Embracing Imperfection as an Artist

This article is part of Mochi Magazine’s summer issue on Art: We invite you to expand your perspective of what art is or who an artist can be. As you check out the rest of our issue here, we hope you are inspired to find your own form of artistic expression.

For 28 years, my dad was employed as a graphic artist, but his love for art went beyond the office and spilled over into all corners of our house. The notepad next to the phone was covered with more caricatures than phone numbers and messages. He stored kneaded erasers and a tin of colored pencils in his desk drawer. And, when my dad took a sculpture class, he kept a block of clay in the garage, alongside dental tools that he used to add details to his pieces. This meant that I always had art supplies to experiment with — and a live-in instructor — at home. When I was a senior in high school, instead of filling my schedule with more academic classes to boost my transcript, I took charcoal drawing and pottery classes.

As I got older, adulting took precedence. College, socializing, relationships, and kids. Sitting down with art supplies and devoting mental energy toward creativity seemed like a luxury. My projects were limited to my children’s birthday party decorations and bulletin boards for their school. I drew Minecraft characters, Pusheen cats posing with desserts, and sea animals the size of the toddler who requested them. I burned the edges of tea-stained scrolls, painted ancient pillars, and hand-cut leafy vines for an elaborate display in the school library.

The hands-on artistry never failed to ignite a spark of creative energy, but the projects were too short-lived for the flame to fully catch. Each time, the ember would fizzle, smothered by my to-do lists, left dormant until the next project. So when my youngest child started school this past fall and I found myself with more time, I decided to rekindle the creativity that I’d long been neglecting. 

One afternoon, I persuaded my 6-year-old daughter to join me for a drawing exercise. The purpose was to draw quickly and spontaneously, focusing more on the process rather than the final image — the artist’s version of freewriting. The timer started, and my mind immediately went into overdrive. I wanted my image to look unstructured and impulsive, but that mere thought revealed that I was overthinking it.

“Don’t just draw spirals — that’s so basic and unimaginative,” I told myself before I noticed that I was drawing a cluster of (equally basic and unimaginative) trapezoids. I was doodling shapes and connecting them, sticking with what was safe. Meanwhile, my daughter’s pencil swiftly flew around her page. Her hand was clearly on autopilot, her creativity unhindered. As someone who sketches daily, she was in her element.

Once the two minutes ended, I put our drawings side by side. I clearly had struggled, and she had not. Her strokes were deep and dark with confidence, guided by her heart and her creative energy, rather than her mind. On the other hand, my fixation on doing the exercise “right” in producing something I could call Art, kept me from embracing the purpose of the exercise — to simply let go and draw.

This didn’t surprise me. All my life, I’ve been focused on doing things “right,” whether in school, church, or extracurricular activities. I’m the first to seek out the rules, and I make a point to follow them. This made me a stellar student and a model churchgoer in institutions that taught and encouraged black-and-white thinking. Elsewhere, this way of thinking and doing meant I could be good at something, but I missed opportunities to push myself even more, take risks, make mistakes, and possibly excel at whatever I was doing.

For many years, I trained in the Brazilian art of capoeira, a fluid blend of martial arts and dance. I was told that I had naturally good form, picked up movements quickly, and had the flexibility necessary for acrobatic moves. Yet I always felt a barrier that kept me from truly progressing, and that barrier was myself. Playing capoeira well requires playfulness, improvisation, and experimentation — all of which struggle to coexist alongside perfection.

“Go Out and Live”

When I decided to devote more time to art and creativity, I also committed to practicing art forms that I’m not as comfortable or familiar with. Not only would I try, I would try often. While my kids browsed books at the library, I sat near the window and sketched the river outside. I sketched at coffee shops, trying to be discreet when drawing other patrons. I signed up for an online watercolor class and painted jellyfish and turtles in varying washes, trying over and over to gauge the necessary ratio of water to paint. 

Sitting with my sketchbook and pen, I felt like an artist. But my work reminded me that I wasn’t  —  at least in my mind. My figures had skewed proportions; eyes were too large, fingers too thick, legs too straight. Dimensions were often miscalculated. The work was seldom impressive, but the more I tried, the more I realized that it felt good to simply do it.

For inspiration, I checked out library books about urban sketching, featuring artists from around the globe. Some artists captured details — windows, archways, the folds in a skirt — while others were minimalists, sketching merely the bones that allowed us to fill in the details with their imagination. Some carried only fineliner pens or pencils and used hatch marks for shading; others traveled with watercolor paints for the full spectrum of the rainbow. I had picked up the books to glean ideas about drawing a certain way, but my takeaway was more valuable: There is no right or wrong way to sketch. If I do it enough, I’ll discover my own style, which may or may not resemble anything in these books.

I recently came across this poem by writer and artist Rupi Kaur that summarizes this essential element to being an artist:

if you want to be creative

You need to learn how to

do stuff that has no purpose

art isn’t made by

working all the time

first you’ve got to

go out and live

– the art will come

My quest to make time for art is teaching me that practicing art isn’t successful only when I produce Instagram-worthy images or when I get the techniques “right.” Like Kaur writes, “You need to learn how to do stuff that has no purpose.” When I’m sketching, I have no purpose except to notice and see how that translates onto paper. I’m truly seeing what is around me: the tilt of a head, the way a jacket hangs on the back of a chair, a shared expression between a father and child, the movement of a leaf in the wind. The experience is about forcing myself to — first of all — make time, but then to live in the moment, to slow down, to observe, and to simply be. 

Cover credit: Anna Kolosyuk/Unsplash

Image credits: Melody Ip