Don’t worry about drawing. Just make marks. Tell yourself you’re simply diagramming, playing, experimenting, seeing what looks like what. If you can write, you already know how to draw; you already have a form of your own, a style of making letters and numbers and special doodles. These are forms of drawing, too. While you’re making marks and drawing, pay attention to all the physical feedback you’re getting from your hand, wrist, arm, ears, your sense of smell and touch. How long can your mark go before you seem to need to lift the pencil and make a different mark? Make those marks shorter or longer. Change the ways you make them at all, wrap your fingers in fabric to change your touch, try your other hand to see what it does. All these things are telling you something. Get very quiet inside yourself and pay attention to everything you’re experiencing. Don’t think good or bad. Think useful, pleasurable, strange. Hide secrets in your work. Dance with these experiences, collaborate with them. They’re the leader; you follow. Soon you’ll be making up steps too, doing visual calypsos all your own — ungainly, awkward, or not. Who cares? You’ll be dancing to the music of art.

When I decided to read this article, I had many things in mind. Too many, so I decided to do something that would clear my mind. That was reading, and for some reason, I remembered the reading I had to do for my NMA class, and I’m glad I turned on my laptop, and it didn’t take much reading till I reached this part. Lesson 6: Start with a pencil, just a pencil. Only a pencil; it only takes a pencil and, of course, a piece of paper to begin, to draw something, and potentially create a masterpiece. It only takes an idea, a dream, a vision. “If you can write, you already know how to draw” If you can dream it, you can make it a reality. That was the way I interpreted that specific line, and that specific line, the one simple, unique line, snapped me back to reality. I had to pause just to analyze what that exact line meant to me. We all have our uniqueness, talents, our own aura, our own personalities. We have to embrace our own uniqueness, or like the author said, our own form, let it be, and let it do its thing. That’s the whole process of creating a masterpiece; let our minds explore and wander off. Once you start, once you grab that pencil, once you see that vision, get to work but have fun as well. Stay woke, enjoy the process, and pay attention to all details and all physical feedback of the process. Enjoy the process because the process teaches something about you and your creation. “Don’t think good or bad. Think useful, pleasurable, strange” There’s no room for self-doubts, no room for negativity when creativity is flowing. We have to embrace the uncertainty, the imperfections, and the unexpected twists and turns that come with the creative process. Trust in our instincts and let our intuition guide us as this vision comes to life. Just fully immerse in the joy of creating something truly unique.