The only 2 things you need to make art

I loved art and design at school but it took me a while to find my way back to making drawings and paintings.

I studied a very academic subject at university and took a brief detour into teaching, but being diagnosed with a chronic illness led me to rediscover how much I enjoyed being creative.

During the early days of being ill, whenever I had a pocket of energy I would find some comfort in doing some simple sewing or crafting handmade greeting cards.

Every so often I would pick up a pencil and have a go at drawing something but it had been so long since I’d done that, that my drawings were inevitably imperfect. So I would lose patience (and energy) and give up.

Thanks to Danny Gregory’s Book The Creative License I started to draw with a pen for the first time and sank into the process of drawing which felt meditative.

During a conversation with some fellow artists where we were discussing our favourite and newly discovered art materials, I sparked a momentary silence by declaring, “In the end, all you need is a pen and some paper” which nicely sums up what I want to share today.

Sometimes it’s easier to get on with making art if you keep your tools really simple. And the simplest way to make art is with just 2 tools:

1. A pen

Nothing fancy, just choose a pen. That ballpoint pen sitting on the coffee table will work just fine. Don’t put extra pressure on yourself to use or find the ‘perfect’ pen. Doing that’s a really good way to procrastinate and avoid making a start on a drawing.

Just find the nearest pen and use that. Once you’re in the swing of making drawings regularly, consider rewarding yourself with something a bit more fancy, but don’t let the sparkle of shiny new art materials become a barrier to making art.

And yes, I know, it can feel really scary to dive straight into a drawing with a pen. There’s nowhere to hide and no possibility of erasing your lines. But if you embrace the slight wonkiness and imperfections you might start to realise they’re nothing to be afraid of. Accept that a line might not be at the perfect angle and redraw it or just go with it, it doesn’t really matter.

But observing, really looking at what you’re drawing and transferring what you see onto paper with your own marks might start to become something you can truly lose yourself in. Maybe you’ll begin to enjoy the process so much that the outcome of your drawing is secondary to the experience.

And yes, when you first start out you might still feel disappointed or frustrated with the results. But if you haven’t drawn in years, or since you were a child maybe, then your ‘drawing muscle’ is going to take a bit of time to get into shape.

In the meantime, though, be brave, dive in with a (any) pen, observe your surroundings and make some marks.

2. Some paper

Again, don’t overthink this. Have you got a printer? Take a piece of paper from there. Sticky note? That’ll do.

The most memorable drawing I ever did wasn’t fancy, wasn’t my best drawing, but it’s stayed with me. It was drawn on a piece of printer paper with a pen that was just lying around the house.

Maybe at some point, you’ll want to explore all the different kinds of papers and find a sketchbook that feels good to use. But make things as easy as possible to get moving. It’s the equivalent of going for regular walks or runs before you sign up for an expensive gym membership.

You might even have a notebook sitting around somewhere so once you’ve used a few pieces of printer paper or sticky notes, why not see if you can fill all the pages in that notebook?

Just don’t overcomplicate things. Don’t make excuses like “I’ll just go to the art supply shop at the weekend and then I’ll start drawing.”

Embrace the wonky, shaky, wobbly lines. When you look back at those drawings you’ll remember what it felt like to make those marks. Each one tells a story.

In the end, all you need is a pen and some paper. And the best pen and the best paper are those that you have right now. Making art isn’t about having the perfect tools, it starts with making beautiful, imperfect marks with simple materials. Give it a go. What’s the worst that can happen?