DAY THREE 

The Great White Whale, the Golden Fleece of my creative endeavours, is drawing and painting. 
 
These two activities are always calling from some place in the distance, teasing, mocking, looking to lure me to disaster. 
 
Tormentors in Chief
In part I started this blog in an effort to get me over whatever this particular hump is. In my fantasy I (pluckily) overcome any misgivings, start to make some rough daubings which I, (remember I said this is a fantasy), share with the world via this blog, but which then, over months of repetition and practice, trial and error, gradually improve to something that is recognisably the work of a human being, as opposed to, say, the agitated wanderings of an amoeba as it escapes from a muddy pool.
 
My difficulties with these mediums is a little odd as there isn't any sort of creative or artistic endeavour I haven't been willing to try - knitting, weaving, sewing, screenprinting, linocutting, woodworking, collage, pottery, ikibana...

But the thought of taking up a pencil and doing anything other than write with it brings me out in a rash. And please don't mention the idea of taking a brush, dipping it in paint and applying it to a surface unless you are talking about house painting.

Because you see, unlike with any of the crafts I've just mentioned, I feel that to some degree, I have to be good or at least half-way decent when it comes to drawing and painting. Put another way, it's a case of allowing myself to fail, of opening myself up to being a novice, a beginner. To be prepared to let myself learn. The concept known to Zen as Beginners' Mind captures the essence of this problem.
 
The not-so-guilty secret is that I actually 'studied' art at school for three years. Or rather I was obliged to sit in front of an easel listening to a windbag of a 'teacher' propound his latest Theory of Life to a captive audience of teenage boys for 90 minutes, twice a week, for three years. Quite literally, we were taught nothing, and he didn't even have the decency to provide us with materials to practice with while he moithered on. Perhaps he had some bracing pedagogical theory about having to discover ones inner artist for oneself.
 
But there we are. I don't blame that teacher for the subsequent 'F' I scored in my O Level, even then I thought painting was something I should be able to do as if it was as natural an endowment as breathing, but surely he didn't help. Truth is it left me with a feeling that I have tried and already failed with drawing and painting, and that is why beginners mind remains elusive, that is the hump.

 
 
 


 
 

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