I’ve written about this before… “Take time to play”! But I insist, because it’s sooooo important to grow your drawing and painting skills.
Because when we take ourselves too seriously and we stop playing, we end up doing always the same thing, creating always the same drawing with the same tools because then we feel safe from failure and judgment.
Being a child, everybody is playing: drawing and painting, and as a teenager we kind of forget about it. We FORGET how to do it without fear! Our education is focused on “making” university professors, just knowing how to use the left side of our brains. Usually this happens because a parent or teacher told us we should stop drawing because what we make is ugly and we’re not talented enough. A student in my Skillshare class wrote this to me two weeks ago.
Then when we’re adults, we’ve to learn again how to draw and have fun while drawing, because our education has trained us not to fail. So we are “afraid” of failing by making “ugly” drawings,…. We can be so hard on ourselves!
The “problem” is that we’re attached to the outcome. To have a better creative practice to train your skills, Seth Godin explains in his book “The Practice“, that we shouldn’t be attached to the outcome, to the finished drawing in this case. We should be more attached to the practice of drawing itself.
But what is “ugly” anyway?! F*ck “talent” and “passion”. Drawing and painting is about having fun. That’s it. Let’s live our “creative life”. By living our “creative life” I don’t mean dedicating 24 hours a day to Art. A creative life means living a life driven by curiosity and connection, rather than by fear. Connection to yourself, to what you feel like doing, connection to others, to what’s right for you. Without judgement of any possible failure.
In this pandemic time having connection with other sketchers and artists is difficult.
We’re bit by bit allowed to go outside again to sketch in small groups, but it’s difficult, because social life in restaurants and bars was on hold. So we try to connect on line as much as possible! I even gave my first workshop on Zoom with Arttoolkit! It was a lot of fun!
Next friday Reham Ali and I will sketch together on Instagram Live! We’ll make a sketch together : we’ll sketch Pinocchio! It’s so much fun to sketch together and chat together about our creative struggles, and inspire each other with our different artistic backgrounds and different ways of sketching and painting!
Why Pinocchio? To remind us to cherish that creative fearless child inside us! To remind us to stay young at heart! To remind us to play ! And to stretch our sketching boundaries, because we’re more used to sketch urban scenes and buildings. So this puppet will wake us up !
That’s what always happens in the “magical land of the Urbansketchers!” We inspire each other and learn from eachother !
Will you join us on Instagram?
It’ll be on Reham’s Instagram feed on Friday 14th May at 6pmBrussels time !
Below I add some of her great art work ! Follow her on Instagram so you don’t miss it.
