Error: Creativity Still Processing
Leonardo Da Vinci regularly scribbled down notes or sketches but struggled to finish them. He was a master draftsman. He relied heavily on observation for his designs and wrote backwards to protect his ideas. His end results might be the stuff of genius, but what about his process?
Measuring genius is as difficult as perfecting the creative process, however, something even Leonardo Da Vinci struggled with. The New York Times reported on an exhibit at the Met nearly 20 years ago that explored many of Da Vinci’s unfinished works of art, curated by Carmen C. Bambach. The show was aptly named Master Draftsman. The museum was able to use new noninvasive technology to study the works and gain insight into Da Vinci’s process. The question of what makes a great artist is one we’ve been asking for a long time. The Met looked for answers in Da Vinci’s drafts. Maybe there was a method to his genius.
But the idea of Da Vinci and other prolific artists like him as geniuses discredits the many drafts and techniques they experimented with. Works like the Mona Lisa can seem unattainable without knowledge of what went into her. The creative process is just that- a process. Most art does not come into being without an amount of labor behind it. Art students can show us how that process forms and becomes art.
Gabrielle Robinson is a senior at SCAD Atlanta. Like Da Vinci, she is surrounded by unfinished paintings, half-written chapters, and still-developing digital renders. Often, she is busy with school, working on class projects or in groups.
“I have probably only finished one painting in my entire existence that I started for hobby purposes,” she laughs, touching her neck, “Why have I never finished a painting? Maybe I don’t feel confident enough even though it’s a hobby. Maybe I lose sight of whatever technique or objective I was going after. Maybe I lose inspiration or something comes up and I have to stop.”
Robinson highlights what perhaps Da Vinci couldn’t. We all struggle with self doubt, lose focus, or get pulled in other directions. Sometimes our drafts can pile up and restarting them can feel like the impossible. After all, we stopped for a reason, right? Or it’s been years since we worked on it, so how could we pick up where we left off when it was so long ago? College students go through a lot of changes in the short years we’re in school. Who we are in our freshman year is very different from who we are in our senior year.
But suppose we do pick up an old, unfinished piece, just out of curiosity. There’s no deadline here, no class critique, and no guidelines to stay within. What happens, then, when we reach the dreaded mental block?
“Sometimes I get lost in my own head and I overthink and overanalyze the possibilities. It might just be that I have too many options and that’s what’s stopping me. Or I have two distinct options and I feel trapped in them,” Robinson says.
One of her solutions is simple. Step away from it. Don’t worry about what other people have to say about it and don’t worry about your own thoughts on it.
“I took walks. Not because I wanted to clear my head and think about it, but because I wanted to get away from it so that it didn’t feel like I was shackled to it. I wanted to come back to it in a natural way.” she says.
She stresses a natural and organic approach to her work. She doesn’t want to force herself or do something just because her professor told her to. It’s the difficulty in preserving your passion for something while also succeeding at it.
In a way, maybe Robinson’s process is one step ahead of Da Vinci’s. The ability to identify obstacles makes them manageable. If we know we are hitting a wall (and if we can see it’s a pattern), then we can better figure out how to manage it.
Ms. Bambach explained the mindset in Da Vinci’s time, “‘In the 19th century there was less preoccupation with the process: the exploring, discarding, correcting — the mistakes. It’s only fairly recently that we have begun to look at the 99 percent of perspiration and the 1 percent of genius that have gone into the work of Italian Renaissance artists such as Leonardo’s.’’
Such as Robinson’s too. The creative process is a long, complicated, and unpredictable one for many. Some people try to define it in steps like “Preparation”, “Incubation”, “Illumination”, and “Implementation”. But those are broad words that can have their own processes.
And everyone’s is different. Robinson gets her inspiration from watching her favorite movies, researching interesting topics, and re-examining the ideas she already has. Many artists in film and theater bounce ideas off of each other and draw on a variety of fields for help. Robinson also utilizes character building for her digital work, expanding out to storytelling. Her process is often a narrowing one- she starts out with a vague idea of what she wants and digs until she has a clear idea she is happy with. She has curiosity for the unknown, not fear.
Whatever your creative process is, if it comes easily to you or if you struggle with it daily, you’re not the only one. Artists like Da Vinci have been hitting the same roadblocks you have and even the best of us can’t defeat them every time.
