Week 2 of The Artist’s Way course highlights moving into your own personal identity by drawing boundaries, brainstorming what you love to do, and pausing to recognize self doubt. When completing the weekly check-in exercises, I couldn’t believe that I completed another full week of morning pages! These dreaded morning pages always seem like they pop up again within seconds of completing them. “Remember me?!” they announce as the journal opens once again to my dissociative morning self. I actually love the morning. It’s that precious time you get to yourself before the entire world wakes up and zaps you of all your energy. It’s ideal for running errands or for just quietly enjoying coffee while watching YouTube. These morning pages really eat in to that small amount of precious alone time, but it’s begrudgingly necessary. The morning pages are a huge component of the Artist’s Way course and must be done every day.
I noticed my morning pages are becoming less scattered, more insightful, and go more in depth with how I’m feeling or thinking about at the moment. Scatter still happens, but it’s all part of writing that stream of consciousness wordflow. The morning pages work like magic to help me recall a previous night’s dream. They help me validate my love of drawing comics are a gentle nudge to get me back into drawing my comic series again. I reflected on the feeling I had whenever I would write and draw a comic series—I felt most inspired and excited when I was thinking about the storyline and how I wanted to further develop the characters. Were any of these stories ever good? Probably not, but that’s not really the point. Back when I used to fill up sketchbooks with a consistent storyline of comics, I never intended to show anyone. I never worried about where to post them or if they were good enough, I just did them for myself. This is another gentle nudge to do what fulfills your heart without thinking of all of the noise of today’s logistics. These comics aren’t intended to become popular or monetized. If I happen to get incredibly lucky where that happens, then great. But for the moment, I will just keep on drawing these comics to heal my heart.
This week’s artist date really tested my ability to practice the main concept of the chapter: recognizing self doubt. I finally took that huge step to start my Palm Springs painting that I originally planned over a year ago. Everyday I was faced with a blank 3x4 foot canvas that loomed against my back wall all year long. I already did all of the hard work to get started: I had the composition photo reference, bought new canvas, stretched that canvas over the frame, and primed the canvas. All done! Why was it so hard to just finally PAINT the canvas? I think I can speak for most of us when I say that the most difficult part of any project is to start. Whether we get held back by limiting beliefs, time constraints, or just not wanting to start, it’s just easier to procrastinate and not change. This artist date was that gentle nudge I needed to finally get going and just paint.
The verdict of this week’s artist date: I loved it! It brought me back to the joy I had during my time in college when I took painting courses. While I no longer use oil paint (I’m using acrylic paint with similar viscosity to oil paint), I still implemented the same methods of building the composition with one base color and then loosely applying more paint in multiple layers. I definitely had those “I’m doing this wrong!!” moments and “This looks terrible!!” intrusive thoughts while painting, but reminded myself that this is supposed to be a low-stakes fun activity and to be kind to myself. I believe this is one of the most important concepts to healing creativity: point out those self limiting beliefs and nasty thoughts and turn them into something more loving towards yourself.
Since that artist date, I’ve gone back to painting again throughout the week. The trick that helps me stay persistent with any new project is to lazily leave out materials or at least keep them easily accessible to allow you to easily pick it up again the next day. It’s not leaving a mess if you haven’t stopped working on that project, right?
What projects have you been wanting to work on again, but have been holding yourself back? Maybe it’s time to get back into it and have fun!