#245: How Sketching Over Static Helped Me Overcome My Fear of Blank Pages

July 23, 2020 — Blank pages are scary, but who said you have to start with a blank page? Sketching your ideas on top of notes or other drawings can get your mind into a more playful state.

Blank pages scare me.

Case in point, isn’t the white space (↑) between these two paragraphs kind of terrifying?

I’m on Day 245 of my year-long comic challenge, so you’d think at least drawing would come easily to me by now, but nope. Putting pencil to paper is still a struggle.

Here’s the problem as I see it…

All creative fear is derived from judgment. And judgment happens when you finish work. Furthermore, the better your sketches are, the more they resemble work that is finished.

So the question becomes: How do I BYPASS the judging part of my brain while I’m in the sketching phase?

Or, as I asked myself yesterday afternoon…

How do I make my first sketch SO BAD that my brain doesn’t even realize that I’m trying to make art?