I'm terrible at art.
I mean, awful.
I can draw, like, a snake and stick figures. and a house with curling smoke coming out of the chimney and a little piece of sun in the upper right-hand corner.
I've always been terrible at art.
It's an awful disappointment, because I really like art. I have had dreams of abstract sculptures and paintings that were the coolest things I've ever seen. I always wake up disappointed, knowing that I could never ever make these pictures of art that my mind makes up in my sleep.
When I was a kid, consequently, I hated art class. My visual art talent is so terrible, that it felt like I was a retard. Other kids used to laugh at my ineptitude. Or maybe they didn't, but i was so bad that I was sure they did. It was more like they gave me pitying looks.
One time in my art class in 4th grade, we were supposed to draw or paint using INK. Not watercolors or oil paint, or chalk or crayon or colored pencil, but ink. They came in these little brown glass bottles.
I sat for a long time not knowing what to do, then I had an idea. I went for a blue bottle but accidentally spilt it on the little piece of posterboard that I had to draw on. I got really upset. I started yelling "I can't do it I can't do it I can't do it! I hate art!" I was really, really upset. Like, heart beating fast, hyperventilating upset.
I felt that art class and my inability to create anything pleasing was something that was strangling me--I literally was having difficulty breathing.
My teacher, no idea what her name was, but she will always stick in my mind, came to me and started trying to calm me down.
I told her how impossible it was for me to do this. That I was terrible. I apologized for ruining my picture. I hadn't done it on purpose. I didn't mean to make it a mess.
She looked at it, at the blotch on the paper. "What's wrong with it?" she asked.
I said, "Well, look at it, I spilt ink on it."
"So?"
"So, it's ruined."
She said, "Hold it up to your face and blow on it."
"What?"
"Just hold it up to your face and blow on the ink. As hard as you can."
She showed me how to hold the bit of board: horizontal, level to my face.
I blew the round blue ink blotch and it sent off tendrils. I held it at another angle and blew and the tendrils went the other way. It looked very different.
She let me make blotches with the other bottles of ink, so I had many colors of ink that I blew on to make these weird shapes. All of them looked like cool splotches of many colors. It was a total revelation: that she had taken my mistake and told me, completely untalented, awkward me, how to make something beautiful and cool with it...and it worked!
.When I was done, she said, "OK, now draw something little on it."
"What should I draw?"
"What do you want to draw?"
I paused. I didn't know. And then it came to me.
"A Ladybug."
So I drew a tiny little ladybug crawling on these sort of abstract blown splotches of ink.
When I was done, the teacher said: "I call that a masterpiece."
When I was done, the teacher said: "I call that a masterpiece."
And it was. It was very cool looking. I couldn't believe it. It was much better than what it would have originally been if I hadn't spilt the ink.
The teacher entered it in a city-wide contest.
Sadly, I moved away shortly after that and I never got the piece of art back. Or I'd show you a picture of it. You'll just have to imagine it.
But that lesson really stuck with me. And it was one of the most useful lessons I've ever learnt.
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