Author: James Chiang

“There is no pleasure in this world without skill.” — Alan Watts, Philosopher

Skill is the foundation by which we bridge our understanding of things. Without it, there is no way of comprehending our craft and therefore no way of achieving clarity or expressing our vision at its fullest creative potential.

“An artistic work is not an intellectual riddle seeking an interpretation or explanation. It is a complex of images — experiences and emotions which enters directly our consciousness.” — Yuhani Pallasmaa, Architect

Skill doesn’t just sit in the technical domain but also the artistic and creative domains. Each layer, each process of creation requires skill, and hence requires development. How do we build skill? We build it like how we build anything else — through education, organization, and discipline.

Let’s redefine those 3 dimensions as it pertains to being an artist:

1. Education — the acquisition of knowledge, an environment for experimentation and feedback, and time for such knowledge to develop into understanding and real abilities.
2. Organization — clear decision-making, order in terms of approach to the work (or workflow), and a schedule for development.
3. Discipline — a devotion to a creative mindset and commitment to rigorous practices required for growth and excellence.

Do such things sound too hard? Well, nothing worth doing is ever easy.

“Behind every beautiful thing there’s been some kind of pain.” — Bob Dylan (lyrics from ‘It’s Not Dark Yet’)

Contrary to popular thinking, making art is one of the hardest, most courageous things one can do. That’s why I always stress the need to build strong rituals and for being prepared, for I know of very few truths other than the truth that our habitual behaviours mold us and that preparation gives us greater clarity and raises the probability of success. Good practices are one of the keys to fulfillment.

Drawing is one such practice. An artist who doesn’t draw is like a musician who doesn’t play any musical instruments or can’t sing or read music. To ignore drawing hinders visual creation because “making marks” teaches us so much in terms of design, composition, and being able to layout tangibly a visual game plan that’s formed from our minds. It’s the seed of imagination. Physical practice engages the mind via the hands. It teaches us to see.

“The hands want to see, the eyes want to caress.” — J.W. von Goethe, Writer

Seeing is so huge. The lack of an artist’s ability to see holds him back. It’s a skill that needs constant development. When an artist draws, he caresses his eyes along and around the surface of the objects. He feels the weight, textural form and inner substance of the thing. The mental-visual filtering of the experience becomes existential knowledge and a connection between subject and artist is formed. This builds a base which then rises towards understanding, with knowledge becoming more than just mere information.

But seeing too, requires constant practice. All skills do. As we grow as artists, the base — which is our visual and intellectual skillset — must grow stronger and more expansive in order to support the rising complexity that our art demands. The most common mistake of beginners is that they ignore or forget their foundation when they begin to take on new or more complex challenges. This lowers their capability to learn new skills and express their ideas. What follows then is overwhelming frustration because the demonstrative failure is as painful as it was inevitable.

The strongest artists — masters of their craft — spend countless hours building their fundamentals skills. Patience is important. Like the star athlete who has developed over many years a strong, fast and flexible body that allows his talents to shine above all others, an advanced artist carries with him an excellent understanding of the technical and graphical aspects of his craft. For animators, that means powerful and expressive command of body mechanics and design principles. When such individuals execute their art, their skills become second nature and they’re free to focus primarily on the expression of their ideas, their foundational tools mere weapons in their arsenal in the battle for creative victory. Skill isn’t everything, but it’s always a required element for creativity to take flight.

“Every artist was first an amateur.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Philosopher

“All arts arise from a common soil; they are all expressions of the human existential condition.” — Juhani Pallasmaa, The Thinking Hand

Being craftsmen, we all know the importance of expressing our art in the clearest, most effective way. Because without clarity, nothing can be related or understood.

For visual artists, that often means thinking in terms of strong shapes, clean lines, and obvious alignments of force (i.e. lines of action). If we strive for that, along with good composition and uncluttered choreography we should have most of the basic ingredients needed to make great art. Unfortunately, that’s not how making art works. Aiming to check off any list of artistic “requirements” doesn’t guarantee a satisfactory result or even a satisfactory experience. Why is that?

The reason is we can’t create art with just principles or checklists, even if such things are helpful and clearly DESCRIBE what makes good art. We mustn’t confuse knowledge with either awareness or understanding. Good art comes from good living — conscious living. This means making art in the state of oneness with the work, doing it with joy and paying the utmost attention to the challenge that sits in front of us. It’s about being mindful of not falling into the trap of automatic reactive behaviour. The focus is not lists or goals or even our desires and anxieties, but on connecting and creating. Only with true consciousness can we learn to deal with the needy compulsive behaviour that often dictates our artistic choices and even that which dominates much of our everyday lives.

“To be nobody but yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.” — E. E. Cummings, Poet.

From almost the day we’re born to the day we die we’re being conditioned. Motivations and ethics aside, over a lifetime human beings are continually and overwhelmingly exposed to ideas and sensations that solidify certain ways of behaviour that makes it very hard to have any real control over our current reactions to stimuli. In fact, we learn our conditioning so well, that once conditioned, we auto-reinforce the programming ourselves even when the external lures or pressures are no longer present. It’s the reason why advertising (or propaganda) is so effective and powerful, so effective that almost every website on the internet is funded via advertisement (save this one, of course). Neuroscientists today have confirmed as much — even what we think is free choice isn’t; our genetic memory, our environmental conditioning, our subsequent self-programming and even the environmental circumstances of our ancestors (e.g. children born from mothers who lived with food scarcity during pregnancy have increased statistical likelihood of developing obesity*) all play a huge part in how we react to situations. It’s scary to realize how seemingly little control we actually have over our individual behaviour.

“Genes are rarely about inevitability, especially when it comes to humans, the brain, or behaviour. They’re about vulnerability, propensities, tendencies.” ― Robert M Sapolsky, Neuroscientist

How does this effect our making art? Well, if we’re not really aware of what’s going in our minds (and our bodies), then our thoughts and the habits of our thinking will rule over our decisions and actions. By simply reacting as usual to each situation as driven by our conditioning and by our egos, we begin to compromise our originality and the uniqueness of opportunity given to us by the challenge that sits in front of us. We defer to the safe choice, the easy choice, the convenient choice. In other words, there has been no choice at all. We’ve gone autopilot.

How do we prevent this? How do we stop acting like a Pavlovian dog?

Response-ability over Reactivity:

Step1: Awareness — widening the gap

“Each confirmation or denial brings you closer to the object, until finally you are, as it were, inside it: the contours you have drawn no long mark the edge of what you have seen, but the edges of what you have become.” — John Berger, Berger on Drawing.

First we must stop and breathe. Before giving into spontaneity and reacting out of fear or desire we must take the time to see as clearly as possible. Like a fighter suddenly faced with an adversary that pulls out a knife, we don’t charge in; we mindfully look first and assess the situation with calmness and detachment. This widens the gap of time between stimulus and response and halts compulsive action. By stepping back mentally, we gain perspective of the situation with greater mental acuity. If we don’t stop and gain clarity first, we’re almost guaranteed to slip towards reactive thoughts and emotions. For example, thinking “I’ve got to get this done,” “there’s not enough time to plan” or “If I fail, I’m screwed” puts us into a state that promotes behaviour designed only to alleviate our insecurities and give us temporarily solace. That’s how we rush into things. That’s how we fail.

“Confidence without clarity is a disaster. Whatever we are unconscious of, we suffer.” — Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, Inner Engineering

Step 2: Assessment — Exercising the options

Once there’s been a pause, we can ask the right questions and search for solutions. Opportunities arise whereby we can exercise our imagination. We analyze and make the appropriate plans. We treat every situation like a new situation, like a new adventure. This is what prevents boredom in our work. After all, isn’t this the challenge we wanted? This is why, as a teacher, I insist that all my animation students make thumbnail sketches for visual problems like staging, posing and rhythm analysis and to get up and act out their scenes to feel the energy and emotions that their characters are experiencing (recording the action becomes just an option). Remember, we don’t think our way out of problems, we solve them through play by energizing our being and moving our physical body. All the creative arts work this way. Science confirms this.

“The brain does not live inside the head, even though it is its formal habitat. It reaches out to the body, and with the body it reaches out to the world. We can say the brain ‘ends’ at the spinal cord, and that the spinal cord ‘ends’ at the peripheral nerve, and the peripheral nerve ‘ends’ at the neuromuscular junction and on and on down to the quarks, but the brain is the hand and hand is the brain, and their interdependence includes everything else right down to the quarks.” — Frank R. Wilson, Neurologist

Always remember this: just because we’ve taken action, doesn’t necessarily mean we’ve made a choice. There’s a huge difference between responding to a situation and reacting to one. Reaction negates any control and lacks all consciousness. It connotes enslavement to our conditioning. If we give ourselves the time and space and thoughtfulness to our challenges, we can respond with creativity and grace and perhaps make something interesting. At the very least we can find fulfillment in the process. But it’s by being response “able” that we gain freedom of choice.

Sometimes it’s tempting to ask if it’s really necessary to do so much work to achieve clarity, that so much is required of us to make good art. But if we need to ask that question, then we must ask ourselves something deeper: why are we making art in the first place?

“At its most basic, making art is about following what’s luminous to you and putting it in a jar, to share with others… We all see something blinking in the sky at some point, but it’s a damn lot of work to put it in the bottle. Maybe that’s why only some of us become artists. Because we’re obsessive enough, idealistic enough, disciplined enough, or childish enough to wade through whatever is necessary, dedicating life to the search for these elusive flickers, above all else.” — Ben folds, Songwriter

*From Robert Sapolsky’s book, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers