Watercolour, Acrylics, Oils, Pencils. Art supplies are alluring. They all have their own special qualities and challenges. They all produce different results and the potential can be overwhelming. So, which one should you stick too? The ultimate question – How to prioritise all this fun stuff!?
Firstly, I think it’s important to acknowledge how incredibly lucky we are to have this choice. That at any time, we have the opportunity to use all these different methods of expressing ourselves. I also think that, as adults, we have to learn to be OK with being a kid again. When we were kids, we picked up and experimented with ANYTHING – coloured pencils, markers, paint etc. and we were unashamed of doing so. As kids, we didn’t feel like we needed to ‘focus’ on just one medium so we could become experts. The joy was in the variety, in picking a medium for our mood, in playing until things ran their natural course, and then we moved on to the next thing.
Jack of all trades, master of none
As adults, we’ve been trained to value specialisation. At the end of high-school, we’re supposed to ‘choose a career’. Focus on one thing. Go for depth on a subject, not breadth across all subjects. And, for getting a job and money, this is generally a pretty good idea. It’s how people become surgeons, or how I became a software designer. To have achieved this, we probably let go of art, music, or any study that doesn’t help us achieve this singular goal.
Then, after focussing for so long and reaching a level of seniority in our speciality, we have the opportunity to play with art supplies again. But, we still try to apply this ‘focus’ mentality to it because we’ve spent so many years training ourselves to think like this. But we aren’t trying to get a job or money from our art. Our art is for us. It’s play. It’s enjoyment. So, we need to un-train ourselves. We need to be OK with being that child again and picking up whatever we feel like, playing with that for a while, and then, when we’re not enjoying it anymore, be comfortable letting it go for the next new thing that takes our interest.
This is fine if your focus is to enjoy and indulge in self-expression. But it also means we need to be OK with not achieving mastery. If mastery is the goal, (like we have in our jobs) then focus is useful, but whenever we try anything for the first time, as kids or as adults, I think we need to give ourselves permission to play, first. If we stumble across a medium that sucks us in, one that pushes and motivates us to seek mastery, then we can focus. But for now, I say just have fun.
*I’d like to dearly thank Zuzana for her question which prompted me to discover what I really think about this idea of ‘choosing which art medium to explore’.*