Art making teaches us how to leap into the unknown

There was a time when first starting out on my art journey that I “had no ideas.” I didn’t know what to create next. These days, I have the opposite problem. Too many ideas crowd by head space. But you know what? Both lead to the same problem. Whether I approach the blank page with “no ideas” or “too many ideas”, I don’t know what to create next.

Intellectually I understand that it all comes from the same place—fear.

Fear of the blank page. What will I fill it with? What choices will I make? Will they be the “right” ones?

Bah! I have to catch myself in my own game. I find myself forgetting what I know to be true: “too many ideas” is a tricky cover for the same fear of not being good enough to pull off any any idea.

And the longer I’m paralyzed by fear of choosing, the longer I don’t choose at all and that just suits my Self Preservation Brain (Inner Critic, Lizard brain, whatever you want to call it) just fine.

Can you relate? Most creative people can, I think.

It’s fear of the unknown, really—and we humans don’t like the unknown much. It is after all the nature of our existence. We don’t know what will happen to us in our lives from day to day, year to year, because it hasn’t happened yet (and so much is out of our control). And we certainly don’t know what will happen when we die.

But somehow we have to overcome our fear and fully live anyway.

Art making teaches us how to take the leap into the unknown. We don’t know what will happen when we start creating something because there is nothing there yet. Except fear.

It feels like it is up to us to create something worthwhile, whatever that means to us, and if you’re like me self-doubt kicks in big time—I don’t know if I can pull it off!…quickly covered over by paralyzed and confused…I just have too many ideas! I can’t choose.

But no. The unknown is where art plays—and actually, it is quite mysterious how ideas form and then turn into things.

Do I even control what I create? Far less than I think.

So the way to create anyway—in the face of fear—is to just start. A simple little contour drawing like this one is one of my favorite ways in. Choose something in front of my eyes. Use a pen (no pencil and no eraser) and start drawing what I see (keeping my eyes off the paper as much as possible).

Because—unable to perfect this kind of drawing, there’s less at stake. It’s going to be wonky.

Because just starting always gets the ideas flowing.

Because then, the fear dies down and that mysterious process of creating takes over.

And then? Who knows what will happen next…it’s unknown.

Where art plays.

Where it’s fun, but not always successful, but sometimes joyfully so! And often surprising.

I love the surprises. Like this flower. The vase is so wonky—but that rose?

All I did was follow the lines with my eyes and my pen…and it appeared. Amazing, really.