Art Basics - What If I Make a Mistake?

After drawing and painting for 20 weeks, one of my adult beginning art students expected that she should now know all the answers and be able to execute every brush stroke and make every color with expertise. She felt a complete failure every time she came up against a painting challenge.

Why do we expect to show up for a 2 1/2 hour class once a week and then be able to execute a painting or drawing worthy of being hung in a museum? We forget that the great masters drew and painted everyday! They didn't magically jump out of bed and become and artist. They worked at it! Learning to draw and paint requires practice just like learning to play the piano. Does anyone expect to play Carnegie Hall after only 20 weeks of piano lessons? I started drawing and painting in 1969. Not gifted or talented, I certainly was not considered an artist. My saving grace was that I was so bad I could only get better.

In my long, accidental journey of becoming an artist, I took a life painting class. Our model was drop dead gorgeous. I expected my painting of him to reflect that. With my skill level I was expecting a lot! The class had 16 students and the teacher did not do much "teaching." If you were a beginner, you were left alone to figure things out. You showed up and painted - or, in my case, fumbled around in the dark. We had this gorgeous model for 3 sessions. In that time I could not capture his skin tone nor his essence. The more beautiful that I tried to paint this man - the more I made him look like a monkey. Humiliated, I felt that I had totally failed. However, I am extremely stubborn and determined so I just had to keep trying.

Our next model appeared for another 3 sessions and I had an epiphany!! I saw my hand "painting" our new model. It seemed to be working independently of me. It seemed to know what it was doing! At that moment, I realized that I could now paint this model because of the mistakes that I had made with my last painting. It was all the struggling with the previous painting that made this new painting a success!

This was a life-changing realization! I was learning - not failing. I had to do it wrong before I could do it right. That is how we develop skills. Our right brains ( the problem solving side) need to be presented with problems so that they may then develop skills to solve these problems. Anything requiring problem solving is about the process - not the end result. It is what we learn on the journey that is important. Drawing and painting are journeys. When we reach the end of the painting or drawing there is nothing more but to start again.

I discovered that, with this new wisdom, I no longer beat myself up every time I made a mistake. I now understood that I would figure things out eventually and that there was nothing that I could not paint if I gave myself the time to make the mistakes.

We don't know all the answers before we start a painting or drawing. Every drawing or painting that we do is a new learning experience. That is one of the wonderful things about art - we will never stop learning and we will always be challenged.

By the way, when that gorgeous model came back for another three sessions, I painted him like a pro and sold the painting. I've been happily solving painting problems ever since. - Kathy