Creative block? Blank Page freeze? Can't get started? Let me give you a helping hand to get you moving....
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Creative block? Blank Page freeze? Can't get started? Let me give you a helping hand to get you moving....
Would you like to get some creative inspiration sent to you each week? Sign up to get my Friday essays. They’re thought provoking, funny, occasionally quite odd, and always free. Tell me where I should send yours by signing up at dannysessays.com.
welcome to art for all the sketchbook school podcast. I'm your host, Danny Gregory. I'm the author of a dozen or so books on art and creativity. And I'm a sketchbook artist. And today I want to talk about one of the hardest things we do. And one of the most important: beginning beginning starts with a dream and dream to draw dream, to create a dream, to play the ukulele, speak Portuguese, ride a bike, lose five dress sizes, a dream to be. What you always wanted to be doing to finally face that part of your life, that you've avoided so long because it changes you or makes you feel weak. You hold that dream in your mind, you caress it at night, you turn it over and over and wish would come true that you could do this thing you dreamed of. Effortlessly fluidly joyously. And with that dream of doing this one thing, come dreams of doing other things, of being other things, uh, feeling strong and competent on top of your game. Happy, complete. Achieving this one dream feels like it could mean achieving all those others as well. The string means so much to you that you hold it delicately like an egg that could shatter and dash all your expectations of yourself to pursue this dream could mean to fail. And so you take a long time before you muster the courage to take the first step toward reaching it. So beginning starts with a lot too much at stake and beginning starts in a realm. You can only imagine because you haven't ever been there. You've seen other people achieve that dream. You've seen the drawings. They've made her, them singing that Aria to the souffle. They whipped up so easily. And you think, you know what? That must be like you think, you know what the journey there must entail. If only you had the courage to actually begin it's so far, all you really have is that dream turning slowly in your mind. Lit. By a thousand candles. And then the day brings the rest of the day that fills you with a new type of hope. And so you decide to begin, you breathe deep and you pick up that pen. You sit down at that piano, you dive into the deep end of that pool. You're filled with exhilaration and hope your dream glimmers there on the horizon. And then as soon as you leave you flounder Flint, you gasp you sink beneath the waves, the water. Is colder and deeper and darker than you'd ever imagined. That first line that you've imagined in your head is, is finally on paper, that first chord thunders across the strings and it's flat and leaden and ugly the work of a four, nothing like what you'd seen in your dream. You flail and struggle on despair, sinking, like clouds over the moon, plunging you into darkness. And then. Through the shadows. You hear the first righteous whale of the monkey wheels, that voice in your head, that delights and holding you back has finally found its way through the lavender bushes and BZ fields that surround your dream, bringing with it. And I see dose of reality. It delights it, your failure, your hubris, and thinking you ugly, you stupid, you hopeless. You could do this thing. It wraps a protective arm around your shoulder and starts to lead you back to safety. You don't have to keep doing this. It tells you it's too hard. Your talents are too meager. The teacher's too incompetent. This isn't really your fault. Don't try to do it again. That monkey is in your head to keep you from risk from, from new experiences from growing that monkey voice was implanted in you when you really needed it. When you had to have a warning voice to say, you put your eye out with that, you'll break your neck. You'll catch your death of a cold. And it has a hundred tools up its hairy sleeves to keep you in check and on the reservation, it can make you panic. It can make you beat yourself up. It can make you lash out at those around you. It can make you freeze and suck your thumb. This is what happens when your dream first meets reality. A rude awakening. You feel shocked, you feel hopeless, you feel humiliated. You feel blind to the path ahead. And the monkey says, see, this is why you haven't done this before, because you can't do it. The monkey says, stop now, stop the pain, crawl back on shore. Go back to where you were. The sense of failure spreads beyond the task at hand, this particular challenge, the monk uses this opportunity to tell you what a failure you've always been at so many things throughout your life at every new effort you ever undertaken. The monkey of course, glides over all the things you have accomplished. All the battles you have one, since you took your very first step at 11 months, the monkey edits your life down to show you that you have done nothing but shit since birth, you cry yourself to sleep. Wake up the sun shining. You are still you. But now you've learned one lesson that lesson might be, if you try and fail, it hurts that lesson might be, if you try and fail, it hurts and you should never ever try again that the pain is temporary, that you can weather it, that you are now a day older, a day wiser. And that challenge is still there to be conquered. You regroup, you uncap your pen, you charge once more and this time or the next time or the 10th time after that, you suddenly feel a shift. You look down at your sweaty paper and one part of one corner of one Richard drawing. Gleans without hope. It's good. That bit there. Through all the mangled notes, one chord rings true. Um, it's all the collapsed and burned cakes and pies. One crumb of one cookie tastes sweet. You can do it. You've seen the first shred of evidence that you don't utterly suck to the core of your marrow. Now that glimmer of proof may actually have been there in your first or second drawing or concerto cookie, but you missed it for shock. The monkey dealt you that first brutal wake-up call made you temporarily blind and deaf. When he first humble and crashed to the ground, your head is ringing. Your nose is bloodied and you can't see straight. You can't assess your work. You can only cringe and cover your head. But when the day comes that your vision clears your objectivity returns, you'll discover the value in what you've made, the beauty, the reward. And now you can clutch onto that one sign of hope. You can continue even as you blunder through more mistakes, more beautiful educational mistakes that teach you lessons galore. With every ham-fisted stroke and that greenish started off it wasn't wrong. Even though getting to that castle on the Hill, as hard as growing, then you gripped, you can look over your shoulder and see that you are getting higher. And so we're walking through clouds. That dream remains essential because it is the thing that keeps you going. Especially when the going gets tough. The monkey is still hanging on for dear life. He still Clausi your shoulders and ears as you struggle forward, but his grip is weakening. It's the voice is dimming. He is wrong. You can do it. If you will do it, you just need to begin and keep on beginning. And discover that it's the journey that is their award. The dream is just to keep you moving forward, a Mirage, a fantasy it's the journey that makes you stronger and smarter and better and happier. Now, what would you like to begin? Thanks for joining me today. I'll make something new for you again, next week. I'm Danny Gregory.