drawing

I’m not exactly afraid of the blank page…

I have heard a lot of writers and artists talk about the terror or intimidation they feel when facing the blank page.

I get what they mean but my challenges with getting started don’t really manifest that way.

A blank page is full of possibilities, I could put anything on there!

I get stuck in pre-draft mode though, imagining that I need to do a lot more thinking than I actually do before beginning a project.

I’ve learned that there is no point in my thinking process when I’ll say ‘Time to get this down on paper!’ Instead, I have to pick a time and get started, even if I fill my paper with doodles or my screen with rambly text.

Sooner or later (usually sooner) something will click and I’ll have a place to start.

Then I start (literally or metaphorically) moving that idea closer or further from the other ideas I have and the action of moving that idea around helps the others fall into place.

But getting myself to that point where I will commit something to paper or to screen can be a challenge so I have started ‘ruining’ my page* to help me get started.

On the screen, I’ll type (or dictate) the question I’m trying to address or I’ll copy a quote or I’ll type what I *don’t* want to say about this topic an why I don’t want to say it.

On the page, I’ll make some weird headings or if it is a drawing, I’ll add a line that has nothing to do with what I’m trying to create. (The line below is in ink because I am just playing, I might do it in pencil for a drawing for a public purpose.)

a top-down view of a notebook, a silver-coloured teapot, a cup of tea, and a spoon on a wooden table.?
Image description: a top-down photo of a notebook, a silver-coloured teapot, a cup of tea, and a spoon on a wooden table. The cup is decorated with tentacles on the outside, and small drawings of people clinging to the edge on the inside. The notebook has a thin, curvy black line drawn from side to side on the open page. The line looks like a very sloppy W.

Once I have ‘ruined’ my page, I find it a lot easier to break out of thinking mode and into doing mode.

And my friends and coaching clients who are intimidated by the blank page find the same thing.

Something about getting those first marks out of the way helps me (and them) get to the next steps.

I highly recommend ruining your work.

*I teach a workshop called ‘start by ruining it’ – it’s big fun!

Words and Pictures

Yesterday, while listening to the podcast ‘The Antique Shop,’ by Ghostly Thistle media, I had a great idea for a series of stories.

My plan is to draw a series of objects and then write a story about each one.

I started by practicing drawing bottles.

A photo of drawings and painting of a variety of bottles.
Image description: a photo of a coil-bound sketchbook with white paper featuring some rough pencil sketches of a variety of bottles on the right hand side and some drawings of bottles painted with watercolours on the left.

Drawing and Listening

I spend a lovely part of Sunday afternoon drawing while I was listening to the audiobook Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts by Kate Racculia.

I highly recommend both.

Two drawings in a sketchbook, one of overlapping geometric shapes one of three mushrooms on a hill.
Image description: two drawings on a sketchbook page. The top one is a bunch of overlapping, patterned geometric shapes in a variety of colours against a green background. The bottom is three toadstools/mushrooms, one gold with a pink stem, one silver with a black stem and one black with a gold stem, all with circular or semi-circular patterns on their caps and stems. They are growing from a patterned green hill with blue sky in the background.

Thumbnail Drawings

I took a fantastic workshop today about writing and illustrating micro fiction and I got a lot of things out of it (more on that in a future post.)

One of the key things I learned was that I was conflating the idea of sketches and thumbnails.

Thumbnail drawings are a series of tiny drawings that have little to no detail, just an idea of objects and composition.

Sketches are a draft version of your final drawing that expand on one of your thumbnails.

This may be old news to everyone else but, all along, I was thinking of a sketch as the brainstorming stage, as the earliest visual.

The fact that there is a even more preliminary stage of drawing is marvellously helpful to me.

Here are a few of my thumbnail drawings from today:

A series of small drawings of scenes inspired by the ‘Mother Hubbard’ nursery rhyme.
Image description: thumbnail drawings of the ‘Mother Hubbard’ nursery rhyme. 6 small squares on white paper that depict an empty cupboard, a woman and a dog looking into an empty cupboard, a sad dog holding a bowl, a woman holding a dog in her lap,,a faint drawing of a woman saying ‘oh no’ while a dog lies at her feet and a dog on its hind legs carrying a hobo bundle on a stick.

Surprised by my own drawing

I drew this yesterday.

Image description: a drawing of a bunch of half-oval shapes close together, a bit like multi-coloured kernels of corn on the cob but with one white ‘kernel’ with a smiling face and big eyes in the middle.

My plan was to make a bunch of faces, one on each shape.

But once I had coloured almost all the shapes, I couldn’t decide what colour to make that last white bump.

That’s when I realized that that was where the face was going to go, that it was a little creature peeking out of a hiding spot, not a bunch of faces at all.

Weird, hey?