I can just get to work
I started doodling. And it’s maybe changing my life?
A lot of things have come together in my brain recently, that have changed the way I think about myself and my abilities.
I have never been good at drawing. That just seemed like an obvious truth. I also have terrible penmanship. I really wanted to be one of those girls in school with the big loopy script. Or the ones who could change their handwriting at will! One girl in high school told me she was changing her w’s to a cooler style. I was thinking, you get a say in how you write your w’s????
And then I was thinking about teaching crochet. See, I hold my hook like I hold a screwdriver. But another very common way is to hold the hook like a pencil. And I tried to teach myself to hold my own hook like that, in case I need to demonstrate something to someone who holds their hook like a pencil. And I can’t. I was able to teach myself to crochet left handed holding it like a screwdriver, but I cannot do it with my dominant hand in a pencil grip. My fingers don’t work like that.
So I have always had it hard wired in my brain that I am bad at visual art. And I have all of this evidence because my fingers don’t work like that. I am not saying I thought I was bad at art. But bad at anything that required me to take a 3 dimensional view and render it in 2 dimensions. In fact, oddly enough, I sometimes look at cartoons of animals to create a crochet pattern. In other words, I *can* do the opposite and take a 2 dimensional drawing and render it in 3 dimensions. I am great at knowing how string moves. I am a great fiber artist. I can knit and crochet and make friendship bracelets. The hardest part of embroidery for me is the drawing of the image.
But then I started doodling. Social media has been feeding me a steady diet of doodling content for a few months now. For a long time it was just satisfying to watch. But eventually I wanted to try. And I thought it was about the colors. Because most of these videos are so gorgeous and colorful. But I am actually pretty obsessed with plain black ink on the page.
And then one of these videos said that a lot of creativity is not the result of being excited. It comes after repetition after repetition when you’re finally bored because you have made all of the obvious choices.
So I have been making spider webs. And other fun stuff. But I keep coming back to spider webs. Over and over. Line drawings, or exploration of patterns and repeats, whatever. Just do it again.
And it has started to make some sense to me. It’s just shapes. And also, drawing is not an innate gift. Some people have a natural talent, but it can be learned. There are teachable techniques. Which I suppose I have always known, but not believed. Not for me, anyway. And MY FINGERS STILL DON’T WORK LIKE THAT! I make so many mistakes. Miss so many lines. But I’m learning how to use them, to incorporate them, to hide them, to just accept them.
I have to know in my heart and head that this place of ever evolving self acceptance that leads me to these new places of self discovery, that leads to deeper acceptance, and so on, is based on 20 cumulative years of choosing not to eat drug foods when shit got real. It’s 20 years of working through difficult situations by experiencing the pain, the disappointment, the discomfort, the stress, the joy, the excitement, the love. 20 years of eating three meals a day with Life in between. It’s 20 years of not being ashamed of myself for not being able to stop eating.
Not being ashamed of myself has done wonders for my art.
I don’t have to be a visual artist. But I like that I don’t have to not be either. I don’t have to label it either way as part of my identity. And if the time comes when my doodling expands and visual art is part or all of what I want to create, I can go in without thinking I am “bad at” something. I can just get to work.
