Radiococo Broadcast #35
it doesn't have to be good
I started actively filling little pockets of in-between time with left-hand drawings a month ago. In between listening to lectures, in between presentations, in between destinations. For years I've wanted to be good at drawing. What good meant varied from time to time, as my tastes and preferences changed over the years. Hardly a reasonable standard to set myself against. And yet.
In the past year, I've had to introduce myself more times than I can count, often asked to summarize my journey of how I got here. Breezing through decisions to uproot 3 times over 10 years, starting my design education in a technical college (temasek poly) being so sure that I would be a print designer and design delectable layouts for publications (ha!), doing a degree in graphic design and realised I didn't want to spend my days talking to text and graphics on screens anymore and then started tinkering with electronics. I can hardly bear to call myself a graphic designer* these days.
Repeating the summary of my short journey in art/design/tech/education has made me realise how much my aesthetic preferences have changed. I no longer wish that I could manipulate bezier curves on Illustrator with pizzazz to create sleek vector graphics that seem to get all the cool jobs. I have accepted that it simply is not a skill my body wants to spend time or energy on.
I have always talked and thought about the spirit of a child when it comes to doing– to create with curiosity and abandon. To be open to where the line takes you and how the cardboard unfolds. It took me a while to translate the spirit into action but these drawings got me there. The first exploration with inky drawings was like a trust fall exercise between me and my creative process. Drawing with ink/ my left hand has allowed me to connect with that curiosity again, accepting the squiggly lines that I have little control over, and knowing that it doesn’t have to be good. It is just an exercise!
Case in point:
I started this with a line that grew into the head and then the rest of the drawing revealed itself (likewise for all the drawings in this broadcast). Never in my life did I think I could draw a kid riding a bicycle with my non-dominant hand without prior sketches, or references and actually like the outcome?! 🥲 Will I be able to expand on that and draw more kiddos on bicycles? In different perspectives? Quite unlikely. But maybe the real treasures are the unintentional drawings you make along the way.
Now I trust the process, and it feels like the process trusts me too.
Thank you for being here in the process 🫶
*I don't regret my choices, I still believe that the foundation my design diploma gave me was the springboard that enabled me to leap into many other creative endeavours with confidence!
This month’s play-list
Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese was the seed that birthed this broadcast
Bop Spotter–an adorable project that is tangentially related to trust
Oblique Strategies by Brain Eno & Peter Schmidt for when you need to deviate from your process
I feel the same way about my fine arts education, at one time I wanted to paint in oils and be a “serious artist” and maintain a studio practice in the way many of my teachers were… but along the way wanting other things like being able to share the experience of art making with others and experiment with styles and materials… which is a more sustainable process for me than what I initially thought to be the “proper” art practice. 🙌🏻 Imperfect is good enough.