In the last newsletter, we chatted about FACING UNCERTAINTY, and trying to find joy even when the future is so completely unknown. Uncertainty is everywhere. Relationship uncertainty, health uncertainty, financial uncertainty, political uncertainty. There’s even uncertainty in our creative practice.
The very act of creativity is an uncertainty in itself. We may have a plan in mind for a new painting, but we have no way of knowing how it’s really going to turn out. Maybe your dog bumps into your arm while you’re painting and your brush spits out a bright blue streak where you didn’t intend. Maybe you can’t quite seem to figure out how to sketch your character in a certain pose. Or maybe you create exactly the illustration you had in mind, and you just don’t love it as much as you thought you would.
All this uncertainty means that creativity requires COURAGE. Courage to step out of our comfort zones, step into uncertainty, and make something anyway. The courage to face the possibility that we might not like what we make.
Some of you may know that I’ve been going through my Nurture workbook again with a new intention: to create one piece of art every day using my old scraps of paper and any medium I’d like for the purpose of deepening my love for my creativity and showing up consistently for it. Today, I decided to create an ink and watercolor illustration of a whale, and let me tell ya’, it was a STRUGGLE. I couldn’t seem to figure out the pose (mostly due to a lack of knowledge about whale anatomy 😂). I had to resketch it multiple times, my eraser made icky streaks all over the paper, I did battle with the watercolors, and in the end it just wasn’t what I really wanted it to be…
And that’s okay. Even though the process was frustrating at times, I still had fun exploring with my dip pen and watercolors. I still learned. I still grew as an artist. And most importantly, I mustered up the courage to see the painting through to the end. Because sometimes creativity isn’t about making something beautiful; it’s about having the courage to make something.
If you’ve been struggling with uncertainty, I recently made a YouTube video that’s just for you!