Week 2: Re-learning How to Trust Your Creative Self

Week 2:
The Artist's Way: by Julia Cameron (Link)
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Learning how to trust yourself happens at an early age. With guidance from parents and well-meaning adult influences, we learn how to expand our approach to life to include problem solving independently. In terms of creativity, it is no different. We learn to become creative, or to become closed off from creativity from our parents, teachers, and families. All one’s life one is told Yes or No to creative decisions.
 
Kids, drawing on the walls, NO!
Or
Kids, drawing on the walls, YES! But…
 
The first response leads to a closed off, heartless wanna-be-artist. Constantly watching in on the art world, wishing.
The second response teaches children that their creative impulses are natural, but can be focused. It fosters creativity.
 
Week 2 is sort of like being told YES! But… let’s focus our drawing on to this special drawing enabled surface, instead of the wall. And here, on this stand-in for a wall, you can draw whatever you want!
Nurturing the inner artist, is also nurturing the inner-child. They go hand in hand, and I have come to deeply understand that this week.
I have never written so much in my life! Over the last two weeks I have written over 30 pages of thoughts, exercises, and art-fostering experiments. It has been almost joyous. However, I haven’t painted a single painting in the last two weeks. I have drawn storyboards, and illustrated characters, and thought of paintings, but no actual painting has occurred yet. I will be changing that with the next steps so keep your eyes peeled for more Chris Potts watercolors in and around Annapolis, Maryland.
 
This week “The process, not the product, is the focus” -Julia Cameron