Drop that fear…

#MyThursdayThing

Have you ever paid attention when a child is drawing something that they see or imagine? Their version of a face, a chair, a house, a car or any scene from their imagination? Have you ever noticed the bold uninhibited lines? Their detailing, the visual stories? When was the last time you saw a child draw? Those who have kids at home or in extended family/circle would have seen a lot of art from kids, I am sure.

 I experience kids’ art very closely. For one, I have my nieces and a nephew in my family (all less than 10 years of age) but more than that I have more than a dozen kids I teach art to, twice a week.  I see their responses to an idea and how they take it to another level. Their stories and then their colours add magic to their drawing sheet.  It is sheer pleasure, a visual treat to work with them. There is a famous quote from Picasso, “Every child is a born artist” and I so believe in it. However, as kids progress in the education system, most of them shy away from the drawing that they so uninhibitedly did a few years ago. Somehow, I feel, the right and wrong, good and bad, this way and that way come in between. But the one reason I see—perhaps the single most important cause—for children to abandon art in general or drawing in particular is fear of mistakes and a loss of spontaneity.

I realised this even more so in the last two weeks, when I happened to attend a spontaneous drawing workshop by artist Gopika Nath. The 10-day workshop was conducted on WhatsApp and had exercises which were aimed at making one shed inhibition and experiment with different techniques and mediums and tools. For example, we had to draw to music with eyes closed, or we had to see video clips of dance performances and draw quick one-second sketches or draw directly with a pen without lifting  the pen from the paper, even draw with different tools other than pen/pencil/brush, like a jhadutilli (a twig from a broom) or a stone or a piece of cardboard. Whatever one fancied, one could use. The most interesting for me was drawing with the non-dominant hand and blind contour drawings.

This meant drawing with a pen directly with my left hand and also drawing without looking at the paper and without lifting my pen. These were timed exercises and I had such fun. The results were childlike and bold. Drawing directly with pen on my sketch book gave me such confidence that I had never experienced before despite drawing and sketching now for many years. The one thing that this exercise enabled in me was letting go of the fear of that line on paper. Whatever came out on the paper was spontaneous and actually the result of eye and hand coordination. The mind was asked to shut up and it was the intuition at work. We were asked to focus on what we felt when attempting the exercise. I felt one with children I teach. Suddenly I experienced their simplicity, their freedom, their intuition and their uninhibited bold strokes.

About a decade ago, I had attended a workshop on drawing and sketching with Mark Warner, someone who is considered the best in teaching the same, and I remember how he had asked us to attempt similar exercises then. I had loved the exercises even then, but I wasn’t awed by my own results.

I probably laughed at them and never saw what they were intended to make me see. Maybe I was not ready to let go of my fears or maybe I didn’t pay much attention to the lines and forms and feelings and just laughed at the crooked result. Maybe I was too caught up in the right and wrong or maybe the time had not come. I did not understand then, what I understood now. The importance of letting go of fear, the importance of attempting that which one is unsure of. The importance of discovering new lines and forms and expressions, the importance of introducing new things like these into your daily practice and then the confidence rubs off on all the different works that one attempts.

From the kids whom I teach and from the last 10 days of work, I learnt a whole new way to deal with my ideas. I learnt a lot about art, drawing, spontaneity, myself and my responses, but most of all I realised that anybody can draw.

If you can see, you can draw. All we need is to lift that pen from our table, take that paper and just draw what we see. Leave the judgement of right and wrong aside. Get into a childlike frame of mind and just draw. Sometimes with left hand, sometimes with right, sometimes without seeing the paper, sometimes to the tune of music and sometimes abandon that pen and just pick whatever you can find, dip in some ink or paints and just draw.

I am thankful to my mentors and my students (my children) for helping me finally see what it takes to draw like a child… Just drop that fear!

©Shubhra
#8  July 30th, 2020

#MyThursdayThing will be published every Thursday, on my blog https://shubhrathoughts.blogspot.com/  and shared on my social media handles.