Today I want to address some
of the comments I've been getting, but this is not a rant about troll comments.
In fact, most of these comments have come from well meaning people,
some of which have used these comments to try and encourage me or support me,
but in the process have made statements about themselves that I'm not okay with.
Today we are addressing specifically what I call the lies about creativity.
These are the things that we have all been guilty at some point of telling ourselves,
and they will hold you back more than any skill or supplies ever will.
If you're new here, I'm Sarah Renae Clark
and on this channel I teach adults how
to be creative through coloring books and other arts.
Whether you're a beginner or an experienced artist,
I'd love to have you join my community here by pressing subscribe so you can grow
your skills and your confidence and create something amazing.
So let's jump right in to our first and biggest lie;
I'm not a creative person.
I hear this a lot, not just online, but with my own friends as well.
Just look at any child playing and you'll see it that we are all born creative.
Creativity is not just about art.
It's about seeing things in different
ways, coming up with ideas and using your imagination.
The more you tell yourself you're not
creative, the more you will block your creativity.
Let's take the statement;
I don't have a single creative bone in my body, and change it.
We are all born with creativity, but maybe it's not a bone at all.
Maybe it's a muscle.
Unlike our bones, our muscles can change
shape and develop, depending on how we use them.
You can't expect to sit on the couch all day and then run a marathon.
You need to exercise your muscles and practice,
you need to warm up. In the same way,
don't expect to pick up a set of pencils or paints and create a masterpiece
if you haven't been exercising your
creative muscles. Instead, start small, exercise. Find ways to use
your creativity in small ways and your creative muscles will growth.
We all have them.
We are all creative.
Some people have just learned to develop their creativity more than others,
and there's nothing stopping you from doing the same.
Which brings me to the next comment
I've seen a lot on YouTube and Instagram;
your worst is still better than my best
or I could never draw like that. Before you write this on an artist's page,
video or social media post, think about whether this is actually
a compliment to them because personally, I hate seeing comments like this.
It doesn't encourage me to see you give up
on yourself or to compare your stage of learning to mine,
when I do this as a job. Stop comparing yourself to others.
We are all on a different journey and you
don't always see the years of practice or training behind someone else's work.
The goal of my channel is not to show off
my art, it's to teach you that anyone can do what I do, but you're now going to be able
to color perfectly overnight, so just start small,
keep practicing and focus on your own growth, give it a few weeks or months
and you'll be surprised at how far you've come.
Of course there is more to this comment,
and I'm sorry if they're hits a nerve, but I say this with love because I
genuinely want you to succeed and not be held back by anything.
I wish I could be as good at drawing, coloring, or creating as you, but I don't have time,
I don't have the patience to do that or I
can't afford the right supplies. So let's break these down.
First; I don't have time.
Time is a struggle for sure,
and I know personally I wish I had more time to create.
I rarely color outside of what you see on camera due to a lack of time.
We've just had seven weeks straight
with one of our kids age two and six at home at all times during lockdown
on quarantine and our whole family's sick at one point or another.
So I get it.
I still haven't even opened these beautiful new pastel pencils that Shane
bought me for my birthday a few weeks ago. So maybe you don't have time to paint
a masterpiece, but most of us do have time to pull out a sketch book or a coloring
page and some pencils for a few minutes in the evening, even if it's while,
watching some TV or during breakfast instead of scrolling on your phone.
Creating something every day will
dramatically improve your skills in a short time frame,
but it can also be an unrealistic goal if
you're already juggling a hundred other things in life and can leave you feeling
discouraged instead of excited about getting creative.
So you don't have to create every day.
I don't, but try to find some time to get
creative when you can. Use it as an outlet or an escape, rather than turning it
into just another item on your to do list and you'll find you enjoy it so much more.
Stop saying you don't have time
and instead focus on giving yourself a little ten minute creative appointments
throughout your day to start building the habit. Next,
I don't have the patience to do that. Okay,
I'm totally guilty of this one.
I've said this about cross stiches,
about diamond painting and so many other crafts, and it wasn't until someone
said this about some of my own work that I saw the hypocrisy in my own comments.
I can spend hours drawing now because I've
bought the right tools and I just do a small bit at a time and I enjoy it.
And yet the thought of spending hours on a project of some other kind
overwhelms me. When you break a project down into smaller tasks,
anything is achievable.
Patience is a learned skill, much like creativity,
so start small.
Don't attempt a huge project straight away.
If you're wanting to draw something
with a lot of detail, start with objects that are small enough
to complete in 2 hours before you attempt a seven hour full page picture.
The same applies to diamond painting.
Start on a small canvas.
Before you go for a huge masterpiece. You can have patience for anything.
Let's agree, me included, to stop saying that we don't.
And finally; I can't afford the right supplies.
This one is a tough one, especially when you're watching videos
and looking at photos of people with big collections of nice supplies.
But nice supplies don't make the artist.
I only bought my first set of Prismacolor pencils five years ago and I bought
my small set of Polychromos here, open stock until this year,
that's all the colored pencils I owned.
But if you've got a small budget, I recently did a review
of the Brutfuner Square pencils, and they are a surprisingly good
and affordable colored pencils set for beginners.
And if that's still out of your budget,
just be creative with whatever you can find.
Nice supplies can make it easier and more
enjoyable, but they definitely don't have to hold you back.
In fact, now that I've been exercising my creative muscles more regularly,
I think I should do a Crayola challenge again.
If you would like to see me create a drawing, either a coloring page
or maybe even a photo realistic drawing this time with just Crayola pencils,
let me know in the comments and remember
to subscribe because I think it would make for a really fun challenge.
Now, can I bring up a slightly controversial point?
I definitely expect some disagreement on this one, but I want to talk about it
anyway and I welcome your thoughts in the comments even if you don't agree at all.
Wasting art supplies.
There are a few different sides to this.
So first, is it a waste to use expensive pencils in coloring books?
I think the answer to this is a personal one.
Nobody can tell you what you are or aren't
allowed to create with and nobody can tell you want to spend your money on.
I think the problem with these comments
online seems to come from this idea that art has to follow certain rules to be
considered worthy of the appropriate titles and tools.
If we were to do a collaborative art piece together where I happen to do the line
work and you happen to do the colors and shading, why doesn't that qualify as art?
In fact, next time someone challenges your coloring page as not being art,
you can tell them it's a collaborative art piece with the coloring book author.
It's the same art police that dictate that
'digital art isn't real art' or that 'hyperrealism is copying' or
that 'abstract painting doesn't take any effort'.
If anyone tells you that your creative
work doesn't qualify as art because it doesn't fit their idea of art,
find someone else to listen to. Back to our wasted supplies
though, what is a waste of art supplies?
I know some of these videos can make artists cringe. The idea that paint wasn't
used in the right way or that it ended up on the floor was wasted,
but before you rush to comment,
stop and think, is this really a waste,
or is this a different expression of creativity, then maybe doesn't fit
within your personal box of what you think art should look like.
These artists all get a lot of trolls and hate comments for their art styles.
They are told they waste too much paint,
they should be ashamed, and their work looks like trash.
And yet, they attract millions of views to the videos, which consequently also
attracts more hate because apparently it is not okay to waste paint for views.
So let's compare, which of these pieces of art isn't just using paint for views?
Paint, pencils and other art supplies are
designed to be used, and they are designed to be used for views.
Whether those views are in a Museum or
in a video on social media, the only wasted supplies, in my opinion,
are the ones sitting unused on your shelf or dried up in the bin.
Yes, I know my comparison will make some
people very uncomfortable, but it would be interesting to see how
history would portray these famous artists differently if social media was available
while they were alive because even the likes of Picasso,
Monet and Warhol were criticized heavily because their masterpieces, like these
didn't fit within society's understanding of what art should look like.
Art is different for everyone.
So while these styles might not be
for you, let's not be the art community that pulls down other artists because we
don't understand or don't agree with their methods.
Let's support creativity.
Whatever it looks like,
I'm going to move on before everyone unsubscribes in protest.
Maybe YouTube can put an ad here to distract you first.
I want to finish with a big thought that I
know we've all dealt with in one way or another; fear of making mistakes.
I bought this book, but I've been too scared to start it.
I don't know where to start, so I just gave up.
I don't know what to color next because I don't want to ruin what I've done so far.
I don't want to use my expensive pencils until I'm better at drawing.
If any of these sound familiar, it's time to break off that fear and take a risk.
The problem with this fear, even when it's small,
is that it often stops us from creating, anything at all.
If we saw someone abandon a game because they're afraid of losing or quit a job
because they're afraid to get fired, we would say that wasn't a rational decision.
And yet how many times do we leave our
coloring books empty or our supplies unused
because we don't want to waste them or make a mistake.
Learning to fail is not just something that will help you with your creativity.
It will help you in every aspect of life.
In fact, it's one of the biggest things I want to help my kids learn because
learning to fail can build confidence and resilience unlike anything else.
So here are some practical tips to help you through this.
First start small.
If you're looking at a new book, don't start on your favorite page.
And if you're looking at starting
a coloring page, start with the easiest object, not the main character.
Next, practice exercise like we talked
about earlier, then remember to give yourself empathy.
Don't be hard on yourself.
If you make a mistake.
Instead, look at how you can improve and stay positive.
Don't throw away your mistakes either.
Keep past work as proof of how far you've come and how much you've improved.
And finally don't aim for perfect, aim for improvement.
As long as your skills are improving, you are doing great.
There is always a chance you'll fail,
but failure is a part of being creative and learning.
Embracing your mistakes instead of running
from them will give you more confidence and help you to think outside the box.
I recently published a video where I
ruined my Thomas Kinkade Disney coloring page, and while I know many people thought
it still looked good, it was a failure for what I was trying to create.
And yet, funny enough, that video has had almost ten times more
views than any other video on my channel in its first ten days.
So even in embracing my own failure,
I was able to achieve something new in a different way.
If I can learn to embrace my failure,
especially in front of a large audience, then I'm confident you can embrace it too.
Remember that every failure is another chance to learn. Your skills will always
improve more through failing than through leaving your books and supplies unused.
So tell me which of these do you agree with?
Which do you disagree with?
Which lies have you caught yourself out on?
And which are you going to change?
I'd love to hear about it all in the comments.
Please be nice.
We are a community here and we can be
supportive even if we disagree with each other.
And if you found this video encouraging or
helpful, please share it with a friend and remember to subscribe.
I really appreciate it when you do. Before I go,
speaking of waste, remember when I shredded my pencils in the blender?
I've had quite a few comments about what
a waste that was or that I should have given those pencils away to a school.
Now let's be clear. Those pencils cost $1, $1.
They were cheap rubbish and no good
for actual drawing, so my creativity in blending them
for a video was actually the best life they probably would have had.
And I didn't even throw the way they are
still sitting here, actually still in the blender.
Since I haven't used it since
they will be used again in some way, nothing is wasted in art.