Giving Myself Permission to Make Bad Art

This week I’m turning 20 and everyone has been asking me what I want for my birthday. A question that I have never known the answer to in my twenty years of life.

All photos from me

When I was younger the answer was obvious to everyone else: art supplies. Usually, the kind that came in plastic briefcases filled with waxy colored pencils and dried out markers or something related to whatever hobby I’m hyper-fixated on. When I was younger, I was always grateful and used them to the fullest, but throughout the years I have lost the motivation and now I’m left with more brushes than I can use and supplies that I'm too scared to work with.

Somewhere in my closet there's a sketchbook that hasn't been opened in years. My guitar callouses have long since disappeared. Boxes of craft supplies sit on a shelf collecting dust. The hobbies I once loved have quietly slipped out of my daily routine. I feel like for the past 20 years I haven’t created anything meaningful. I’m turning 20 and I feel as though I have made nothing to prove for my accomplishments.

But there isn’t a lack of creativity or inspiration, so what is happening? For a long time now, I have experienced the phenomenon called an art block. Every creative experiences this in different ways, whether its authors with their writing or fine artists with their paintings. The art block does not discriminate. There's a period of time where you just feel like you can’t create anything. You feel like you have lost your skills, or that you are rusty and untalented; but that really is not the case.

The biggest misconception about art block is that it means a loss of talent. That if you were truly creative or talented, you would always be creating. That the lack of production means something is wrong with you. An art block does not mean a lack of creativity and talent, but a lack of confidence. It's about fear. We have a fear in our head that our ideas that brew in our head won't be perceived well in the real world. We are our own worst critics and the critical voice in our head stops us before we even get started.

Kids don’t have this problem.

When we were kids, we made terrible art. We drew lopsided houses and stick figures with huge heads. We all remember the sun we drew in a corner with whatever shade of yellow crayon we could find and called it a masterpiece. So where is that mindset now? Kids make art subconsciously. They don't worry about the right proportions or technique. They just create. And somewhere along the way to adulthood, we have lost that naive freedom and traded it for self-awareness. Our ability to produce art without judgement.

Bad art is a part of the process. Our sketches are not going to be perfect, every chord is not going to have the right tone, every draft is not going to be exactly right on the first go. We look at artists on social media and exhibits that only publish their best work and compare our entire process to it. You don't see the pile of bad sketches that create every good one or the number of times a paper has been reiterated before being published. We compare our rough drafts to someone's perfectly polished draft. Bad art is not a sign of failure; it's just a part of the process.

Now looking back at the years I've spent hesitant to "ruin" my sketchbook pages with bad sketches or not wasting my good art supplies, I realize that I have fully stopped creating. I've felt so scared about turning 20 because I haven't created anything good, but now that I'm almost there, I wish I just created more. I've lost so many ideas to time and the fear of starting. It doesn't matter if my ideas are bad when they are on paper, as long as they are on there.

So, this week, I'm going to start my 20's by opening my sketchbook. I'll waste the good art supplies, and I'll draw the sun in the corner just because I can. I will create, not to create something beautiful or perfect, but because I miss creating.