Fear of the Blank White Page

One of the things that can be nerve-wracking about creating any kind of art is confronting a brand new, pristine white canvas or sheet of paper. You might catch yourself thinking, "The moment I make a mark on this, I might screw it all up!" I think this is something that's kept me from drawing and painting as much as I should - it sometimes still happens. As artists, when we decide to create, we're committing to physically make something that will be seen by many people, and our natural desire for perfection and fear of rejection may make us freeze up and create nothing at all. But you can get past this.



There's only one solution to this problem: CREATE ANYWAY. As my favorite high school art teacher once told me, "99% crap, 1% masterpiece." That's not to say that only 1% of your work is worth sharing, but that you've got to work and work and work to get to the level that you want. And when you do that, a lot of your work is going to be stuff you don't want anyone to see - sketches, experiments gone wrong, full-blown paintings on canvas where you look at it the next morning and think, "Good god, I don't deserve to call myself an artist!" But you are. You have to give yourself permission to mess up on purpose. This is the only way to fearlessly grow and become better.

Sketch of a restaurant I did while I was stranded with a dead car battery. Making lemonade out of lemons!

Experimenting with cross-hatching, not a style I've ever really worked with before.

I had a conversation with my professional musician husband once about the different natures of creating visual art versus creating music. He couldn't understand what the big deal was - what the fear was - about starting a new piece. After all, he performs live music all the time in front of hundreds of people - and he might even hit a wrong note while he's at it! The difference is that when an artist creates something, it's there for all eternity, for countless people to see. We'll always be able to look back on our less stellar attempts and that can sometimes diminish the great feeling of our successes. When a musician performs live, those notes float off into space and dissipate. They're gone forever, whether it was the right note or the wrong note. It's only if a musician hits ALL the wrong notes that people are really going to notice!

But here is where musicians and visual artists are exactly alike: we both have to practice and refine our skills over hundreds and hundreds of hours, behind the scenes, hitting the wrong notes and drawing bad lines. So take heart and keep the faith! Get a good sketchbook and just draw anything and everything around you. Look in art history books, go to museums, find artwork that inspires you and copy it. I myself am planning a trip to our local, wonderful Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, VA soon to copy some of my favorite marble busts by Hiram Powers (1805-1873).

What inspires you to pick up that pencil and draw?