Introduction
Our art form is a hard task master — demanding, relentless, and unforgiving. You get it right or go home. Indeed, when perfectionism is the baseline, equine realism isn’t for the faint of heart! And this is great and all — it’s resulted in stellar artworks that stun and inspire us, even get us to do a double-take, thinking the piece is a real horse. But this is a problem as well. Why? Well, when we’re so fixated on getting things perfect — when we’re fearful of making mistakes in a creative pressure pot — we’re going to miss an essential component to truly great arting: Play. Make no mistake, play is critical to all art, especially to our art form, and especially in the making of masterpieces. In a very real sense then, it shouldn’t be perfectionism at the forefront of our priorities, but play — always play! Why? Because only through play are three necessary qualities injected into our work most potently: Your Voice, your boldness, and a mysterious quality we can call "life," an energy that amplifies a whole lot more. So dare to play! It's the best thing that can happen to your art!
So let’s talk about how play factors into our creativity and why it’s such a prime directive to keep alive in our work to not only create the best work we can, but to always fail forwards. Because that’s what each new piece is also about — an opportunity to successfully fail in order to learn something new! As Ed Gonzales wisely advises, "Each piece is practice for the next." So in that spirit then, play on!…
Imagination and Inspiration
When we lean too much into our own comfort zones, when we actively dampen our own penchant to step beyond our own boundaries, we’ll find that our well of inspiration and imagination tends to dampen in kind. That’s to say, play and imagination go together. So if your inspirations are harder to come by lately, try injecting play back into your arting, and in heftier and more frivolous doses. Go into your art without the stranglehold of perfection and simply explore uncharted territory to mine some fresh ideas. What does that look like in our art form? Well, try a new medium, for starters. If you’ve worked in acrylics this whole time, try taking some classes on oil painting, loose pigments, or pastel work. Become a learner again. Lemme tell ya, that newb energy is intoxicating! Classrooms are a tremendous way to get our inspiration revved back up again, so jump in! Another way is to literally simply play with your art. Like I approach my NaReViMo horses as more low-key maquettes intended only as pure art play where perfectionism doesn’t even have a seat at the table. With that little attitude adjustment comes a huge payoff — a geyser of imaginative inspiration driving the making of lots more NaReViMo pieces. But more importantly, that great energy spills over into my actual work as one informs the other. This is the power of play! So consider having some play-filled projects on the side from time to time to help keep your inspiration curious, energized, and exploratory because that freshness will seep into the rest of your work in welcome, unexpected ways. And don’t you notice that inspiration wells up best in a more lighthearted atmosphere? When our expectations are less intense, when we’re more open to possibility without the undue chokehold of perfection and it accompanying anxiety, inspiration just seems to flourish in fuller force. In this way, play has the ability to get us arting again by reigniting our inspiration and priming our pump as only it can. Inspiration may be our match to our creative fuse, but play is the lighter fluid to our creative flame. Apply liberally.
And lastly, when we’re too careful, when we seek approval and certainty over our daring to explore, we tend to squish our imagination and inspirations outright, or they don’t stretch as far as they could…as far as they should. But the opposite is true, isn’t it? When we stop worrying about making mistakes and subsequently what others will think, we reorient our art back where it needs to be — on us — and with that comes bolder strokes and more ambitious ideas. Art and fear are rarely good bedfellows, and definitely antagonistic when it comes to things like this. So kick fear to the curb! If you intend to play in your art then, there can be no room for fear! Just jump right in the game and kick that proverbial ball! It doesn’t matter what direction or how hard you kick it — just kick it and see where it takes you!
Happy Mistakes
We all make mistakes when we create a new piece. No biggie. They’re part of the creative process and indeed, they’re intrinsic to how we learn. So it’s really no small stretch to say that mistakes are learning itself, pure and simple. Like have you ever watched a painter in a time-lapse clip? How they go over areas again and again to get it just right? That's literally the process of making "mistakes" to get to the final product — that's how it's done. Embrace it! No one gets bingo right out of the gate when it comes to equine realism...there's a slew of adjustments to be made. So never be afraid of making mistakes — therein lies a new lesson for you, a whole new horizon of understanding! As such, mistakes are truly one of your best learning pathways. Now if we’re truly lucky, we’ll make a “happy mistake,” an error that has a beneficial outcome that’s far better than we originally envisioned. It’s a surprise blunder that actually improves things, maybe even expands our knowledge base or skillset. But if we’re too afraid of making mistakes — if we’re reluctant to play — we won’t be making happy mistakes very often, and maybe not at all. This is a disaster on two fronts. First, it shuts down our ability to surprise ourselves which becomes a long-term motivation-killing grind. In fact, it can inspire boredom and so we may drop arting over time, feeling like we’ve gone as far as we can go. Yikes. Then second, it can shut down our willingness to take risks, to stretch and push our own boundaries which can result in creative plateaus, homogeneity, and the amplification of blindspots and stylistic biases, all of which inhibit our progress and evolution.
So we need to remain open to happy mistakes and it’s play that lays the fertile ground for them to flourish. In this way, the more play you inject into your art, the more happy mistakes you’ll make and so the faster you’ll learn and progress and the fresher your work will be. Best of all, you’ll continue to surprise yourself and so your art will always be that source of wonder and elation to keep you engaged like a joyful addiction. In short, play sets the stage for you to fail forwards in compelling ways. Hey—you’re already going to make mistakes, right? So why not design a scenario with play where those mistakes will actually help you get a jump on the ball?
Exploration
When we’re playing, we’re less rigid in our expectations and our thinking, and so we’re more flexible and exploratory in our arting. In a sense then, play is a kind of exploration in itself, it’s a means to test boundaries, to ask “what if?” in the most low-pressure way. For instance, when we choose to play in our paint, we’re more likely to experiment with color to see where new hues and mixes take us. So think about switching out a color or two on your regular palette just to see what happens, for instance. Like what would happen if we use Van Dyke Brown instead of Raw Umber? Or Payne's Grey rather than Ivory Black? What if we added a bit of violet, blue, green, red, orange, or yellow to our mix? Or when it comes to sculpture, perhaps the interesting way that muscle group is manifesting piques our curiosity, or the novel way the mane is tousled or flipped trips our trigger...chase it! Explore! Discover! Find those surprises!
When we’re playing around with our art, we’re simply more prone to challenge our own habits and take bigger risks, always a smart long-term strategy. And, in particular, when it comes to equine realism, exploration is everything! It keeps our knowledge base evolving and growing, it keeps our work fresh and authoritative, and it deepens our appreciation for this lovely animal in ways only discovery can. Because when we’re explorers, we remain learners, too, as that electricity of discovery drives us forwards and keeps our portfolio lively. To tell the truth, if a new piece isn’t about a kind of exploration, we’re falling short of our potential, aren’t we? Because pushing ourselves doesn’t have to be a high-stress, pressure-cooker endeavor. Nope. Pushing ourselves can look like play instead!
Recommended reading:
Experimentation
One of the most powerful ways play influences our work is through experimentation with our media, inspirations, methods, and sensibilities. Similar to exploration, experimentation actually formalizes the processes with methodology in order to repeat it, even to teach it. So while exploration is looser and more a free-for-all, experimentation has a structure to it so we can control variables and find targeted solutions. So think about it as answering the question "what if?" but with a system, one we may or may not adopt, depending on its success. In this way, experimentation can be a powerful problem-solving and innovating tool in our skillset, so never hesitate to run one!
Recommended reading:
Special Effects: How To Create Tricky Aspects Of Horse Color For Beginners Part I to Part VI (just hit "newer post" at the bottom of Part I and subsequent posts to get you to the next part)
Challenging Convention
Conventional arting is rooted in fear. It’s safe, accepted, not prone to rocking the boat. And believe it or not, despite being based on objective facts, our art form is riddled with conventional ideas about how to express reality from the painting of hooves to the proportions we fix into our sculptures. But if you do a lot of field study and really learn to See our subject, you quickly begin to See all the safety built into our expectations…and that’s a long-term problem. On one hand, it can stifle our expression of more objective reality in our own art, and on the other it can homogenize our art form to a point where it will prejudice us against more factual depictions as “wrong.” What's more, it can make us deaf to the surprising science happening today that's disproving quite a few of those conventions, so why not listen?
But play is the surefire countermeasure for convention by forcing us out of our comfort zones and habitual expectations. It asks us to risk, to embrace the unexpected, to face uncertainty, and best of all, to challenge accepted norms and formula. By always asking “what if?,” play confronts our collective habits and gets us all asking new questions, and that almost always leads to leaps forwards in our art form. In other words, play gets us working along fresh new pathways simply for the fun of doing it and it reciprocates by uprooting our own prejudices and biases as it directs us towards a freer, more authentic expression in our art. Playing it safe hardly ever gets us where we want to be in our art! Indeed, playing it safe typically leads to homogeneity, regurgitating the same errors, and entrenching a problematic artistic style. In this way, the conventions we first need to challenge most are often our own, and it's kicking that proverbial ball around that inspires that progressive metamorphosis.
Innovation
When play has us exploring with a fired up inspiration open to happy mistakes and an eagerness to challenge convention, we’re inevitably going to innovate. It’s a given. So innovate! Never be afraid to stretch farther to discover new ideas and push the materials and methods. You’ll never develop a new way of arting if you play it safe! So venture into that uncharted territory and put that new idea to the test. Create that new methodology or expectation — both your work and our art form will benefit from it. And quite often, you’ll find that play is a fun and handy conduit for innovation for precisely these reasons.
And while it can be intimidating and scary introducing a new thing to the public — because the public is the public after all — never be afraid to contribute to our art form! Your Voice is unique in all of space and time, and just as much, your discoveries will often be unique as well. And this art form really isn’t so constricting — there’s plenty of room for a lot of ideas, methods, aesthetics, and styles, and so there’s plenty of room for your new thing, too. Indeed, there are many equally convincing ways to convey reality, so explore them!
Organic Chaos
When we’re more willing to actually play around in our clay, for instance, we’re going to generate more “organic chaos” which is a boon for recreating textures and that sense of living hide and flesh. Our sculpting becomes less formulaic and rigid, less literal and more natural and organic, which is ironically a leap forwards in realism. That’s to say the less we sculpt like a literal anatomy chart, the more realistic our work tends to become in a funny twist of irony. Because equines aren’t literal depictions of anatomy charts — they’re living flesh full of moment and happenstance and morphing life — and it’s playing around in our clay that helps us get there.
Likewise the same can be said for pigment. When we choose to play with our paint, we’re more likely to test new waters and in so doing, perhaps discover new ways to inject a more organic, non-regimented, "organically messy," living quality into our paintwork. For instance, maybe we'll discover a new way to do sabino or roan ticking that lends a more natural result. Likewise, playing around with the color sampler tool in a photo editing program to spot-sample our reference photos can reveal a lot of very surprising color families. Like did you know that many dark hooves are in the green family and a lot of dark skin is in the violet family? But if we don’t play around with things, we miss those discoveries.
Never be afraid to steer into left field from time to time. Really, the more we playfully push our clays, brushes, pigments, glazes, and airbrushes, the faster we'll tease out organic chaos in our work.
Recommended reading:
Knowledge Base And Skillset
Put all this together and you’re automatically expanding your knowledge base and cramming new skills into your toolkit, aren’t you? In this way, always remain childlike with your arting! Indeed, to a child, play is very serious learning, and so should it be for art, too. In a very real sense then, it’s the most childlike artist who progresses the fastest. And I don’t mean childlike in their artistic style, but childlike in their unending capacity for curiosity and putting things to the test through play. So grab those proverbial tinkertoys and get to tinker toying! See what new configurations to discover and boundaries to bust past, push those materials and ideas beyond their limits, make mistakes and learn from them, surprise yourself over and over again, and above all, feed that curiosity and let it inspire new questions. Like, never stop asking “what if?,” or "why did that happen?," or "why not?" It’s not only super fun to ask these questions as we work, but it keeps our knowledge base flexible and ever-expanding while keeping convention at bay. So if we find that things just aren't progressing like we want, chances are it’s because we’ve stopped asking these critical questions and have probably plateaued by leaning too heavily on our own comfort zones and conventional thinking. This is the inevitable outcome when we forget that inner creative child that yearns to explore the possibilities. Indeed, FAFO, or futz around and find out, is far more valuable a habit than many artists may realize!
So how do we boot ourselves off that plateau if we can’t even see the edge of it ourselves? Well, take classes and workshops to learn a new medium or technique. Classes are a great route to glean a new ways of Seeing and doing things by being exposed to a lot of fresh new ideas from the teacher and the other students. And no one — no one — has been at this long enough to no longer need classes. Everyone benefits from a classroom! Heck, it’s said that Michelangelo quipped at eighty years old, “At last my apprenticeship is finished, I am ready to begin.” You are never too old or too advanced to no longer be a learner! There’s also a ton of online resources at your disposal from YouTube to Zoom. So get back into learner mode! Also absolutely get back out there to do some field study, up close and personal. Maybe your friend or family member has horses — go visit them and bring your camera. Or go to shows, expos, fairs, and rodeos as they’re a great way to see horses up close and personal, too. Grooming horses can also be a great way to learn about structure and color hands-on, and many horses seem to really enjoy it. Or just sit out there in the pasture with them for a long quiet moment, and it’s also so good for the artistic soul.
Amusement
Of course, play is supposed to be fun fun fun and, in turn, this can make learning fun fun fun, too! So…have a blast with it! Indulge play to your heart’s content simply out of pure delight. But then again — hey — there will be times when you don’t even want to have a goal, right? No objective? And that’s okay! Because really, sometimes you just want to play around with your art simply for the sake of playing around with it and that’s always a good idea, too! Make FAFO work for you!
Overall then, do whatever you have to do to release pressure so that your play can be truly productive and enjoyable. Let me repeat that: Do whatever you have to do to release the pressure. Because our art form imposes so much pressure on us, doesn’t it? It’s a lot. But as numerous studies have found, when we’re under stress or anxiety, our ability to learn and loosen up enough to explore diminishes in kind, making for a very counterproductive environment. That’s to say, the fastest, deepest, and most creative learning happens in the absence of pressure! Or in short, it's through play we learn best, not pressure! Never forget this! So always show yourself grace. Allow yourself to have fun again in your arting, to explore, to ask “what if?", and to even make mistakes. Who knows where that wrong turn will take you! Honestly, some of my biggest discoveries have been the product of a big unintentional detour. "Don't worry about mistakes. Making things out of mistakes, that creativity," said Peter Max. Spot on! So stop caring what other people are going to think! Who cares? Who do you create your art for — them or yourself? Dump that baggage then and just get back to playfully arting full bore! Ultimately, you’re the only one you need to please with your art, so keep yourself and your own sensibilities front and center.
Recommended reading:
The Critic in the Creative Space
Arting In A Bubble: An Empowering Way To Create Art
Recommended viewing:
The Power Of Vulnerability - Brené Brown
Why Your Critics Aren't The Ones Who Count - Brené Brown
Your Elusive Creative Genius - Elizabeth Gilbert
Success, Failure And The Drive To Keep Creating - Elizabeth Gilbert
Conclusion
Creativity is cultivated in courage, not in caution, not in hesitation, and not definitely not in convention. Playing it safe squelches innovation and creative thinking by limiting our willingness to explore uncharted territory where newness is found. We’ve got to be willing to take risks and ask “what if?” if we’re going to really get somewhere in our art! We must "dare greatly," as Teddy Roosevelt urged. So keep playing around with your art by stretching yourself just for the fun of it. Never ever stop being childlike in your art! Keep that curiosity fired up and your penchant for play revved and ready to go. And never forget: Always put everything you’ve learned to the test and push it. You’ve learned these ideas and techniques, sure, but do they really stand up to reality and to your evolution? Do your own comfort zones, do your conventions really hold water? And do they continue to vibe with your Voice and development? So challenge them, test them, and expand on them, asking yourself what you can discover simply by playing around with them.
Perhaps even better, creative play tends to purify, expand, and amplify your Voice, that critical component to all great art. Because make no mistake, there's nothing more special in your art than your Voice! In this way, playing around in your arting gives your Voice fertile ground to grow since you'll also be discovering who you are as an artist and a person, a deeply meaningful exploration that gives your art depth and authority.
Altogether then, play is a powerful factor in progressive arting. In many ways really, progressive arting is essentially play itself, the two being nearly synonymous even for our stringent art form. So go long! Go way long! Way out there! No—keep going! No more…waaaaaaaay more! Ok — here it comes! Incoming! And don’t worry — you win even if you drop the ball! So get to playing around in your art. It’s rewarding, it’s beneficial, it’s refreshing, it’s surprising, and most of all, it’s super inspiring! It absolutely gets your creative ball bouncing 'round and shootin' through that goalpost of truly great art and a truly great time creating it! So game on! Let's play!
“Serious art is born from serious play.”
— Julia Cameron
