves from deciding ahead of time what we are creating should become. Our gremlins are sitting at the doorstep having a party amongst themselves, because we have no use for them at Bad Art Night. We are too busy chatting, doodling or collaging, sometimes sewing and always in that zone where we are creating with reckless abandon. It’s good to be bad.

TIP: If you can’t embrace calling what you make “bad art,” here’s another tip for getting away from your gremlins, posted by artist and writer Melody Nunez: use a crazy writing or visualization prompt, then write or draw what you saw. For example, you may want to write a short story based on the “facts” of a piece you read in a tabloid magazine. Or you can want use a random photograph in a magazine to inspire you to create a collage from some of the same colors. Or you could have a friend throw out some words at you and you could make a small sketch of what each word means to you visually.

Do you have any tips and tricks for getting past the judgement when you are trying to be creative? Please share them in the comments section.