Luck is a skill

I’ve been re-reading Twyla Tharp’s book “The Creative Habit” and one of the things she says is that “luck is a skill.” This phrase got me thinking about my own tug-of-war between control and abandon in my artwork (and in my life?).

Tharp says that while an artist needs to be prepared in order to make good art, she also needs to be open to happy accidents. In the words of E.B. White, habitually creative people are “prepared to be lucky.”

Accepting the idea of luck in life can be hard for those of us determined to control our destinies. The idea of control is comforting – it is in our power to make things as we want them to be. Luck is seemingly random, chaotic, and disorderly.

Tharp says that you have to be present to recognize a stroke of luck – that is showing up, regularly, working at your craft. Furthermore, it requires a person who is skilled at their craft to see a stroke of luck for what it is.

In my artwork I like to believe that I am the controller. If I just create the right conditions, have the right mindset, focus on one particular aspect of my drawing and painting, my creative output will be just as I want it to be.

But accepting the randomness inherent in the creative act is freeing. If I don’t have to take full responsibility for every aspect, every line, every color, every shape, I can relax and have fun. Who knows what will arise if I am open to a world of possibilities?

Tools of the trade

An artist’s tools of the trade are as personal as the artmaking itself, and involve a lot of trial and error to identify. I’ve been painting and drawing for a long time and have developed my own tools of the trade. Here’s a quick roundup of some supplies I find useful and cost-saving. 

Pentel brush pen 

This pen has a brush end with ink supplied by replaceable cartridges. The resulting stroke is luscious and smooth as butter. It takes a little practice to gain control of the stroke as the ink flows. As the pen runs out of ink it creates a nice sketchy effect too. 

Blick studio oil paints 

Oil paints are expensive and I’ve tried a few studio versions to try to cut costs, but always found the paint kind of gloppy and lacking in ‘body’. But these studio paints have a texture and body comparable with artist quality oil paints and are very affordable.

Kneaded eraser 

The good ole’ kneaded eraser is my preferred eraser when drawing. It can be reworked endlessly and doesn’t leave eraser crumbs behind.

Princeton Ashley Series 5200 Natural Bristle brushes

I work my paintbrushes hard and sometimes use up a brush a painting session. These brushes are a great value – good-quality Chinese hog bristle and very inexpensive. If you buy them in bulk from Dickblick.com they are even cheaper.

Prismacolor Premier pencils 

Love the softness of these pencils, and they come in an endless array of colors.

Golden fluid acrylics iridescent gold

Mmm, acrylic paint with a totally yummy liquid texture and a gorgeous gold hue. Kind of pricey, but I find that a lot of gold paint is really mustard colored or ochre or something else not resembling gold. The texture and color of this paint make it worth the price.

Open for business

I’ve had a hard time taking myself seriously as an artist. I always knew I was an artist and had a unique voice, back to when I was in the second grade and won an elementary school-wide poster contest sponsored by the fire department. As an adult I’ve created a lot of art and have received mostly enthusiastic feedback.

But when I see artists on Instagram who are stars on the platform making triple-figure incomes, I feel taken aback. Where do they get all that gumption, I wonder. Promoting myself and encouraging people to buy my art always felt like asking a favor. After all, art isn’t a necessity like food or gas.

Recently I had a switch in mindset that has meant everything in terms of my feelings about promoting my artwork. In addition to being an artist, I’ve started to think of myself as an entrepreneur. On the suggestion of Abby Glassenberg of whileshenaps.com, I read a book called “Growing a Business” by Paul Hawken.

Hawken says that a successful business solves a problem. While it’s true that art may not be as necessary to life as food or housing, there are people and businesses who need art to thrive. Galleries need artwork to sell. Cafés have blank walls that need art. Living spaces also have blank walls that need art.

I don’t think I ever questioned that I had something to say, or even that people would want to see my art – it was the commerce of art that had me stumped. That feels like the missing piece to the puzzle, and now I feel ready to charge ahead with my goal of putting my artwork in the hands of those who want – and need – it.

My love for Japanese children's book illustration and my disdain for sentimentality

So much children’s book illustration I see is cutesy or overly sweet.  I’ve always had an aversion to sentimentality and excess emotion. The Random House Webster’s Dictionary defines “sentimental” as “weakly emotional; mawkish.” In my mind this over-feeling clouds the truth of whatever is being expressed. 

This opinion also applies to illustration style. I prefer children that are represented as physical creatures, that are fully embodied, rather than stick figures with ambiguous body parts. To me drawings that accurately and expertly represent physical creatures are another form of truth.

This sensibility is one of the reasons why I love so much of Japanese children’s book illustration. The Japanese aesthetic is reductive, minimal – nothing in excess, nothing overstated. The drawing style is sophisticated and embodied, rather than some fey imagining of what a child looks like.

One well-loved Japanese artist and illustrator is Chihiro Iwasaki, who was born in 1918 and died in 1974. She created expressive illustrations of children and flowers using line and watercolor.

Masamitsu Saito is an illustrator of two of the books in Enchanted Lion Books’ “Being in the World” series. In “Into the Snow,” he uses oil pastels, gouache, acrylics, and colored pencil to convey the immediacy of a child playing in the snow.

Komako Sakai is a children’s book writer and illustrator. Her incredibly tender – but not saccharine sweet – mixed-media work can be found in such books as “Emily’s Balloon,” in which a very small child makes friends with a balloon.

Each of these illustrators conveys emotion without turning maudlin. The drawing style may be loose and expressive, yet the children look like they belong in real life. Children reading these books will see themselves in the story because the illustrations look like them and the emotion rings true.

On perfectionism and the true path to creativity

I’m a perfectionist. This quality has been advantageous in my day job, which is as an editor. But it has been problematic for my other vocation, which is as an artist. Creativity demands experimentation, which means making mistakes. In other words, you need to push through the bad to get to the good.

I used to approach each canvas or blank piece of paper with the goal that it would contain my masterpiece. That’s a lot to live up to! Needless to say, I was frustrated when the masterpiece didn’t show up. I thought that the perfect image lived in my head and was just waiting to come out fully formed on the paper.

But that’s not how creativity works, I eventually discovered. Creativity is play. When it occurred to me that I could play and make mistakes and not need to show this part of my process if I didn’t care to, this freed up my perfectionist self to experiment. Who cares if only 1 out of 40 drawings made the cut? In fact this is exactly how creativity works.

Sometimes it feels like I am making mudpies when I push through all the noise in my head to get to the clarity of song. There are lots and lots of fails. But now that the pressure is off it’s time to have fun. And as in life, it is so worthwhile to take risks and make mistakes and simply live your intention rather than just thinking about it.