Bridging the drawing gap in creativity
Read me in: 2.2 mins
I’m going to tell you the story of a barrier to creativity that’s actually just a big misunderstanding.
The confusion between creativity and the skills needed to express creativity.
How it started
How it’s going
Once upon a time, we were all kids who loved to draw. Like all kids, we didn’t draw realistically, but in symbols. Looking at a tree and drawing what we see is a tricky skill. It means flattening a 3D object into 2D (paper, tablet) but rendering it so it still looks 3D. Confused? I sure was. So as kids without those skills who wanted to draw trees, we broke it down into symbols (leaves, trunk, branches) and drew what we imagined those parts looked like.
Developmentally, we started to hit a point when we wanted to break away from the symbols and draw what we saw with our eyes and imaginations. But drawing realistically is frustrating. Especially without help. Some kids had books or an adult around who could explain perspective to them. Those kids were called “creative” and “talented” and encouraged to keep going. They were given supplies and pointers on how to develop their growing abilities. The rest started to think: “I guess I’m bad at this. Maybe I’m not creative.” And nobody told them the truth:
That developing the skill of drawing realistically has little to do with creative thinking. It’s simply a language skill, like so many others.
But somewhere along the line, we started incorrectly conflating “visual art” with “creativity”.
Creativity is a way of thinking, and problem-problem solving, and a big part of our human expression.
The point of learning to read and write isn’t spelling and grammar, but it’s what those tools will allow you to express. That’s the creative part.
I’ve seen many creative people get so lost in skill-building that they never get around to the important bit: expression. I’ve been stuck in that quagmire more than once myself. I’ve spoken with so many people who think they aren’t creative at all because they never developed specific skills that they associate with creativity. Expanding our skills can be empowering and liberating, but there’s no upper limit to how skilled we can become. The fact that we’re never done learning and improving can be one of life’s greatest joys, or it can be an excuse not to live at all.
If you wait to be “good enough” to express your creativity, you’ll be waiting forever.
So let’s clear up this barrier to creativity once and for all:
We are creative. We can learn skills to help us express that creativity, but those skills are just the vehicle of our expression. You can pick any vehicle you want. You can change vehicles any time. You can have the fanciest or janky-est vehicle on the block, but you’ll still be creative.
