Snark & Bitchery

I’ve realized, in a bright flash of epiphany, why I haven’t been drawing hardly at all lately. 

When  it was required for school projects, I’d follow through, from doodles to thumbnails to roughs to finished. When I drew, it was with feelings of commitments. They were things I had to finish. There would be finished pieces that would make up for whatever poor quality of sketching. The sketches added to the merit of the final piece, and weren’t critiqued on their own.

Now that I’m not in any design classes, I’m afraid of making mistakes. I’m afraid of committing to a doodle, or of making a page of inferior scribbles. I don’t know for certain if I will take a sketch and work it into a finished artwork. Doodles without finished product to make the doodles more… valued? worthwhile? …weakens them, and makes them feel more exposed and vulnerable. That, in turn, makes me feel anxious.

Doodles and sketches are for screwing around. They don’t have to be finished. They don’t have to go any further than that vague gesture drawing or shoddily scribbled cartoon. Sketches and doodles won’t demand to be finished. It’s ok to fuck up in a sketchbook, nobody will care. These sketches won’t be presented in the process journal for any class. They don’t have to be bolstered by a finished piece.

And with that anxiety quelled, I doodle. …no, you can’t watch.