40 Days of Art: Pride
Mar. 12th, 2011 10:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tealinJust a short word, today, on a matter which, in my own personal timestream at least, is directly related the the previous post.
I have always drawn, as long as I can remember, but for many years it was just what I had managed to teach myself, usually by doodling around, rarely from any sort of instructional book. This 'construction' thing crossed my path a couple times and I might have seen some rough drawings that used it, but I resisted employing it myself for some time. I drew perfectly well already! I had been complimented on my artwork by several adults! Construction is for lesser mortals!
Imagine my surprise when I finally bent my stiff neck and acquiesced to starting a drawing this way and, within a matter of weeks, found my skill had practically doubled.
I am a child of the 80s, and as such, I have not remained untouched by The Karate Kid, despite never having seen the movie. I knew three things about martial arts: 1) Wax on, wax off. 2) If you were good you earned a blackbelt. 3) Every dojo had a sign near the entrance that said 'Leave your ego by the door.' Once I finally learned what an ego was I understood this to mean that you had to deny your sense of pride and self-righteousness if you wanted to learn anything, and this counted for more than just karate. I can't count the number of times I've heard 'leave your ego by the door' echoing in my head when I found myself being asked to do something offensively rudimentary in an art class.
The thing is, when you leave your ego by the door, you aren't leaving it there to pick up again on the way out, like an umbrella. You leave it by the door like you leave a newspaper on the train, because if you have to carry it around the rest of the day it'll be an encumbrance, and you have to throw it out at some point anyway. As soon as you think you've 'got it' and are doing pretty well for yourself, you stop learning. It's not just a matter of abandoning whatever self-importance you might have in order to begin your training, you have to keep abandoning it, if not actively running away from it, or else you will fossilize. As the great teacher Moist von Lipwig once said: Always keep moving – you never know who's going to catch you up. If you let yourself get comfortable, those who are still dynamic will take your place and then surpass you. If you do not forcibly reject your ego, it will get a sound pummelling, and which hurts more? (I am currently dealing with this a bit myself at the moment; despite my experience I still fall in this trap.) This is not a one-time piece of advice, this is something you have to remind yourself of, and in many cases struggle with, your whole life.
Now, on the flip side, it is healthy and beneficial to have some degree of appreciation for your own work, within reason. If you look at your work and believe in your heart of hearts that this is as good as it gets and everyone should recognize your genius, you will never improve. But if you look at it and, seeing only the flaws, believe yourself to be the lowliest failure that ever crawled the earth, you will not be encouraged to do any more, as art brings only pain. By all means, recognise what you do well, so that you can set aside those skills and spend your precious time only trying to fix the ones that aren't up to scratch. If you do a drawing you like, allow yourself to like it! Just don't stop there.
In my experience, the most talented and accomplished artists I've ever known are the most humble. They see how much talent there is out there, and how many artists there are ahead of them in any number of different ways, and keep shooting for the stars – that's how they got to be the great ones in the first place.
I have always drawn, as long as I can remember, but for many years it was just what I had managed to teach myself, usually by doodling around, rarely from any sort of instructional book. This 'construction' thing crossed my path a couple times and I might have seen some rough drawings that used it, but I resisted employing it myself for some time. I drew perfectly well already! I had been complimented on my artwork by several adults! Construction is for lesser mortals!
Imagine my surprise when I finally bent my stiff neck and acquiesced to starting a drawing this way and, within a matter of weeks, found my skill had practically doubled.
I am a child of the 80s, and as such, I have not remained untouched by The Karate Kid, despite never having seen the movie. I knew three things about martial arts: 1) Wax on, wax off. 2) If you were good you earned a blackbelt. 3) Every dojo had a sign near the entrance that said 'Leave your ego by the door.' Once I finally learned what an ego was I understood this to mean that you had to deny your sense of pride and self-righteousness if you wanted to learn anything, and this counted for more than just karate. I can't count the number of times I've heard 'leave your ego by the door' echoing in my head when I found myself being asked to do something offensively rudimentary in an art class.
The thing is, when you leave your ego by the door, you aren't leaving it there to pick up again on the way out, like an umbrella. You leave it by the door like you leave a newspaper on the train, because if you have to carry it around the rest of the day it'll be an encumbrance, and you have to throw it out at some point anyway. As soon as you think you've 'got it' and are doing pretty well for yourself, you stop learning. It's not just a matter of abandoning whatever self-importance you might have in order to begin your training, you have to keep abandoning it, if not actively running away from it, or else you will fossilize. As the great teacher Moist von Lipwig once said: Always keep moving – you never know who's going to catch you up. If you let yourself get comfortable, those who are still dynamic will take your place and then surpass you. If you do not forcibly reject your ego, it will get a sound pummelling, and which hurts more? (I am currently dealing with this a bit myself at the moment; despite my experience I still fall in this trap.) This is not a one-time piece of advice, this is something you have to remind yourself of, and in many cases struggle with, your whole life.
Now, on the flip side, it is healthy and beneficial to have some degree of appreciation for your own work, within reason. If you look at your work and believe in your heart of hearts that this is as good as it gets and everyone should recognize your genius, you will never improve. But if you look at it and, seeing only the flaws, believe yourself to be the lowliest failure that ever crawled the earth, you will not be encouraged to do any more, as art brings only pain. By all means, recognise what you do well, so that you can set aside those skills and spend your precious time only trying to fix the ones that aren't up to scratch. If you do a drawing you like, allow yourself to like it! Just don't stop there.
In my experience, the most talented and accomplished artists I've ever known are the most humble. They see how much talent there is out there, and how many artists there are ahead of them in any number of different ways, and keep shooting for the stars – that's how they got to be the great ones in the first place.
