Naturally talented vs hardworking - Can creativity be taught?
I always have a little back and forth with myself about this subject, having done a lot of events, the amount of times you hear ‘oh wowww, I can’t even draw a straight line’ which I always think is wild…
because I’m like, I can’t either…
that’s why we got rulers sis.
But the general public seem to have this idea that creativity is this elusive magic that is imparted onto very few.
And I’ll be honest, I love the sound of that, makes me feel magical, like I was blessed at birth with the gift to scribble.
But I just don’t know how true it actually is, I’m a firm believer anyone can learn to draw, drawing is just the skills of observation and training your hand eye coordination.
It’s a skill, no different to learning to play the guitar, piano or whatever, but there is a huge leap between being able to play the piano and creating your own compositions…
Knowing how to play the notes laid out in front of you, that’s skill!
That’s the 10,000 hours type of thing, do it wrong enough and you’ll eventually learn to do it right.
However the part that stumps me in the conversation is when the imagination and creativity comes into it.
Yes anyone can learn to draw, play an instrument, cook, whatever, but that’s all based around emulating or mimicking what’s already out there.
With enough practise anyone will be able to draw the fruit bowl in front of them realistically, but the thought of changing the apple to blue and the banana to pink, or adding eyes onto the grapes, or drawing the orange massive and the banana tiny…
Aka ‘the creativity’
Can that be learnt?
On one hand I think maybe not, maybe there’s just a particular way some peoples brains are programmed, allowing them to think in ways different to others…
BUT
On the other hand I think for sure it can be learnt! I think back to when I was a kid, I used to copy peoples work, draw photographs and practise practise practise to develop my drawing skills.
And I think when you get to a point where the drawing part is more second nature, it opens your brains capacity up to start focusing on the other things.
So when drawing a face I’m not using all my brain power figuring out the proportions of it, so maybe now I can start to stylise that face…
Maybe I can draw the eyes in a different way…
Then after months of that you’ve now got a particular way of drawing things, so now you can start thinking about adding in colour, or change up the composition, or adding in a story to the drawing.
The same way you learn to drive, you learn the clutch/accelerator, then the gear box, checking mirrors, reversing, manoeuvres, etc, they’re each a lot to learn on their own but you work through them and eventually you’re driving and doing it all without even thinking, so much so you’re talking to a friend or singing along to music whilst driving without a second thought…
Or at least that’s what I think happens, I failed my test xoxo
But I think that’s the creative things are… it’s all learnt over time once you’ve got past the initial large hurdle of the fundamentals.
Other people might see it as magic, but I reckon every composition, every colour scheme, every idea I have is probably rooted in something I’ve seen before.
But because I got past the fundamentals and learnt anatomy, I could look at other peoples work and take in different things because I wasn’t so fixated on just getting the figure right.
So no different to how you first learn to draw a face, all those other elements, compositions, colour, narratives, were all just learnt gradually and applied step by step over the years.
And maybe that’s all it is!
Just years and years of trial and error, observation and learning one thing and moving onto the next.
So what ends up looking like magic, drawing something from imagination in 5 minutes, is really just rooted in step by step learning over the past 30 years of me drawing.
The creativity part can only come in once you’re comfortable enough with the basics. It’s just most people don’t get over the first hurdle of learning the basics, because the beginning is the most frustrating and takes the most patience.
So if art can be learnt, what is talent?
There’s the argument that talent is merely something that pushes you off the start line a little sooner than everyone else, it’s just that initial bump, that initial extra interest in a subject that then develops into something more thorough with practice and persistence.
So in that case, talent does exist, but it’s merely a little lift, as opposed to the sole reason people are good at anything.
And I think that’s the one I’m going with… because I used to make my own comics, draw stories, write books, all when I was a kid, which is a creative based hobby rather than skill.
Believe me if you were to see the comics or read the books, there wasn’t a whole lot of skill involved.
But, there was something in me that made me want to create those that young, but also something that let me be able to.
A lot of 8 year olds probably wouldn’t know how to start writing a book or creating a comic.
Same way I could never get my head round people who were good at sports or book smart.
So that initial sprinkle of talent gave me the gusto needed to be able to get on with creating my own things, but the rest of it is just practise.
Because whilst it sounds impressive for someone so young to write their own book or create their own comics, looking back I can see they’re basically rip offs of what I loved at the time.
But the passion was there, and the passion is what gets you through shit work after shit work until you finally start creating something semi decent.
So maybe talent is really just passion, where most people would give up after 100 drawings looking bad, the ‘talented’ people just kept on drawing…
It’s funny, some people like being called talented, some people find it a bit insulting when people say ‘omg you’re so lucky to be talented!’ Because they feel it diminishes the years of work you’ve done, just to be labeled something as trivial as ‘luck’
But maybe the real luck is just knowing what you want to focus on sooner than everybody else…
I’ve been drawing all my life, I’ve rarely questioned that I was going to become an artist, so I’ve already got 3 decades of practise under my belt, whereas if I only discovered drawing today, I might be 62 the time I catch up to the practise I’ve done up to this point.
Probably be able to cut that time riiiight down if took my own courses… oi oiii!
Maybe talent is in the eye of the beholder, because someone who doesn’t draw will look and see anyone who draws as talented, whereas a professional looking at an amateurs work can see where they need to put in the work to improve, so talented to one is rookie to another.
To me talent has always been synonymous with hard work, because if someone called me talented I’d just think, well, 5 years ago my work didn’t look like this and some people called me talented then, but talent isn’t what’s filled my sketchbook and honed my skills, it’s the grind.
But to sum up, do I think some people are born blessed with an innate talent? I’d like to think the spirit of Picasso gave me an ET like tap on my forehead at birth and said you’re a wizard ‘arry, but I don’t think so.
I think all of it can eventually be learnt, perhaps it’s just initially easier for people who start younger to learn it, same way kids pick up languages quicker, but I do also think we all have things we’re more aligned with than others, because I cannot do anything remotely useful outside of creative things.
I can’t drive, don’t know how to bleed a radiator, took me 6 hours to put together some Ikea flat pack furniture, had to call a plumber round because my dishwasher stopped working, only for him to tell me it just needed a salt top up …my skill points in life have well and truly been all spent on art and nothing else.
But I’m happy with the conclusion that talent is just passion, I genuinely do believe it can all be taught, I wouldn’t be sitting here doing online drawing courses if I didn’t, but it’s the perseverance that matters.
If you’re new to drawing, can you get through 100 drawings that are absolutely awful? And begin work on the next 200 that are only a bit less awful?
I think all you need to do is get your head down and power on through the shit art until it gets good, because what’s the alternative? Give up drawing?
Sod that.
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