Drawing Lessons
self-doubt + authenticity
I love drawing. It's something I've done for many years. Sometimes with a passion, drawing every day, other times just once a week or so, and more recently intermittently.
Some of you have been in my circle for a long time and will recall when I was a landscape painter. I had success with that. I had gallery representation, awards from prestigious national and international shows, and large corporations purchased my work. All good, but I gave it up, much to the dismay of my artist friends.
Art is a competitive business. It requires hustle. You face rejection. As much as there's camaraderie among artists, there's also envy and egos, some fragile and some large. It's not a supportive industry and can make you a bit paranoid. There's a lot of posturing and crowing, too.
People think it's glamorous, which is the impression show openings can give, but all the chardonnay and cheese platters in the world can't obscure the reality beneath.
One of the most brutal things western society has done since the renaissance is pit artists, the people with the most sensitive natures, against one another in competition. Whatever the shortcomings of the medieval period, at least artists could create with anonymity. They were quietly working away for the glory of God, perfecting their craft without being goaded into a competition. They were artisans and craftspeople. They had not yet been burdened with the myth of the tortured artist, the ego-maniac, the mad genius, the starving artist leading a life of dissolution, or the puppet of patrons, always working but rarely paid.
After stepping out of the professional arena, I picked up my sketchbook with renewed vigor. I drew and painted, and experimented for the sheer joy of creating. Some of you took my very first online course Beginning a Nature Journal. It was so much work to produce that course in 2016 when less user-friendly technology existed. But I am incredibly proud of what I made and the way it helped so many people learn to love sketching nature.
I don't often talk about the history I shared above because, quite frankly, I feel self-conscious, like it's too braggadocious. So I share it now only to provide background and context to what I'm about to relate.
I write this account, especially for those of you who are creatives, but art teaches many lessons that extend to life in general, so many of you will see the wisdom of what I'm about to share.
"You can’t do sketches enough. Sketch everything and keep your curiosity fresh" ~ John Singer Sargent
I hadn't sketched in a while and today was a sunny, brisk winter day. The kind of day with bright winter light despite the fact that even at noon, the January sun still hangs low in the southern sky. It was too chilly to sit outside but perfectly reasonable to park the car in a picturesque spot and do some sketching.
Because I own more art supplies than anyone should ever own, I sometimes browse through drawers and bins and resurrect old supplies I last used a long time ago (or never.) While rummaging through my pencils' drawers, I realized I should use these pencils to create lovely naturalistic landscape sketches like those I admire from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These are often done on toned paper and sometimes in tricolour, with three colors: black, white, and an earth tone like sepia, ochre, or umber. Sometimes they are a single color or created with tonal washes of ink or watercolor.
I have many books of these works, and I truly love how they look. Their naturalism is beautiful and often evocative and emotional. Now to be clear, I can create pieces in that style. I've spent many sublimely happy hours in museums making copies of drawings like that. But it's copy-work, imitation, not original.
In a moment of self-doubt, likely brought on by not having sketched in a few months, I decided to take a selection of watercolor pencils and produce some lovely eighteenth-century-style landscapes. I would do this because they would be charming, naturalistic drawings that would be admired.
Why would I think this?
When I was in art school, my drawing professors constantly tried to get me to abandon my inclination to stylization and draw more naturalistically. My natural "hand," as it was called, did, in fact, lean to an erratically curvilinear and bold style. Also, in the more recent past, a random stranger in a Facebook group rather condescendingly commented that my drawings were too cartoonish and not naturalistic enough for nature sketches. Ouch! The old wound opened and bled again.
I share this because it's indicative of what all creatives suffer. Our belief that what we create is acceptable and valuable is very fragile. This, of course, can extend to everyone. The idea that we are acceptable and valuable just the way we are is so easily destroyed. A single random comment or a thoughtless word from a friend or loved one is enough to shatter us, at least at that moment.
Even twenty years in the professional art industry and having faced stacks of rejection slips haven't made me immune to this. Even worse, on this particular day, I did it to myself. I loaded up my sketching bag with lots of gorgeous watercolor pencils and set out, determined to create something I thought would win the admiration of everyone. Let me be clear that this is entirely the wrong attitude, but it slips in now and then.
So I made my sketch. It took a lot longer than usual, it felt much more demanding, and I fretted throughout the entire process. But, ultimately, I had a good sketch, not as good as I had hoped, decent but utterly unsatisfying to my soul. So, I pulled out my bold brush pen and gouache paints and created a new sketch on top of the eighteenth-century imitation. It only took a few moments to do that, and I breathed a sigh of relief when it was complete. Finally, it looked like my work on the page, not an imposter's.
I furiously wrote in my sketchbook beneath the sketch, venting my frustration at myself for succumbing to the old doubts, fears, and criticisms. I had abandoned myself and diminished my unique and authentic way of drawing.
Embracing yourself, your uniqueness, and your authenticity, whether in creative pursuits, self-expression, or simply by being unashamed of who you are, is a lesson that sketching and art-making, in general, will teach you.
After my vent on paper and radical renovation of the first sketch, I drove to another beautiful spot and made another sketch. I did that to reaffirm my belief in my creative skill and to reconnect with the utter joy I feel when I lean into my natural way of drawing.
I immediately felt a surge of delight as my brush pen, loaded with bold black ink, began to dance across the page. I felt free, engrossed in the process, and delighted by each hieroglyphic-like mark I made. The work was rapid, free-flowing, natural, and intuitive. This was me being me, drawing as I always had since childhood.
Did I make a good sketch?
That's irrelevant because it felt glorious when I allowed myself to work in my authentic style, and when I look at my sketch, it feels honest and genuine. It has integrity.
Isn't that what we all want? To have integrity. Our many selves and the various slices of our lives must weave together into one integrated whole. We need to be who we are without feeling shame or the need to suppress or diminish ourselves.
Creativity can be an influential teacher. Art-making challenges you to take risks, learn new skills, and develop a capacity for radical and authentic self-expression. These are lessons for artists and everyone because they lead you to be courageously and unapologetically who you are.
Today I was brought face to face with a lesson I've encountered before. I was reminded never to abandon my authentic self and to love what is genuinely and naturally mine. So, from now on, I will commit to holding onto that knowledge, and with integrity, I will no longer feel the need to suppress or discard what is uniquely mine.
Now, about that word authentic. It is related to the word author—and you can think of it as being the author of your own self. When you’re living your own reality, you become the sovereign of your own life. You know who you are, you speak what you believe. There’s a natural pride that goes with that:
This is who I am—take me or leave me...
To me, real power is about presence. It’s the energy of knowing that you are who you are, and therefore speaking and acting from your authentic self. It doesn’t matter what your work is—if you’re a teacher or a nurse or whatever; it is your presence that’s the power. It’s not power over anybody else. It’s just the expression of who you are.
- Marion Woodman
Do the ideas of authenticity and the sabotage of self-doubt resonate with you as a creative or simply as a human? The comment section is open for sharing and discussion.
Jan,
I loved this. Yes, to your question I and many face self doubt and long more than ever to be authentic. When I left the idea of having to produce realistic paintings and got more and more into art journaling my creative self started to hum. I was working from that place of authenticity for me. I am a chaplain and a world religion teacher. I have learned the world is ablaze with wisdom everywhere. Now I use my art for cancer patients, women at shelters and refugees. It's so much less about perfection but more about coaxing the authenticity of each beloved out into the light. My art now is really about sharing who I am at the core. However, journeying through self doubt, the comparison by others, judgement has very much been the tool that awakened me into my own authentic path.
We are our own worst critics, it doesn’t help that others make comments on your work without realising that’s actually how you draw! I paint, though by my own admission, not very well, but I’m happy enough. Recently I received my first ever compliment, and that was from another artist. It’s amazing how you can be lifted by nice people, and you feel so awful when someone shares their opinion. At the end of the day, as you say, we are doing it for the joy of creating. I often say “comparison is the thief of joy “ I’ve no idea who said it originally, lol. Your pages look joyful, doing it for yourself is always the best thing!