The Blank Page & Creativity
The Blank Page Doth Stare Into Thy (artistic) Soul
For a long time, the blank paper /canvas, no matter the size, would taunt me with doubts of “what if, what I draw is unworthy of being there? What if, what I draw is not good enough? Because it would be embarrassing right? Or it will simply reveal how unskilled of an artist I am.”
Okay. A bit intense and negative there, but that was how I felt back then. Whenever I drew something I deemed “ugly” or “silly looking”, I would withdraw with shame and disappointment. I think there are many reasons which culminated to this problem. There’s perfectionism. The annoyance of wasting paper. The want to receive compliments or be acknowledged. There’s no definite answer or reason but let’s not dwell on that. For today’s post, I’m going to talk about how I overcame my “blank page” fear, using Exposure Therapy.
According to WebMD, Exposure Therapy is a “treatment used to help people confront their fears”. For a while, I had stopped drawing altogether and when I came back to it, I couldn’t help but feel somewhat anxious as I stared at all that white and then immediately sought inspiration by browsing Pinterest, for the sake of drawing something good. I did this back and forth on repeat. I would spend half an hour in frustration, trying to decide on or think of what to draw. When pencil hit paper, the eraser soon came after and eventually, I would give up. Heck, thinking back, it wasn’t just the blank paper. It was that “white empty spot” where I could fit a drawing that even got me feeling hopeless. All of this might sound very strange. You might say “Just draw something” and I would reply “Yeah but what?”
The truth was that I was fighting against my inner demons, of being a “great artist”. Lol, it sounds cheesy, but my brain, however naïve, wanted to become a “Master” from the get-go. Sometimes I was very hard on myself, concluding that I was not good enough and will never be. Reflecting on this makes me a little sad that I had this kind of mindset as a young person. As an adult now, I’m learning to not be so hard on myself in many areas of Life. Among all the chaos and imperfections of adulthood, Fun was what I needed.
Make a Mark with Markers
If you’ve read my previous post on “My Top Favorite Art Supplies”, you’ll know that I bought some markers at a discounted price (yassss!) What you don’t know is that the markers played a huge part in helping me overcome my fear of the blank page.
With a pencil, I could always use the eraser when I made a mistake. I can add in shading, and extra details, sometimes finishing a sketch or even overworking a simple drawing. I gnawed over the tiniest details and was trying to make masterpieces in my sketchbook. There was too much focus on the “undo” instead of, well, “do”!
Markers didn’t give me a moment to hesitate. With pencils, I was given the option to re-think, to correct, to undo and with all these options, I was lingering on a line or a curve or a shade for longer than I needed to. It creates fixation and perfectionism. Markers took all those options away and with more straightforward doodling and sketching, I found my creativity soar!
The availability of different colours somehow helped me become more creative too. I don’t know the science behind this or perhaps it’s all a placebo effect, but I found that certain colours increased my productivity. These colours are lime green, pastel green, baby pink, lilac and baby blue. Strong saturated colours such as scarlet, pumpkin orange and dark purple just felt very off.
Creative Juice Refill, Please
I recently saw a YouTube video where the YouTuber explained that “Just Draw Something” is the worst advice you could ever give someone with art block. I couldn’t agree more! Imagine making a mistake. You find it hard to remember a part of your speech and for some reason, you keep blanking out or you keep messing up the words. What’s happening in your brain are impulses that keep firing and running the same pathway it ran on every time you made a mistake. You make that same mistake because your brain keeps taking that exact route. The brain has this amazing ability to find the shortest routes from point A to point B to conserve energy resources. Unknowingly, you keep looping on that exact mistake because your brain thinks it’s the best route. Short cuts are better than long newer routes, right? Why expend more brain energy to find a new route?
What you need to do is take a break. Your creative juices are at a low, and you need a refill by doing something else completely different! A break can mean an indefinite amount of time though. It could be an afternoon, a couple of days or months, maybe even a year. Honour how you feel and have compassion for the days you don’t feel “it”. Of course, if your bills depend on your creative career, the story is a little different. But you’ve still got to take care of yourself. The sooner you take a break and identify burnout or art block, the sooner you can get back to creating. Doing something else can spark inspiration or lend you a new lens to a perspective you’ve never thought of before. So try out that new hobby or go watch that movie that just came out in the cinema. Try that new cafe that just opened up at the corner. Perhaps go to the museum and bring along your sketchbook if you are called to.
Made this illustration a while ago and thought it fitting for this post!
A Leap of Faith
Mindset for me is super important. Stemming from the previous point about having compassion for yourself when you feel you aren’t productive enough or your artwork is not up to standard, having faith that if you are not where you hoped to be, doesn’t mean the future You won’t get there.
Take a leap of faith and believe that you are continuously growing as an artist and as a person, with a broad horizon of opportunities. In a week you could be doing something you didn’t even know you could achieve.
