Pretty Real Behind the Veil

I posted in a recent discussion about coping with a tendency toward perfectionism in efforts to create good art, sharing my own experience and constraints around even attempting it.  I’ve tended toward perfectionism in many areas of my work, and certain things in my life, rather obsessively at times, and I actually tried that when I first began to draw, a year ago this month!  Earlier blogposts on this dilemma explain in detail how well that didn’t work for me with art early in my efforts, but as it turns out, there is more to it than that.  I happen to have unusual disabilities that actually block me from being able to have motor control integrate with mental images in a conscious intentional sense, and I can ONLY draw well if my conscious mind disengages in any kind of intentional control sense. Same with my handwriting, like if I have to fit it into a specific space, I can become so overwhelmed that I can’t write. It’s a weird thing, I know, but the blog post explains it well for me around drawing.  It affects me in other ways, like with handwriting.  I was recently asked to fill out a form answering some questions, with limited space to insert my handwritten answers.  The questions were not so difficult, but I couldn’t work out how to fit the words into the space, and it was so overwhelming and distressing, and that I finally had to go to the doctor’s office and get the secretary to sit with me and hand-write the answers as I verbally told her, and she mentally edited a bit to make it fit into the form, and it was done.  I, on the other hand, had lost 2 nights of sleep trying to accomplish this seemingly simple task! 

While the impairment is physically specific to myself, creatively, I think it has value in an overarching sense in my life, to trust myself, go with my gut, express without constraint, don’t decide the outcome in advance, if I don’t have to, just start making marks and don’t worry about the product. Without exception, this is where every one of my strongest pieces comes from, and the aesthetics and all the other good *stuff* took care of itself. It was goodness, it felt good, and because its value did not depend upon whether other people liked it or not, the funny thing is that those are usually the ones that people connect to the most.

I hosted a kids’ painting party at a campground a couple of months ago, with about 15 kids (whom I had never met before), of various ages. They asked me what they should do, and were ecstatic but initially unsure of what to do when I said, "We paint with NO rules! No plans, just reach for colors that you are feeling drawn to, grab a brush, and just move it however it feels good! What made you feel today? A round tube? water in the lake? a special place in the forest? What does that feel like? Warm, cool? Round, long, short, swaying from side to side, do you hear swishing or plopping? What is your personal feeling that feels strong right now? Or earlier today? Whatever that feeling is, connect with it, grab a brush, pour some paint, and just move! What they did was spectacular! In fact, 3 sets of parents came down to my campsite, when their kids rushed back all excited, trying to explain this lady’s approach to art, so they had to come and see for themselves. If I’d had another day, I would have had the parents doing the same exercise the next day! It was such fun, and so freeing! I loved it so much that I kept the paper towel rags the kids used to clean up, and have incorporated them into random pieces that are quite beautiful, including the journal cover mentioned earlier. Every time I look at it, I remember that night, the freedom, the look on the children’s faces when they painted with total freedom.

I often grab a blank index card and pen and just start making marks, and see where my hand goes. Or maybe I’ll randomly brush some ink on paper, fold it and start from some inkblot beginning, and imagine what I see in the random inkblots, and start scribbling in to complete imagined partial images. Did you ever stare at clouds when you were a child and imagine that they were shaped like animals or other things? Same kind of thing, except that you take the cloud images, and you start adding details to what your mind’s eye is seeing–go with the flow. If you don’t like it, you can always swipe it with something to make something else out of it, or turn it upside down and look at it again–maybe a whole new view. Even my husband sometimes does that with my pictures and sees things he didn’t see before!

Sometimes I take my own zentangle drawings (see below), chop them up, flip them around, upside down, cut them up like a jigsaw puzzle, push them back together in different ways to see what images begin to present themselves.   I start drawing in, and painting over other lines to make them look like something completely different, based on the new image forming in my mind. Here’s a sampling of some tangles done, some in progress, and some reference photos to consider. The first a zentangle that became a foot began as me making marks to deal with pain, then became a couple of other creatures, and currently, that foot is becoming a rather wicked cheshire cat figure. Another tangle, chopped up, became the beginning of a new drawing that is looking like another favorite creature of mine, the poor dodo bird! Another one in progress right now looks rather…..well, I don’t know yet, a weird, elephant with a bird brain something or other??? I’ve thrown in a few of my photos that are fun reference photos to stir the imagination (well, mine, at least). One of a section of the Eno River with piles of rocks remind me of some giant rock children, lounging in the sun, legs in the water, another some reptilian beast slithering up a huge tree trunk, and then there is the "Forest Queen", the tree that inspired the journal page that is a story, or at least part of a fantasy story that I scribbled into my journal. It’s sort of an "idea page" for me. There’s also a zoom of a carving from a site that I visited abroad, that has a number of interesting patterns carved into it. There are many patterns that you could create, just pulling them out of that carving, and turning them into their own doodle patterns, that could launch some lovely pictures.

But those are just my brain workings according to what excites me to draw. The important thing is process, and letting go and letting flow. Sometimes you will get to a point, like my bird-brain elephant, where you stop feeling energy around it, and you do something else. Maybe you will feel inspired around it again later, and it will become based on your new energy with it. Don’t worry about how it will turn out; just focus on what pulls on you, and it will be fine.

Now if you want to get input on working to specifications, I am definitely incapable of contributing on product-focused work. Either way, though, find a way to connect to your own passion and the rest will take care of itself. I can tell you that, for me, doing realistic drawings like this one   come from exactly the same process of connecting with what I feel and sense, and not from some great talent and technical brilliance and experience. I have never taken an art class in my life, and really don’t "know" what I’m doing. In fact, I have no idea "what" I’m doing, just staying open and focusing on process.  You can do that with a pen or marker or crayon, too. Keep it simple in what you MUST do, and you’ll be amazed at what your imagination will do when you let your mind drift free to explore and express