This week in my artistsjournals Yahoo! group, someone asked a couple of good questions: "If you were on a deserted island what journaling supplies would you have to have with you? Now could you answer this question with limiting yourself to just three items? How different do you think your journals would be if you didn’t have the outside contact and eye candy available to you?"
Assuming the journal itself is a given, my three favorite things would be a black drawing pen, like Pitt or Micron, a nice watercolor palette, and a set of prismacolor colored pencils. I would hope I also had a way of sharpening the pencils and a brush to paint with, so I suppose that’s five things instead of three, but those three mediums – watercolors, pen, and colored pencil – would make me happy on a deserted island.
I think most things in my life would be completely different if I wasn’t around other people to compare myself to and find new and creative ways to criticize myself and seem unworthy to do art. Actually, I did grow up in the middle of nowhere, and while there, I don’t ever remember having a problem sitting down to do art, deciding what to do, and knowing exactly what I had the ability to do. It was when I moved to the city that I started second-guessing myself. Not like it was the city’s fault, or that the city makes me feel insecure, but it can be both very encouraging and intimidating to be surrounded by so many talented and diverse people.
One thing about being in the middle of nowhere is that its just you and nature all around you, and you just don’t pay so much attention to what everyone else is doing – you just marvel at creation and digging your hands into the stuff of life, quite literally sometimes. Plus, you get to walk out of the shower in the morning, wrap your towel around you, and walk out accross the lawn to the street to get your mail if you wanted to, because no one is there to see you or care except for the trees and birds. How can you do thinks like that and NOT have great things to write and art about?! 🙂
So, without anyone to compare myself to, without deadlines to pressure me or hubbub of the world to complicate life, I’d like to think I’d do my best work. Hmmm….are there any available deserted islands anywhere????