The Confident Creative

Preface—

What does it mean to be creative? And why do so many of us feel blocked in one way or another? To be creative is to make something new or to make new connections between ideas that already exist. Most of us know this, but do we know that we are all essentially creative beings? It’s not just art that requires creativity; we’re inventing our very lives all the time through our intention and actions. Still, many of us feel we’re not creative though we may long to be. We’ve stopped envisioning expansive possibility and started settling for half-measures.

In the same way, many of us feel we can’t draw even though as children we did. We feel the basic, simple, even inherent quality of making marks on paper is beyond us. There are many ways to draw as we’ll see—making marks, drawing from life and drawing from imagination. It’s a myth that special talent is needed. We often think the purpose of drawing is to produce an image or likeness but it holds the potential to do much more. The simple act of drawing can deepen our sense of presence and open the gates of creativity. This is a new kind of drawing, not the kind we learned in school!

By its very nature, drawing takes us out of our worrying minds and into the wide open space of peace and possibility where inspiration comes to meet us. Artists will benefit from a drawing practice, of course. But writers, musicians, dancers, filmmakers, gardeners, cooks, scientists, designers, craftspeople, and all who wish to live authentic, exploratory, creative lives will find the practice both liberating and empowering.

Most people give up drawing in childhood when they fail to make drawings that look “real.” Some of us may also give up some essential part of ourselves when we stop drawing. We may lose touch with our creative core. On the pages that follow, we look at how drawing can be a practice to reclaim and grow the creative self, useful to both the experienced artist and the novice. We will contact our imagination, open our minds, and have fun. We’ll see how drawing can bring us to the place of confidence and freedom. Learning to connect with our higher creative selves will not just change our art, it will change our lives and even the world we live in.

Now, pick up your pencil and read on!

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Introduction—

“Every child is an artist.  The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” —Picasso

Often when people I meet discover I’m an artist they say, ‘I can’t draw at all!  I can’t even draw a straight line!’  They laugh but it’s easy to catch a glimpse of a slight panic too.  ‘But you can,’ I say.  They laugh harder—‘Oh, no!’  And then my heart breaks a little.  Don’t they remember when they were kids and drew with complete confidence?   Of course, they’re right—to be a visual artist takes skill and that only comes from long, hard work.  But behind the laughter is often the wish for that childlike freedom of expression that we all lose to some extent on the journey to adulthood.

Artists too can loose that sense of freedom.  Sometimes I meet artists who are stuck in their work.  They know they can draw but it looks like there’s some kind of dark cloud over their heads.  They don’t know the way forward in their art.  Their work no longer feels vital.  Sometimes they feel no one cares or values their work.  All artists reach impasses but sometimes these grow into canyons of doubt.  Sometimes an artist doesn’t know how to jump into the flow of creative connection again, how to feel happy about his or her work or life.   Something has happened and the artist has lost touch with the spontaneous connection to creativity we all knew as children, and with the belief that it matters.  Perhaps they never were fully conscious of it.  What’s going on?
Kids draw with abandon.  If we give crayons and paper to a small child she’ll happily make marks.  She doesn’t care whether the marks look like anything—there’s joy in seeing something where a moment before there was nothing.  The child doesn’t judge her scribbles but takes deep pleasure in them and for a few moments is totally engaged in the act of creating.  It’s not about being ‘good’ or looking ‘good.’  It’s simply about doing and seeing.

When we grow a little older, we draw from the mind—from imagination and memory.  We develop a simple, symbolic way of drawing to tell stories, explore the world and master the deep well of feeling, even fear, within.  What would happen if our parents were kidnapped?  Where did our grandparents go when they died?  Children often use drawing to explore and reflect.  Rockets and fighter planes dart through mysterious explosions in the sky.  Dragons prowl the land and swords are drawn.  Mothers hold babies and birds fly overhead.  The sun shines, a huge yellow orb in the sky.  Parents and siblings stare out at us, often with huge smiles.  The kid’s home is there, usually with a tree or flower beside it, signs of life’s grace and abundance, whether or not such trees or flowers exist in actuality.  And the child is there in the center of the page and of his or her universe.  Children’s drawings are full of imagination, assurance and vitality.

Kids take a lot of pleasure in showing their drawings to others.  They’re only a little offended if you think that the person they drew is a bird.  They’re very pleased when the correction is made and we admit our mistake.  It’s not a big deal.

It’s only when we get a little older, around the age of twelve, when we’re more curious about the bigger world around us, that we decide our drawings really ought to look more like what we see.  We want to make grown-up work.  Many of us become embarrassed when we only know how to draw people with stick arms but there’s often no one around to show us how to draw with greater competence.  In school, if we have art at all, we might have a class once a week for an hour or two.  It’s not enough time to develop skill or insight.  The goal is always to make a ‘good’ picture, something that can be graded, mostly by how ‘real’ it looks, and perhaps hung on the wall.  There’s no chance now for real exploration, experimentation or expression.

For the most part our public system of education seems not to know that drawing might be a way to observe the world around us with care and to appreciate that world.  Or that it can be a tool for scientific observation or to design what can only be imagined.  Mostly it’s seen as something separate, only for art making.  Art itself is seen as something of far lesser value than the calculus that most of us never use once we’re out of school.

With no chance to learn skills, many of us stop believing that drawing or art serve any purpose in our lives.  We forget the wondrous things that drawing did for us as young children, how it helped us understand ourselves and appreciate the world around us.  We may never think about the way drawing gave us a sense of peace and happiness, or why.  Or how it made us laugh.  Many of us come to believe that we’re not that ‘good’ at drawing or we don’t have ‘talent.’  Why wouldn’t we give it up?

Later in childhood most of us are very skilled at verbal communication.  Words are everywhere.  We rely on them—they’re fundamental to the way we communicate with each other and explore our world.  There’s no real need to draw, we think.  We’re not going to be artists.
Even so, when we give up drawing we might well lose something vital and important. Drawing takes us out of our rational, linear thinking minds into our feeling, intuitive, creative minds.  Some of us may lose contact with our creative selves to the point where we come to rely almost entirely on rational, linear thinking.  Much is lost when we can’t access our own creativity and see beyond the limitations of linear thought that can only grasp what’s already evident.  It becomes hard to envision what doesn’t already exist, to invent anything, even our lives which we do need to envision.

Many of us want to be artists in one way or another—we want to capture the freedom we experienced as children and give form to the invisible.  We want to make meaning and find mastery over ourselves, to find happiness in the full expression of who we are.  We want to feel inspired and full of energy.  In whatever way we choose, in whatever form, we can all be artists—we may take photographs, or plant a garden or cook or write poetry.  We may paint or sculpt or draw.  We may choose our clothes with care, even flair, or design our home in a way that gives pleasure.  We may design innovative programs for the computer or create a brilliant business that creates an excellent product and provides a living for others.  We may raise children to be kind human beings and productive adults.  We may run for political office and do inspired work in the public domain.  We may be doctors or counselors who empower their patients to heal.  It can all be art and the more conscious we become the more we can create and manifest in this world.  It isn’t necessary to draw to do these things but drawing can be a practice, a simple one, which connects us with our true creative selves again.

I hadn’t thought much about these things until I began to teach drawing at a new art center on the fringe of Boston on Saturday mornings.  I’d been an artist all my life and made my entire living from art for over twenty-five years.  I’d met my own impasses along the way and discovered the way through these impasses through a little dogged determination and the study of yoga and energy medicine.  This knowledge was at the heart of my desire to teach but I’d never taught before.  Not only that, I’d never been to art school so had no traditional methods of teaching in mind.  Still I knew that drawing itself could liberate creative power and I was passionately interested in self-empowerment in art and life.

All of my students had successful careers in fields other than art.  Some had degrees in art but wanted to make art more central to their lives again and ignite, I think, a new journey of artistic discovery and expression.  Some had not drawn since childhood but wanted to try it again.  Some came to class with trepidation but also with brave hearts.  We began with no pre-defined course of action and no real inkling of the amazing discoveries we’d make together.

What follows are the lessons we learned in what has become The Saturday Drawing Club.  It offers drawing techniques to grow our skills, shows how to overcome obstacles, find peace and grow our true creative selves.

Art and text©Cat Bennett2009—All rights reserved.