The Number One Thing that Changed my Art

Hello Stranger.

If you were here right now, there would be clothes and trash on the floor, and dishes piling up in the kitchen. You would detect a faint light in the window, but the curtains would be drawn, and the door locked because I did not trust the night. For the first time, you would see bills and notices with my personal information littering side tables and flung haphazardly on the kitchen table and under it. But what would I care? The dangers are outside. You are inside. You would feel vaguely ill at ease, and I would be grateful that you felt it too.

There would still be food and something to drink.

And it would be a good night to discuss the subject of art.

My art changed forever when I stopped trying to make masterpieces, and started making things that were accessible.

There are two aspects to this. The first part was mental.

About three New Year’s’ ago, I bought myself a nice sketchbook. I had very specific plans for it, it was going to be used as a field guide for a world I was building, hoping to make a book. A list of ‘flora and fauna’ and the corresponding illustrations. I painstakingly researched medicinal plants, sketched and painted them, and wrote descriptions of them describing how they would apply in the other world. I got two pages done. I didn’t touch the sketchbook for the next year.

I was proud of the art! In fact, I still really like what I created. But it was stressful. It was high effort, and joyless. I was working full time and in college, and when I got home, I was exhausted.

It all changed when, a year later, I sat down to draw with my little sister and sketched a frog, a little cottage, and some mushrooms. And then it looked empty, so I splattered it with blue and green paint. I liked those.

Just like that, the sketchbook was ruined. It was no longer going to be used for flora and fauna of one specific world.

Now, this doesn’t bother everyone, but for someone like me, it made my skin itch. I felt a vague but intense sense of shame and guilt for straying from my original intent. I was a flake. And my story would never exist.

Let me just say, I have made more art, and more bright, happy, interesting artwork, and sewn together more stories in that sketchbook than I ever did before. When I had to quit my job, move states, and stayed in a room, sick with long-covid for three months, I made art. Not beautiful, detailed portraits. Not things that took my energy. I drew simple lines and painted in bright colors. I used whatever I needed to ‘cheat.’ Whatever tools could help tell the story that I hadn’t allowed myself to use before. And I didn’t freak out when sharpies bled onto the pages behind them. (That was a big deal for me.)

Instead of stressing about what my human characters looked like, I just drew a scraggly little guy in pen, and painted him in bright colors, and wrote him a little blurb in a pretty font. Instead of meticulously planning a page, I drew a general idea of what I wanted and splattered paint all over it. It didn’t have to be ‘the exact mushroom from my head,’ it had to be a mushroom. It didn’t have to be a perfect van, it had to be a van on a misty mountain with the words, ‘I would like to live in a van and drive through the mountains one day.’

I know I’m rambling, but honestly, how often do we hold ourselves back because we’re afraid that either our art will look imperfect, or that the imperfections will look like us? Art is one of the few areas in life that I don’t just carry shame and it eats me alive that other people do.

For the next week, what if you drew little comics with stick figures. What if you painted abstract figures or splattered colors. What if you looked at it without criticizing yourself so harshly. What then.

The second part was physical.

After long-covid, I am chronically exhausted. I am often sad or numb, and you know what, I was before too. But I can’t just ignore it anymore. When I get sick now, I stay sick for a long time. I feel like I have so little within me.

Babe, if you have a funny joke in your mind but it can only happen in a certain scenario, write it down. If you want to sketch Pete Davidson on a receipt from the Chinese restaurant, do it. If all you’ve got in you is a weird little guy in a striped sweater, but he’s there a lot, get him out on paper. Draw stick figures. Honey, it’s okay. The art that I make when I have almost nothing, is the art at the bottom of me.

It changed my life.

Just create what’s accessible to you. It’s okay.

Anyway, much love to you. As you know, my name is not actually

–Mabel