The Creative Gym (Learning art with no natural aptitude)

Tuesday, January 28, 2025

Humans make things. Whether this creative urge is unique to us or a common trait among all species that reach our level of social and technological development remains a mystery. It is also worth noting that the creative urge does not exist in all members of our species. Many people are perfectly content watching Netflix and eating cereal out of a box. Strangely, there has never been societal pressure to be creative. There is pressure to get a job and pay bills, get an education, and shower from time to time. But failing to find motivation to create does not cause any social issues at all.

Most of my friends create things. I know artists, coders, tinkerers, and writers. Most people in my life are working on a “project” or some other general creative task. I enjoy getting updates on their creations, even when I don’t entirely follow what they’re working on. There is something absolutely wonderful about listening to someone talk about what they are making. There’s an intimate passion that oozes from them when they speak of their “work.”

I have never thought of myself as creative—which is strange, considering my major pastime is writing fiction. I have published books, novellas, blogs, and even videos, and I have been doing so for years. I love storytelling. Writing has been the best way for me to do it.

And yet, oddly, I still do not consider myself creative.

This isn’t a self-esteem issue. I am proud of my writing. I’m happy to discuss my work with people. Genuinely, I think I’m a good storyteller. My prose may need tightening, sure, but the only way to improve is to keep writing—and I do.

I recently spoke in a post about learning to draw and how I was using the Niceferatu comic I post here as a platform for this endeavor. I have to admit, the postings of the comic have slowed recently. This isn’t because I have lost interest in the story or project. It’s because I realised that my art skills were not good enough to do justice to the story I wanted to tell.

While Niceferatu was supposed to be a platform for learning, it quickly became a platform for storytelling—one that my artwork was not yet good enough for. I even considered writing Niceferatu as a script or novella. Ultimately, though, the point of the character is to help me learn art.

So, to the gym I have gone.

There were a few things I had to remind myself of before I started, including, considering why I wanted to learn to draw.

I love writing. It is my main creative pastime. The only major downside to writing is that it takes a great deal of time to produce a finished work. I’m not naïve about this—I know full well that many people work on drawings for months. But I want to create basic art for a comic. I’m not trying to make high art or draft my visual opus.

I have watched hours of videos on composition, basic line art, and color theory. While I’m pretty sure some things I have drawn are “okay,” I have yet to create something that makes me happy. Progress is minor, slow, and very linear. But progress has been made. Sometimes, when I learn a new way of thinking about composition, it takes me a few attempts to work it into my flow—and often, I feel like I’ve taken a step backward.

I have come to think of this as a workout—a drawing workout. In fact, when I began to think of my art journey as a gym or a training regimen, I started aligning my expectations to a much longer timeline. In turn, my patience with myself has increased.

As I said earlier, despite writing a lot and telling many stories in the process, I don’t think of myself as creative. I think this is largely because my expectations of what it means to be creative are not reasonable.

I understand the process of writing well enough to recognize it as hard work—day after day, a consistent drive toward a goal. I don’t automatically consider this creative because I am distracted by the process and rarely reflect on the product.

With drawing, I have a different problem. I have always associated “being creative” or “artistic” with natural talent, but I am now at the point where I recognise talent as the end result of hard work. Maybe, one day, I will consider myself creative. But not until I finish my time at the gym of practice.

I wonder how many other people feel this way.