Kat Johnston

Tag: fear

  • My first real sketchbook… done.

    Kat Johnston Sketch: This is one of the pictures from my first fully-completed sketchbook… I’m thrilled.

    This morning I did the final few sketches in what is my first real completed cover to cover (though I do only draw on one side of the paper) sketchbook. Yes – good, bad, inbetween, from rough to refined, it goes from cover to cover with sketches by me and I haven’t torn out one single page. How’s that for progress?

    Its funny, you know… I can’t wait to get into the next one. I have another little sketchbook the same size and make as the first, but with green pages… and I have a green pen… it hasn’t had one thing drawn in it yet and I am itching to go. While I have started in other small sketchbooks like the first, I haven’t yet completed them. One has a focus – I have to come back to it. Another I started to draw in, but it hasn’t taken off yet. This little green one though, it hasn’t been touched, and is therefore just full of ready-to-go potential.

    I’m really happy with the little sketchbook… I have to say, some of the pages are just pure ‘bleh’ but going through it as a whole, it has something special. Perhaps it is just because it reflects the meandering trail of my thoughts – I actually find my flittering thought patterns to be interesting to map throughout it. Cherries here, berries there… a rabbit over here, then another further along… one thing fascinates me, then as quick as its come I am onto something else… though believe me when I say that when one thing is dropped away, another is taken up just as quickly and the first never strays all that far.

    When I get a chance, I am going to go through and scan it for you all, and post it up on Flickr. I really have to through and put up all the images that I have put on this blog there as well, scan in some other things, put up photos of dandelions I promised ages back… I will get around to it, I promise.

    In the meantime, enjoy this one extra page from the little sketchbook… I’m sure there will be many yet to follow.

  • The Unwise Owl: Escaped once more to grace my page.

    Kat Johnston Art - A book unwritten remains unread. It takes a pen to paper and a risk of failure to make those words take wing. How's that for a bit of philosophical mumbo-jumbo for you? The unwise owl gets a little sense, perhaps?

    Some may remember a previous post I did a little while back: The Unwise Owl, complete with a little story to tell his tale. A friend of mine liked the image rather much and I needed to draw something more substantial than a two minute sketch last night, so I took pen to paper in one of my sketchbooks; an ‘actual’ sketchbook, mind you, not a spiral-bound cheapie. It comes after this page in the same book, in case you were curious. I decided to give the unwise owl a second chance to redeem himself.

    If you click on the picture for today, it should link to a rather larger picture (800px wide rather than 500) because I just wasn’t happy leaving it so small. Generally it links to a 600px wide picture, so slightly larger, but I love the detailing in this one just so much that I had to share it properly. Lins and I have been talking about Atelodemiourgiopapyrophobia (a fear or phobia of messing up a perfectly nice piece of paper) a fair amount recently, as you can probably tell from my posting, since it has been mentioning it so often. So this seemed appropriate.

    A book unwritten remains unread. An artwork which stays in the imagination is only ever partially realized. It takes writing it down or roughing it out for things to truly take form. I can start drawing what is in my mind, but it isn’t until it gets to paper, canvas or whatever other medium I am using for it to really come to life. We all have a vision of perfection in our minds when it comes to what we do, but when it gets to the point of actually being realized, I think it is possible to stun even ourselves.

    I am with this image: I was a little concerned that I couldn’t do something to accentuate the owl properly whilst merging into another level of delicacy with the branches there, but to me, it works. The little books are flapping and floating, they’ve taken flight around him; perhaps he sits in awe of them. I don’t know why he isn’t flying with them… perhaps he is scared? Perhaps if he leaps from his branch he won’t float, but will fall? Who is to know. Perhaps I will write another ‘Unwise Owl’ story to accompany this picture later.

    I did slip up majorly once, although it probably doesn’t seem major to anyone else but me. As I drew my pen away from the page, I slipped and accidentally drew a line in the bottom right of the page. I turned it into the pen of the artist – what better way to transform those mistakes than to make them a part of the image? That’s all for today, hope you like it!

  • Another little dandelion day-dream.

    Kat Johnston Sketch - a little pair of dandelions sitting in the grass, a little rough sketching to make the day go past.

    Just a little picture drawn quickly to get something up by early afternoon. I’ve been doing a lot of dandelions recently, for some reason. I think I’m going to make them the little ‘symbol’ for Atelodemiourgiopapyrophobia, a fear of imperfect creative activity on paper. When you can’t think of something to draw, you might as well draw dandelions, yes? Ahh, my ‘fear of drawing on an empty page’ phobia is getting a little life of its own here… but I’m going with it.

    I think it would actually be a great name for an exhibition: a showing of sketchbooks, of works on paper, the great and brilliant pieces mixed in with the ones that probably get overlooked even by the artist themselves… in other words, pointing out the fact that each and every thing drawn, painted and roughed out is important in its own right. Each one is a step forward, each failure a step closer to an even better failure; sometimes success.

    How would we polish our skills without trying things and seeing if they work? How are we ever going to advance ourselves and challenge the boundaries of what we do if we don’t give it a go? If you never reach for the stars, then there is no chance that you are ever going to reach them unless you ride on the coattails of someone who can. A song comes to mind, actually – They All Laughed, a great Gershwin song from 1937.

    I can’t count the number of things that I have just stumbled upon by simply giving it a go, trying something new and often stepping back afterwards and going ‘oh my god… that’s horrible’. The fun thing with that though is that we know what not to do next time. That said, I admit I’ll often try it over, because you never know quite when the first time was just a fluke. Find glory in the failures, fail in style and never forget that not ever failure is quite what it seems from the outset. Accidental discoveries such as silly putty would never have happened without it! Yes, there are more significant discoveries than silly putty, but hey, its so funnnnnn!

    Just a little note saying thank you also to QUT’s Artisan newsletter for including a link to the site – I had a whooping 194 visits to the site yesterday, with five more wonderful responses to the survey. Thank you QUT, thanks to those who visited and to those who have yet to visit but probably will.

  • Atelodemiourgiopapyrophobia – the fear of imperfect creative activity on paper.

    Kat Johnston - Atelodemiourgiopapyrophobia, a fear of imperfect creative activity on paper.

    I know, it is rather a mouthful, isn’t it? A friend and I have looked high and low to find a proper term for a fear of ruining a blank page. We have found fear of blank paper (vacansopapurosophobia), fear of imperfection (atelophobia),  fear of ruin (atephobia) and fear of failure (atychiphobia), but none quite describes it perfectly.

    What am I talking about exactly? I’m talking about the fear of ruining a beautiful, pristine, blank piece of paper. The fear that so many of us seem to face as we stare down at that first intimidating page in a brand new journal or sketch-book, sitting there so full of amazing potential of what ‘could be’; that is, until we make that first stroke of a pen, the first sweep of a brush. Not one, single mistake lies between cover and cover yet: its perfect. The things that could potentially rest on those pristine sheets are the things dreams are made of – until we actually write or draw in it and stuff it all up with a misplaced squiggle or a crossed out word.

    Its easy to look at an empty sketchbook and imagine all the great things that could go on those pages. Its much harder to actually make the move to do so, and risk creating a garbled, disorganized mess; which in my case at least, is far more likely than having it turn out to be the new next best thing to Da Vinci’s journals.

    All those phobias above are just fine, well and good, however they do not capture that specific fear that we artists, writers, and other creative individuals seem to face. They are general and overarching. Am I afraid of all blank paper? No, not at all. It isn’t blank paper by itself that scares me, but the ruining of said paper by creating something unworthy of it – messing it all up. Is it a fear of failure? Well, of course… but it isn’t a fear of failure overall, it is fear of failure at this one specific task of drawing something good on paper that deserves a good drawing.

    Thus, I propose that we actually name this fear. No-one (so far as I can see) has made a good one yet, so it might as well be Lins and I who coin the term. Here are a few options, for those who like choices. Credit goes to Lins for coming up with the words from their various etymologies:

    Atepapyrophobia – a fear of ruined paper.

    • Word origins: ‘Ate‘ from Greek Ate (goddess of rash destructive deeds). ‘Papyro‘ from Middle English / from Old French papier / from Latin papȳrus, papyrus plant, papyrus paper / from Greek papūros.

    Atekanevaphobia – a fear of ruined canvas.

    • Word origins: ‘Ate‘ from Greek Ate (goddess of rash destructive deeds) ‘kaneva‘ from 1260, from Anglo-Fr. canevaz / from O.Fr. canevas / from V.L. *cannapaceus “made of hemp” / from L. cannabis / from Gk. kannabis “hemp,” a Scythian or Thracian word.

    Ateloaetorrophobia – the fear of an imperfect creation.

    • Word origins: ‘Atelo‘ from Greek ateles literally ‘without end’, meaning incomplete, inchoate, imperfect. ‘aetroro‘ from the Greek aetorrous literally meaning ‘creating’.

    Atelodemiourgiophobia – the fear of imperfect creative activity.

    • Word origins: ‘Atelo‘ from Greek ateles literally ‘without end’, meaning incomplete, inchoate, imperfect. ‘Demiourgio‘ from Greek ‘demiourgia’ literally workmanship, handicraft, meaning creative activity.

    Atelodemiourgiopapyrophobia – the fear of imperfect creative activity on paper.

    • Word origins: ‘Atelo‘ from Greek ateles literally ‘without end’, meaning incomplete, inchoate, imperfect. ‘Demiourgio‘ from Greek ‘demiourgia’ literally workmanship, handicraft, meaning creative activity. ‘Papyro‘ from Middle English / from Old French papier / from Latin papȳrus, papyrus plant, papyrus paper / from Greek papūros.

    I for one think that ‘atelodemiourgiophobia’ is the better, broader, overarching term for this fear of failing in creative endeavours. After all, I have the same problem standing back and looking at a blank canvas some days, as I do looking at that brand new bound sketchbook waiting to be drawn upon. But I don’t know… Atelodemiourgiopapyrophobia works too. And is far more impressive!

    The sketch that accompanies this post? Well, perhaps it is my own little theraputic way of trying to overcome this phobia. Its drawn in a sketchbook. A good one. I’m never going to create the stuff dreams are made of between those covers unless I dare to give it a go now, am I?

    Word origin credit goes to www.dictionary.com and the Greek-English Lexicon by Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, hosted online at www.perseus.tufts.edu/.