Every artist is intimidated by the blank paper or canvas. Sometimes it’s debilitating. You can encourage students, but how do you really alleviate any of their fears? Expectations and misconceptions can shut down many artists, especially a perfectionist.

Here is a great little list of Pocket Pointers for when you need them. They’re also good for when a student is angry and frustrated about not doing work they like or in the way they wanted to.

Finding a stressed out student is sometimes easy, but often they are masking it quite well. This makes it easy to miss them because of the contrast between obvious stress and hidden stress. Be on the lookout for tell-tale behaviors: very slow progress; staring at blank paper; fidgeting; going to the bathroom too often; and other avoidance techniques.

If you suspect someone is having trouble, it’s more important to ask and be wrong about it than to risk missing an important need.

Sit down next to your student and ask them how their lunch was today or some other benign question. Then ask them how the work is going. It doesn’t matter what they say, just keep talking and move into the de-stressor suggestions we have below.

Try one of these ideas, or a combination. Go with what seems right for the moment.

You can’t make paper less valuable

Bring a sheet of paper with you or even use the one that the student hasn’t worked on yet. Tear it out and have the student crumple it up into a wad. Throw it in the trash! 

“So did we just waste a sheet of paper? It sure looks like it. How much money do you think we just threw away? Yeah, not much, it’s just paper.

What if I had given you a sheet of paper with an amazing lesson outline on it and you had followed that lesson and learned something? Then you’d be done with the paper and you could throw it out. It wouldn’t seem like a waste though, because the paper carried information on it, right? Well, the piece of paper we just destroyed also carries information on it. Here is what that lesson is:

You cannot make that paper less valuable than it was. It’s just paper! The cost is very, very small. It’s ok to throw paper away even with nothing on it. We just did. But what if you drew something on that paper and you didn’t like how it turned out? Well you also throw it away. Does that make the trash less valuable? No. But this piece of paper will have taught you something extremely valuable – what not to do next time. That makes it worth much more than the cost of the paper. What if you make 10 horrible inaccurate drawings and learn so much from each one, and then you make an accurate version that is really fantastic? Those 10 sheets of paper would be totally worth all that learning they gave you, even though you’d throw them away.

That’s one of the best things that paper is for. To learn.”

The big X

Have your student(s) make a big X on their paper. Now use the paper to sketch a “learner”. This way they can’t keep it, so there is no pressure.

“Draw a huge X on your paper from top corners to bottom corners. This is now a “learner” page and you can’t make it look like a keeper. So do a sketch, or even two, on the paper and just try to figure things out by drawing them. You can even draw lines over other lines to correct them. You can’t mess this paper up.”

No Mistakes allowed

“You can’t make a mistake as an artist. That’s our rule, ‘no mistakes allowed’, but it just means the word is not appropriate. Instead, think of your sketches and paintings that you don’t like as ‘Learners’, and the ones you do like as ‘Keepers’. Every artist makes lots of learners. Otherwise they don’t learn.”

Old Masters were kids too

“So did Michelangelo ever make any horrible drawings? Have you ever seen any of his ‘Learners’? Me neither. I used to think that meant he was born a master. He could draw like he did as soon as he could hold a pencil at 2 years old, right? 

Nah. I now believe he just threw out all his learners. That’s what artists do. We throw those drawings away and don’t show them to anyone. It’s totally normal.

But it makes us believe that all the old masters never did any learning!

That just can’t be true. And I know it’s not true because hey, we don’t have any work by Michelangelo from when he was a kid.”

Time Travel

“So… it looks like you’re being really hard on yourself. That means you’re trying to time travel.

You are expecting yourself to be in your own future where you have developed your art more. That often happens when you see someone else who is already there. They may have reached a point you want to be at. Well, you can only get there by doing all the learners that are required to …um, learn. You can’t just jump up to your future today.

But the good news is that it’s fun to learn on the way, and sometimes you get Keepers too!”

It’s impossible to waste time

“Did you know that an artist cannot waste time? It’s true, if you’re creating something, you’re either learning, you’re making something awesome, or you’re doing both at the same time. Even if you throw away your work, you gained very valuable information and moved yourself forward on your journey as an artist.”