Lesson 7 – Mentoring

Talking to an artist is not always easy.

Artists often seem overly sensitive and contradictory. There are 3 valid reasons for this sensitivity that you should understand. Keep in mind that the following 3 statements are not true.

1. Artists believe their self-worth is connected to their artwork – and to it’s value.
2. Artists believe they need to have something called talent, which comes from a magical place and is out of their control.
3. Artists believe that creating something that looks bad is evidence that they missed getting the magical talent they so desperately want.

Put all these together and you have some big fear tied up in your child’s self-image and performance as an artist. While none of these 3 beliefs is true, almost everyone, including non-artists, believes them.

Your job as the parent of an artist is to counteract these 3 misconceptions gently and persistently. You must continue your role as a parent, while also partnering in their artistic journey. It’s not as hard as it sounds, it mostly means learning to speak with helpful honesty and being a cheerleader.

Self Worth

To make sure an artist can value themselves without attaching that value to their work, you should take every opportunity to remind them that they are wonderful – at times that they have not just recently created a wonderful piece of art.

sTell them that you know they try their best, and that’s one their best qualities. Tell them this after artwork they’re proud of, and after artwork they’re embarrassed about.

When artists do create good work, don’t react like this is what you’ve been waiting for all their life. React positively. Put the work on display. Show the work to friends. Be proud. Remind them that they did that work, which is proof that they can always create more good work if they keep after it.

Just don’t make it a bigger deal than all the other good things about them, like being your child, and generally just being awesome.

Talent vs. Gifts

When people believe in talent, it’s as if some people are born with a magic ability, and that they’re special – without working for it. These people have more value simply because of the luck of the draw. They are “The Chosen Ones.” 

This permeates our culture in books and movies. Wizards and mutants have special abilities that others will never have. Luke Skywalker was The New Hope. What could possibly be more exciting than to discover you’re going to save the galaxy – and what could be more elite?

That’s why a lot of artists think they’re more special than others. Elitism is rampant in the art world, and it can be brutal as well as arbitrary. People who are lauded as the most talented artists, were often simply at the right place at the right time, and met the right people.

The flip side of this is the frightening belief that if you create any artwork that isn’t awesome, you might not have gotten that lucky talent card. You are not a Jedi warrior after all.

Instead of thinking of talent as one huge prize, we should segment the idea into the many smaller gifts that come together in myriad ways to create artists of all kinds.

Some artists have a gift for putting colors together in exciting ways. Some can draw what they see more easily than others. Some artists like to invent new ways to express themselves. Some have the gift of patience, while others have the gift of not being patient at all. A few people will have a combination of gifts that propel them to a higher quality faster and more easily than others.

Gifts are helpful, but not magic. Some people do have a super-set of gifts, and can rise to a level that is stellar. With art, we think they got the only prize there is, but just like there are great musicians who are not superstars, and great athletes who do not win the gold medals, there are great artists who are not household names. Not having all the gifts merely means you practice a little harder to get where you want to go.

There are highly gifted people who never work and don’t use their gifts. There are people who struggle with effort, but work so hard that they overcome a lack of gifts – and shine brightly.

So what is the greatest artistic gift of all? The desire to make art. If you love creating, you will work to create. If you work at it, you get better and better. Van Gogh did not have the most important gift of his time, which was to draw accurately. He knew nothing about color or mixing paint when he began. He could not draw in perspective. 

Vincent didn’t stop though. He worked harder than most artists and produced an enormous amount of work in a short time. He actually has more work to his name than many other artists, yet began painting later in life and died young.

He managed to discover hidden gifts of color and technique. It took time to develop these. He learned how to draw in perspective. He re-drew things that he had trouble with until they looked more accurate.

So don’t worry about that rare thing called talent or the perceived lack of it. Just encourage, and help your young artist continue to love art.

Teach to C.R.E.A.T.E.

Connect

Respect

Encourage

Ask

Truth

Enlighten

These six words help you remember the ways to work with artists that help them overcome their fears, and learn to be better artists.

Connecting means using your body language to communicate your care. If you’re standing, and a small one is too, you tower above them. Kneel down so you can look at them face to face. Lean over when you can. Eye contact when you’re being asked about artwork is very, very important. More than almost anything, this tells an artist that you care about their work. That communicates that you care about them as a person.

Respect is about your voice and inflection, as well as temporarily refraining from typical parental love actions like hugging and hair tousling. Speak to kids like you speak to an adult. Never sound condescending or use “kid talk”.

Encouragement is finding out what is really needed at any given moment. This might simply be commiseration instead of problem solving. Sometimes, trying to fix something just says you think you know more than they do. At other times, an insight is the thing that’s needed, and that takes patience. Insights cannot all be gained in one lesson, so not only do you need patience, so does your artist. They will be frustrated at times, as they learn.

Ask your artist what they want. But be sensitive to whether or not they really just want audience applause.

Truth is always needed for artists. They need to trust their mentors, so always saying their work is good, will not be helpful. How do you trust someone who says everything is fantastic?

If an artist tells you they hate their work… Do. Not. Say. It. Is. Good. That tells them that you believe they don’t know how to judge good artwork! Every artist depends on being able to evaluate art, so that’s a very bad thing. You might think the work is bad too, or you might think it’s the best thing they’ve ever done. Either way, your job is not to agree or disagree at this moment. Your job is to help them discover why. Go back one space, to “Ask”, and find out what is troubling them.

Another aspect of truth is how to respond when you’re asked only for applause, as in, “what do you think?” If you think the work is less than what they’re capable of, or has an obvious flaw of some sort, do not speak about it. You were not actually given permission for that. Instead, you should find one or two things you see that you believe are great in this work. “I love the way you use greens together!” or “this eye is the best you’ve ever done.” Truth is detectable, and so is fake praise. “I love that!” when you’re thinking, “I don’t know how to point out how weird that mouth looks”, then you’re busted. Remember, if they don’t see that flaw that’s so obvious to you, they can’t see it. They won’t see it if you point it out. They need time to get over the artwork honeymoon.

Artists must discover their own need for improvement!

Enlightening with lessons, examples, and questions, to get your young artist to think about themselves and their work, is invaluable.

Art takes practice

Always take the opportunity to remind your artist that the great masters were not born great. Where is the work by 10-year old Michelangelo? or 8 year old Rembrandt? 

They practiced for years before they created the works we know and love. Where did their practice works go? Well they probably threw them in the trash, which is why we don’t have them today. 

That means your young artist should have permission to throw their work in the trash too. If they hate it, you saving it against their wishes seems like you don’t respect their opinions. But you are a proud parent, so fish it back out later when they’re not looking if you can’t part with something. They will forgive you – far in the future – at the very moment their own child does the same thing.

No mistakes

Artists can’t waste time. They can only make learners or keepers. If you hate the work you made, then you learned from it. If you like it, you keep it. Practice helps artists make more and more keepers, but every learner work is an unavoidable step in the artists’ journey. How do you get there without learning? Learners are how you do it, and you have to make a specific number of them to get there. So every time you get a learner done, you’ve put that one behind you.

Artists should celebrate every learner they do, because they had to do it at some point, and now it’s over and done.

These are the things I know from being an artist, being an artist’s son, a dad of two artists, and many artists’ friend. This lesson should be reviewed often, because even when we know the best way to be a parent, it’s hard to do it well all the time, and reminders are good.