Going dotty...

I think that I’m going dotty. The strangest things keep popping into my head; take dot-to-dotting for instance. I think that we must have all done a dot-to-dot puzzle at some time, they were in all the comics; even if they were pretty pointless as a puzzle.

I wonder what Vincent Van Gogh thought about dot-to-dot books, were they even around back then, and do children still do dot-to-dots I wonder? I guess that they must. I know when I was young I seemed to spend a high proportion of my time following the numbers and joining them up to find out what the picture was. Of course I could usually tell what it was before I started, but that didn’t stop me slavishly following the process.

I think it was dot-to-dot that got me interested in drawing, making an image appear on the paper was great, a bit like those magic painting books where the picture appeared when you brushed the page with water.

Of course, when I tried drawing for real I found that it wasn’t as easy without the dots. I could still see what it was before I started and for years I slavishly tried to draw exactly what I saw. I even used to make dots on the paper before I started drawing, positioning the key points and then joining them up with lines. It’s a common technique and one that I was taught at Art College years later.

Anyway, somewhere between the dots and my subject I became very dissatisfied. Even when I tried to join up all the dots it usually didn’t look like what I wanted it to. It would look like the thing I was drawing, but I was left with a feeling that it wasn’t what I wanted it to be.

I think that’s what happens when you slavishly try to draw what you see. It’s like that silly idea that when children ‘colour in’ they mustn’t go outside the lines. It’s outside the lines where all the good things happen and if you let yourself have a little freedom, who knows what you may create.

These days I’m not really interested in drawing exactly what I see. It’s a struggle because I’ve spent so many years following the dots and staying inside the lines, but I try. When I draw (which isn’t as often as I should) I’m happy to experiment a little, giving myself a freedom to draw what I feel and not worrying if the shapes aren’t exactly the same as the reality.

Like my life these days I don't follow the dots, I'm outside the lines, and I'm happy to just watch the picture appear. Maybe that’s what creativity is – freedom to do it your own way.