Art is a way of knowing what it is we actually believe. –Pat Allen, artist and art therapist

Hints and Tips for Art Making

I do not claim to be an artist. Although I have enjoyed dabbling in art since my first encounter with crayons, I do not create works of art fit for galleries or even other people’s living rooms. That said, I believe that art making is powerful for anyone, whether you call yourself an artist or not.

So maybe my perspective is useful because I don’t have a key to the magic kingdom. What I have is a desire to spend time making art, a commitment to following through, and a small collection of art materials. I can tell what has been helpful for me, a passionate amateur.

Become “Image Aware”

I consider this to be the equivalent of “pre-writing” when working with story. You aren’t yet doing art, but you are paying attention to images. What are the images that are important to you? We all have them. When I look around my office, I see a small, stone sea turtle, a stuffed hedgehog, several Olivia children’s books, along with a stuffed Olivia doll. My office is painted a deep, soothing brown I like to call “roasted coffee,” and there are lots deep red accents, like the color of my I Am Story logo. There are small framed photographs of my grandmothers, my sisters, and myself as a child. Around my neck, I wear a silver necklace with a small silver sea star, or starfish. This image has become almost a talisman for me, and it shows up often in my work. In fact, I am often amazed at how often the images and colors I see around me show up in my art.

Look around your living environment and notice what you have displayed: photographs? prints? collectibles? What colors reflect who you are? One of the best resources for this exercise is a book by art therapist Cathy Malchiodi called Art Therapy Sourcebook. Malchiodi gives a few exercises (on page 57 of her book) to expand your awareness of what images are important to you and why. A few excerpts:

Pick out a part of your home or work environment where you spend most of your time. Look around at the images in that space . . . and make a short list of the ones that catch your eye. Notice if there are any particular colors, forms, textures, or shapes that you see within this space; list those below.

Take some time to write down a few phrases about each image or object. Try to note why you like each one.

Choose one image or object in your environment and look at it for a few minutes. Close your eyes and image what the image or object would look like if you could transform it into a work of art, such as a painting or sculture.

Keep a Visual Journal

In the words of artist Kelly Brown in her blog Art Journaling as a Creative Process, “art journaling combines the written language and the visual language to give a greater breadth of expression and understanding. In essence art journaling is the combination of art making and journaling with the intention to create greater insight and understanding of the self and others.” It helps you to explore your own visual imagery (see above), and work with ideas in a non-verbal way. For ideas on starting and keeping an art journal, visit the Art From Within section on this site.

See Beyond the Symbols

Just as we develop metaphors to explain complicated, abstract ideas to ourselves–i.e., Shakespeare’s “It is the east, and Juliet is the sun”–we develop symbols as we explore complicated visual images. For example, two golden arches now represent a fast food restaurant. Three dots of color–green on top, yellow in the middle, red on the bottom–become a traffic signal. The problem is, we often resort to well-known symbols when we try to draw or paint or sculpt, which may prevent us from see what is actually in front of us. For example, instead of seeing an actual human eye, we might see a perfect almond shape with a round circle in the middle. When we get stuck on the symbol, we loose the ability to see. For an idea on how to get beyond this, read “Fractals and Fresh Eyes”.

Process, Not Product (or learn to silence your inner art critic)

Everyone has an inner art critic. It often carries the voice of someone in your past–an elementary school teacher, a mean kid who sat next to you in art class. It’s often your own voice, the critical, haranguing part of you that says whatever you create should be beautiful, display-worthy. It should match your couch. But to focus on the end product is to miss the point. It is the process of creating art that has the most to teach us. One of my favorite writers on creativity, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, says that “when we are involved in [a creative pursuit], we feel that we are living more fully than during the rest of life.” Living fully is the goal, not having great art to hang on our walls. That said, I have hung the collage that is pictured at the top of this page on the wall of my office, not because I think it fits a great aesthetic standards, but because it is beautiful to me, and it reminds me of the joy I had creating it. For more information about that process, read “Finding A Way In.”

Play

Remember what it was like to be four years old with finger paints or a big stack of construction paper? Go there.

Small Assignments

One of my favorite books on the process of writing is Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott. It is both brilliant and funny, and a good read. To summarize, most people get stuck in the creative process because they either: (1) try to take on too much, or (2) try to make it too perfect, too soon. Her advice, therefore, can be boiled down to:

Give yourself small assignments; and
Write shitty first drafts (or, for artists) create shitty first sketches

These are her terms, by the way. The first is critical. Don’t take on such a huge assignment that it overwhelms you. Give yourself something you can complete in one sitting. Create one page in your art journal. Flip through magazines to collect interesting images. Draw a 3″x3″ box on a piece of paper and draw a small picture of your cat. Do one small thing.

The other piece of advice–”shitty first drafts”–is to be willing to be bad. Be willing to do lots of terrible drawings. Be willing to mix paint even if it turns out muddy. Most of the time, what keeps us from showing up for the process is the fear that we won’t create something wonderful (see above). But if the process is what you’re after, the product won’t matter, whether it is brilliant, pedestrian, or unbelievably terrible. Show up anyway. Make art anyway. Keep at it.

Work with Intention

When I start out to work on anything–a short story, a blog post, a painting–it helps me if I know why I’m doing it. What is my intention in setting out? Do I want to honor my mother on mother’s day? Recapture the house of my childhood? Figure out what I want to do for a living? Just holding the question in your mind forms an intention for your work and helps your brain select the information or images that will be help you meet that intention. And, as Cathy Malchiodi writes in The Art Therapy Sourcebook, intention gives purpose to your activity.

Working at something intentionally and with passion unlocks the creative process. You have to be willing to commit to the process, to stay with it, and to trust that it will unfold exactly as it should. (p. 73)

Try it. You’ll see what I mean.