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February 16, 2005
the roller coaster
When I was at college a life drawing tutor explained to us the Roller Coaster of creativity. “You’ll do a good drawing - often surprising yourself,” he said looking directly at me. “Then you’ll do a bad drawing.”
The thinking goes like this: you work hard at drawing and look hard and eventually see, and the result is a good drawing. So naturally you feel good about this and a degree of confidence seeps in. So that when you next begin to draw you’re feeling more confident than hitherto; so you don’t look quite as hard, you don’t see as much and you produce a bad drawing. Your confidence goes, you look much harder the next time, you see more: you do a good drawing. And so it goes on.
After many years of this and trying to tame the roller coaster, with a degree of success it has to be said, I seem to have flipped tracks and am now riding the roller coaster backwards.
I push some paint around feeling fantastic [see previous post] and then, instead of feeling confident I feel terrified. How did I do that? [because I still don’t know how to bring all the ingredients together at the same time, and don’t even know what all the ingredients are – and when I think I’ve found them they change, such is life I guess. ] Anyway… so, after the elation of some delicious painting, I then struggle to do any kind of painting or drawing, feeling I will inevitably fall flat on my face.
The balance is to maintain a feeling of directness, of spontaneity, while at the same time employing a wealth of skill. A painting or drawing shouldn’t look forced, in my opinion – and it is after all only my opinion.
Posted by john at February 16, 2005 10:40 AM
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