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Keep Your Pencil Light

Echoes of Advice

I had the privilege of having an amazing art teacher in high school. She embodied her art to a core and effused class to all her students. One piece of advice she gave me has been ringing in my head recently seeking a way out:

Keep your pencil light.

Sadly she isn't around anymore to explain what she meant so I will borrow her words to explain what it means to me.

The Simplest

One of the classic mistakes beginners make when learning to draw is working with dark heavy lines. Others mistakenly try to feather-in the line making a dull grayish blob. When she told me to "keep your pencil light" odds are good she was giving basic advice to a beginning mediocre art student. By keeping the pencil light and moving you don't get a chance to overwork the line and get bogged down on a certain aspect of the drawing. If you keep moving and working you can adjust and rework as you go instead of overworking a single line.

Of course it wouldn't have that much affect on me if that's all it meant to me.

Reading Into It

Don't over-think things. Everyone has their "someday" list. Maybe it's a project that you will get to one day when you have the time or the talent it begs in order for it to be done "right". Instead of working a bit every day towards that goal you put the pencil down and wait for the day to come when you should pick it up again. Each day the pencil gets a little heavier and the work seems more daunting. The project itself gets overshadowed by the mental burden and pressure as well as an uneasy guilt. The trick commonly thrown around by prolific writers, artists, and developers alike is to pick up the pencil and move it as much as you can. By picking it up as much as possible you remove that mental burden and you might even surprise yourself when the project flows naturally from your daily practice.

The advice she gave me carries far and wide seeping into every aspect of daily life.

Don't let the pencil get so heavy you fear trying to lift it. Lift it daily. Doing this keeps both the pencil and your mind light. Whether it is about eating healthy, blogging, improving at your job, or even practicing drawing by keeping the metaphorical pencil light you can focus on the work and not the mental weight over-analysis can bring.

Save the analysis and criticism for after the work is done. Then you can beat yourself up and figure out how to improve. Perfect doesn't come to those who wait; it comes from those who try.