I'm Making Art Again--By Not Being An Artist

July 4, 2023 - 1 comment

Great news: I’ve started drawing again! And by that I mean not just making a couple of shitty doodles and calling it a day before abandoning my sketchbook for another year or more. I mean I’ve actually been sitting down with a pencil and sketchbook, losing myself for hours pumping out portraits, gesture drawings, value studies etc. and enjoying the entire process.

Getting into this flow state with art is something I was starting to fear I’d never experience again. I have an extremely complicated relationship with art, and for the past while I’ve really struggled to create it consistently. I’d done a few commissions here and there, but nothing I was particularly proud of, and outside of those I had literally nothing to show in terms of artistic output. For the past decade I’ve always had excuses:

I’m going through a depressive episode right now, I’ll draw once I get my motivation back.

I’ve got artist’s block, I’ll draw once I have ideas.

I have too much going on, I don’t have time to draw.

I’m working too much, I have no energy to draw now.

All valid excuses to not be making art. But what was my excuse when none of those things were going on? I’ve had many pockets of time to work on my craft. Yet I didn’t. Every time I picked up a pencil it just felt like an exercise in futility. I dreaded making the first lines, after which I’d slog through whatever exercise I’d set for myself just to get my “practice” in because, you know, “use it or lose it” as they say.

When did making art, something I found joy and solace in as a child, start to feel like work? Every time I tried, I was left feeling defeated, hopeless, and so frustrated with myself I got as close to crying as my antidepressants allowed. It wasn’t supposed to feel like this, and knowing that it did made me even sadder. (And again, no crying in baseball on antidepressants.)

It felt like a part of me was slowly dying. It got so bad that I even seriously considered giving up on it altogether, which for me was an existential nightmare. I’ve always loved drawing, so why the fuck couldn’t I draw anymore?

After many discussions with friends, countless journal entries, and a nice helping of hippie-approved drugs, I finally figured it out. My problem went way beyond the typical lack of motivation/inspiration/ideas that is universal to suffering artists. The thing that was really stopping me was fear. A profoundly deep-seated fear of failure which, ironically, stems from a lifetime of being defined as The Artist. Here is how my journey unfolded:

A natural-born artist

Me at age 2, oblivious to the suffering that awaits me.

I’ve been drawing pretty much as soon as I could pick up a crayon. I was the best artist in class all throughout elementary school. My classmates would regularly line up beside my desk with their Pokemon, Digimon, and Yu-Gi-Oh cards and ask me to draw the characters for them. (Obviously I was not cut out to be an entrepreneur because all I asked for in exchange were whatever doubles they had of their Pokemon commons. 7-year-old me was kind of a dumbass.) When I moved to a new school, my watercolour paintings in art class blew my classmates away and even got me featured in the school newspaper my first week there.

I was a very shy and quiet kid, and a very average one at that, so being a good artist was everything to me. It me made valuable. It got me to be noticed and acknowledged, things I was painfully starved for. I couldn’t talk to people, but I could always get them to talk to me by letting myself be seen sketching. And when it came to career ambitions, I never once considered anything beyond the vague “I want to be an artist.” I didn’t think at all about specific careers, I just knew I wanted to paint and draw for the rest of my life.

Being talented fucked me over

My whole identity and my self-worth hinged on being The Artist. And if you haven’t guessed by now based on my totally unpredictable, tension-building style of writing, or literally what I said two paragraphs ago about fear of failure… this turned out to be a very bad thing for me. It created a paradox: I was such a good artist that I failed to grow, and my failure to grow threatened my status as a good artist.

I was praised as a “talent” so often for so long that I never tried to challenge or push myself. I took for granted that I would always be this great talent without trying. This caused me to stagnate, and even though I managed to get into an illustration program right out of high school, I started to find that the quality of my art didn’t align with where I wanted to be. I was rarely ever happy with what I created.

After nearly dropping out due to some trauma happening in my life and just barely passing all my classes, I graduated. But no more classes meant no more projects or assignments. Which meant I had nothing holding me accountable to keep creating art. So I stopped creating art pretty much altogether.

I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I was too afraid of seeing the results, too afraid of seeing how far behind I was and how little I’d developed. And the longer I went without doing it, the harder it became to start. When I did manage to start, nothing I drew inspired me to keep going. I felt discouraged each time, and I even began to experience a serious case of imposter syndrome. I felt that I didn’t deserve to call myself a professional. I thought it was a fluke that I got into that illustration program at all, let alone earn a degree.

The solution

I knew in theory what I needed to do. “Just pick up a pencil and draw anything” “Do a little bit every day” “Go easy on yourself, let yourself to suck” were all things I’d been told and had repeated to myself over and over. It’s so simple, right? Just start drawing, keep drawing, and don’t worry about the results.

Don’t worry about the results

Sorry. Does not compute. I couldn’t not worry about the results. Lowering my expectations? Allowing myself to suck? Those were the definition of easier said than done. This was a mental block so severe it crippled me. If you had gone full Misery on me and shattered both my ankles I’d sooner be able to walk than allow myself to draw something mediocre.

I spoke to a friend about all these things, and they offered me a completely unheard-of solution: to stop calling myself an artist. They had a similar struggle and said that once they did that, they were able to enjoy making art again, because there was no longer any pressure to be good at it. Now they’re making art for fun, not because they’re “supposed” to.

And it’s true. I have many hobbies that I’ve never felt pressured to be good at like I do with art because I haven’t formed an identity around them. I’m not The Cook, or The Bassist, or The Knitter, The Comedian, what have you. I do all those things for fun, with little to no expectations.

“Stop calling yourself an artist.” What an amazing, radical piece of advice! So radical that it couldn’t possibly be that easy, right? Yeah of course not, otherwise this blog post would have ended here, ya dingus.

So in front of me was the solution. In front of the solution was… me. How do I get out of my own way? How could I just stop calling myself an artist? That’s all I’ve ever been. I didn’t know who I was otherwise. How could I let go of the one thing that had kept me from feeling worthless and invisible my whole life up to this point? I was basically a prisoner in my own head; the door was open but I was stuck because I couldn’t detach myself from the identity that made me feel whole.

Now the question has moved from “how do I make art again?” to “who am I?”

Yeah. That’s one hell of a jump eh? What a classic, “who am I?” I went through life without ever thinking very deeply about it because my answer had always been “I’m An, The Artist.” And as you know by now, that’s a copout of an answer that ultimately, was a crutch for my weak sense of self.

Okay, so who am I then? Honestly, I couldn’t tell you. I think the question is such a deeply personal one that you can go about answering it in a number of different ways, and just as the self is transient, so are those answers. Even if I had an answer today, it might not be the same tomorrow, or next month, or a year from now.

I don’t think the importance of that question is in finding a concrete answer anyway. I think its real value comes from the self-exploration we do in an attempt to answer it, fleshing out our inner world in the process. For me, that starts with stripping away the artificial labels I’ve imposed on myself for all these years.

My sense of meaning didn’t come from being The Artist. It came from doing something I loved, and the only way I can love it again is by not being The Artist anymore. Which means I have to be comfortable with who I am outside of that.

Don’t get me wrong, I am an artist, through and through–I feel lost and empty when I don’t express myself creatively–but labeling myself as one, fullstop, has limited me because it prevented me from truly seeing myself. Now I’m giving myself the space to both explore and embrace all the pieces that make up the whole me, without cherry-picking parts to define myself by.

I don’t know what happened 3 weeks ago that kickstarted my urge to draw again. All I know is that something finally got the ball rolling, and if I want to maintain this momentum, I need to value myself enough to say: I’m not an artist.