Shedding the Inner Critic

We have to treat ourselves better.

Will we ever find that ease we dream of - the one where we wake, every day,
a bright vessel brimful of inspiration? Anticipating the siren-call of the canvas, so
magnetic in a way. Brushes and paint are drawn to it. We don’t have to think.
This art makes itself. We are a conduit, a mother-father of pigment children. 

Yes - I dream of such things.

There’s not a day when I don’t consider this. Art has weight, and it weighs on us.
Our arms grow heavy even as we contemplate the first line. Fear is a big part of it.

Fear that we’ll be found lacking – not by others, but by the inner bully-child.
Younger, bitter selves that stand at our shoulders muttering obscenities and abuse.

“That is utter shit,” he/she says. “You’re wasting everybody’s time. Who gives a
crap about you? What good is this? Why are you still doing this? The world burns,
and melts, and children are killed. And still you spend your waking hours trying to
give precious meaning to this testosterone-fueled drivel! You can’t draw. You can’t
do anything. Give up. Stop now, while there’s still time…”

There’s barely a creator I know who doesn’t treat themself worse than ANYBODY
ELSE would ever treat them. 

And then – to dare show it, this cruelly battered work! To release it into the world,
where surely it will be likewise mauled?

The reality – bar the auspices of subjectivity, and the pointless cruelties of the
modern troll – is that our art fares much better in the real world than we generally
imagine or hope. Because for the vast majority what we do is like magic. It’s a form
of alchemy, creating new realities born of deft penmanship, a sensitive slip of clay,
a surprising flurry of words.

We ask our worst critics to represent us - ourselves!

These journals are now a huge part of my work, and there’s good reason for that:

Authenticity.

What I’m trying to do is genuine, and it comes from a place of knowledge and
experience. It comes from failing, but trying again – from learning. It comes from
knowledge that only a tiny number of creators get to do what they THINK they
want to do.

Let me explain: I had thought I wanted to be a fantasy artist, or science-fiction
illustrator. But I also wrote short plays in the vein of Woody Allen. I imagined I
might one day make claymation movies. I thought I might write a novel.
Perhaps I would draw comics…
It ended up being comics. And then I got, for the greater part, stuck there. 

Children at some point stop drawing. We shed bits of ourselves. We stop playing.
Games become competitive sports. We are advised by supposedly older, wiser
people to turn to more profitable possible futures, subjects that are sensible.

But some of us rebel – at least at the start.

The more I am free to look at what art is, what comics are, what motion books
are, and what creativity is, the more I feel a need to advise against the obvious.
If this is truly to be a creative revolution then we should, as much as possible,
try and free ourselves of the fabricated shackles that we don’t even know are there.
We have to unlearn everything.

Maybe we need a dogma, a declaration: 

I will not bully myself, or judge myself against my peers.

I will be free of the tyranny of style, the cruelties of fashion.

I will dare to learn. 

I will be free of all expectation, and will not judge the fruits of my labour, as it all
leads to greater knowledge and nothing is ever a failure. 

I will not follow the rules, as all rules are man-made and subjective.

Well, y’ know, maybe that’s a bit pretentious – whatever that means! But you get
the gist! Let’s create for the love of it, and aspire to that perfect dream I mentioned
at the start. If we take away all the chains, and stop all the judgement, then -
why not? Why shouldn’t it be a blissful experience? 

And then – who knows what we might create?

Meanwhile:

This is all part of a learning process for me – a discovery. I always love hearing
about the epiphanies of other creators. Tell me your stories!
And here's a piece from my gallery that has no meaning at all, but was done
for the love of creating! I did it way before 300 was released, and called it
Leonidas because it had a strangely classical, epic feel.