I stole a child's drawing

A little while ago, I pinched a child's drawing and wrote the following about the experience. The piece has been used as part of a key chapter in The Creative Condition, my next book which you can still back for the next 4 days on Kickstarter.

Here is the piece again, and you can hear the longer chapter excerpt over on the Creative Condition podcast now.

I stole a child's drawing this weekend.

There was a local dinosaur-themed event in town and a kid drew a shark. The lad was about six, maybe seven, at a guess and, while he drew using the provided pencils, his dad was preoccupied with something on his phone, oblivious of the art. Without really looking at the final result, the dad issued a vague, automated compliment, then said they needed to get going and set off.

His son hashed out the final bits of colour at speed, flung down the crayon, then legged after him.

It never crossed the boy’s mind to keep the drawing.

As they vanished from the market square, I crept over and picked it up. Just a tablet-shaped outline with two rows of jagged teeth, a grey scribble on the body, pink in the mouth, blue in the sea, and a tiny plane flying overhead. My head spun, looking for someone to come and bear witness to this mastery with me.

Do you know how many lecturers, art directors, designers, illustrators, and artists have spent hours teaching, learning to draw with such stripped-back power, such economy of line?

A lot. Trust me. It took my college tutors one and a half years to knock the perfection out of me and set me on my way to something better.

Your five-year-old could do this, but you couldn't, and didn’t. Did you?

Want to know why?

Schools, workplaces, your mates, and well-meaning loved ones will nudge or shove you toward the mirage of perfection; nothing more than a seductive illusion leading you further from what feels right. To you. In your guts.

Adults will stand and coo over a hyper-realistic painted portrait when it might be argued that a photograph does a better job of hyper-realism with a snap of the shutter. Perfection in art is a false prophet.

A parent will tell a kid how their drawing could be better, or steer them away from it entirely, as they slowly abandon that invaluable flippancy and willingness to fuck up that makes the superb shark drawing breathe. Then it’s the pursuit of feeding expectations, stability, prestige, and a fat pension.

I stole the drawing not from the child, but from the jaws of the recycling bin. The kid forgot the work the second he finished the masterpiece. I claimed it to put on my studio wall so that every time I start to overwork my art, I am reminded just how good it could be; how much better we all could be… if we just let go.

The Creative Condition is out in March 2024 and there are just 4 days left to get a contributor-credited copy ahead of general release.