I went back to school!

But not for a new degree or even in the traditional sense. I started taking a continuing education course on the fundamentals of drawing.

Why? Because it sounded fun and I missed the meditative state that drawing and painting used to bring me. I want to improve some art skills to help my career, yes, but more than that I want to get back in touch with things I loved to do during my school years.

I first experienced this “flow” state in art class. I chased that joy through high school and took any classes I could fit in, and even some summer classes. It was so freeing and calming that I actually considered following it into art school. Then I had a classmate absolutely uproot any of those dreams by giving me a harsh comment that made me question everything. “Do you ever actually do art outside of the class projects?”

It was a poorly phrased question asked by a mean girl, but it made me truly look at what I was trying to do and why I wanted to do it. I wanted to go to art school because I loved how art made me feel. But, I wasn’t as “arty” as some of the other kids. So I chose a passion that followed me no matter where I went and no matter what school projects were presented. I chose writing.

I could have kept writing and gone to art school, or I could have kept doing art while studying composition and rhetoric. But I didn’t. I let art fall to the wayside, viewing it as something I had faked my way into liking. That part of me suffered from my “all or nothing” attitude that I am constantly trying to keep in check.

But…the way I felt while creating still haunts me.

I get a lot of that same meditative “flow” state with writing, especially when I get really into a draft. I’ll end up sitting in a coffee shop or at my desk for hours to keep following my characters. This has happened since I first learned you could write stories — from fanfiction on NeoPets in middle school (yes, don’t judge) to my current squirreled away projects on my google drive that get opened during slow moments at work. But writing always took me away from my thoughts and away from what was right in front of me.

Drawing is a little different. With drawing, especially with this class, I am focusing on an object in front of me. It is more rooted in being mindful and seeing. And it’s helping my writing.

The firs day of class our instructor described creating in a way that I had heard before, but never had click into place. He explained that to be an artist in any media you have to be ready to get the general shape first and keep going back and back and back to fix things to slowly make it look more and more like what you see, whether it’s right in front of you or in your head. It’s not so much about getting it right the first time, but having the endurance to keep making changes until it’s the closest version possible to what you want.

For drawing, this means putting down the basic shape and proportions of whatever you’re referencing. It doesn’t LOOK like the thing in front of you yet, but it gives the IDEA of what it is. Much like how Neil Gaiman has said you have to pile the sand into the sandbox before you can start building the sand castle — the sand being your ideas into the sandbox of your first draft. Writing even came up as a good comparison during class. You don’t write a first draft and call it good.

Even though it’s a basics course and I’ve learned a lot of this a long time ago, I’m still learning. We’ll see how the rest of the course goes, but right now I’m loving it for its simplicity. I’m reconnecting with my creativity bit by bit.

Happy Creating!

Rachel