“What happens that causes so many people to stop drawing? I think it has a lot to do with peer pressure. It’s hard enough growing up, and art is just one more thing that you can have out there for people to pick on – and that’s why so many of us stop, i think. Stubborn people like myself put up with years of being picked on – maybe because creative drive is that much stronger, I really don’t know. I think it has more to do with being stubborn.”
–Fred Gallagher (creator of Mega Tokyo)
^_^ Okies, so I totally agree! ^_^ Basically, I needed to post this quote from Fred Gallagher’s interview with The Pulse for no other reason than I liked what he said. It’s basically that which keeps me drawing. An individual can spend a life on art, trust me, I know! ^_~ Even though my path leads far away from art, the understanding, the mentality that fighting for art gives one, remains with me through it.
I listen to my best friend say she can’t draw. I listen to others say the same. And truthfully, they can’t because they say they can’t. Art is an expression of one’s self. Even if it’s realistic art, anime, what-have-you, it’s still your style, your drawings, your art. In art, the one thing you can never do is to allow others to criticize you and destroy your ideas and creations. They can never touch the actual art, but if you allow their words to trully affect you, your world is destroyed, your art no more. The creator must have faith in their art for that art to exist.
There is an unsaid standard. If it’s to be realistic, it must look photographic. And of course, variations on the like. My goal has always been to explain that art takes the form your subconscious dictates, not the other way around. Therefore, if you were to listen to what you can’t hear, to close your mind away from society’s rules, your art will formulate an original expression of yourself, and tell yourself what you trully need to hear.
Art is a dangerous thing. It can reveal to us what even we do not want to hear.
But if you don’t listen to it, if you always follow society, you will never achieve that unique individuality. Okay, so in a sense, this is obcenely difficult. But society blantantly destroys that pure uniqueness that all children are blessed with. To go against that tutelage as a much older individual, when you’ve had years of ritualistic originality-bashing, to be blunt, it’s almost impossible. You feel as though you are going against yourself, and in a sense, you are right. It’s helped to shape who you are. But there will always be that part of you that holds on to the uniqueness.
Remember those happy childhood days.
And then there is another side to the equation. Not only when you look at the art you do have, and it may even be good by public standards, you absolutely detest it. Usually this is because you still feel it does not meet to the standards. But also, if your self wants you to draw a certain way, and you can’t find that way it wants you to drawl, then you feel your art is inadequate. Art is a self-discovery, in any form that it takes. When it calls, heed to it, for your own peace of mind.
And we artists, that have drawn since the dawing of time, or pretty much since we could hold a marking utensil in hand, and still continue to draw figures and marks, doodles and plain nonsense at times, never stop. You’ll lose a part of you and later wonder what it is you need. Keep it close to your heart.
Children are lucky in many ways. They first understand what art means, they don’t need true dipictions to express themselves. Maybe they’re even wiser than we are. Teachers, a tree can be purple, or blue, or red, or black. The leaves can be yellow, or maroon. The sky can be gold or green. Anything is possible. They say the eye sees things that our mind can’t register. Who knows. Maybe that’s what children see. Or they’re just more creative than we. They haven’t had the years of sterilization that we older generations have. The ones who’s teachers gave us bad grades because our trees weren’t brown.
In essence, never give up on art. Incourage it in anyone you know. If Rosseau can paint distorted self-portraits and jungles of larger-than-life pansies and grassblades, if Jackson Pollock can sling paint on a canvas and call it art, then by God above, why do we humans feel we have to draw figures that must look as photographic as possible?
This obtuse cycle must be broken. If for no other reason than that children can grow up to believe in themselves.