Art by Accident

“Art by accident?” What is this guy on. Oh. Wait! I wrote that, shoot!

When creativity strikes, the natural inclination is to try to make it happen. Grab that pencil, scribble down your idea, start making some shapes. And yet, the more you draw, the less it looks how you imagined it. I’m not talking about it looking wrong, it could look perfectly fine. I’m talking about… accidental art.

Hello there, I’m Kanjon, a critter who likes to ramble about art and creative hobbies. I like to show people that anyone can learn to draw, and have made tons of videos, a website showing more, even a free series teaching digital art! Today, let’s chat about how you make your art, and what to do when you feel like your brain has gone a little too off the rails. This came up in my Q&A series called “Art Block” a few weeks ago, I’ll link that in the description if you want to check that out next.

Art is a practice where you’re always stepping outside of your comfort zone. Where what you do might feel “wrong”. One way that can appear is when translating ideas to paper. You made a plan, but as you progressed, you drew something completely different than what you set out for! You failed at your goal, didn’t you?

But. What if… no one knew?

Gasp What? What if you embrace this happening? What if… it was meant to be? Who set the expectation of what your goal was when you sat down to draw? You. You set an expectation for yourself but it’s OK to CHANGE your MIND. This is the coolest thing about art! It is something outside of your comfort zone! You don’t know what you want to do until you start doing it! You feel like you made art by accident? WHAT! That’s AWESOME! Use it! This is raw unfiltered creativity. Capture it! You can tell people you MEANT to do this! Or you can tell people that it was all an accident! It doesn’t matter when you made something. It’s all art. Go off the rails, exist off the rails, you don’t need rails! Art’s not about following the path someone else laid out for you!

I’m not even talking about “bad art” when I say this: sure, you make bad art when you’re warming up, studying, and practicing, but I’m talking about making art that’s different than what you set out to do. When you’re drawing more from your imagination, you might have this perfect picture in your head of how something should look. When it starts to come out on paper, you’ve decided to make a tweak here, add in more there, change some details over here, and then by the end you’ve not followed that plan in you head but still made something to be proud of. That’s heckin’ neat!

Sidenote, if the idea of picturing something in your head sounds strange, you might have heard of the term “aphantasia” – some people have very vivid imagery in their head, some people have almost none. Nothing wrong with that; in fact you might not experience as much trouble having art not go “to plan” since you’re not constantly comparing what you’re drawing to what’s in your mind’s eye.

“Right, right, so once again Kanjon’s telling me to do the thing I thought was wrong. But how?” Do your warmups, do your studies, your practice, whatever. Make your imagination hungry. Start with a vague idea of something. If you already have an idea in your head, start with just a part of it. If nothing’s there, begin with something around you, or a reference photo, or a study you did in your warmups. Is the thing you studied doing something silly? What if they… were? Could you place that person into a scene that fits them well? What about one that doesn’t fit well? What’s the vibe: cozy, serious, silly, absurd, funny, warm, cold, colorful, tasty, fearful?

Want to build out the background? Or wait… maybe the character first? Your choice. Put your character somewhere. Start changing the pose. What if they were leaning backwards. Why? Hmmmm. They’re surprised by something! Give them that expression. What made them surprised? It’s… a bee! Delivering… candy! See where this is going? You can ask yourself questions, give yourself answers, see what happens. You’re guiding your imagination by throwing yourself off the rails.

This whole situation also happens if you’re trying to draw something else because you got frustrated with what you set out for. Maybe you changed a pose to something that felt easier. It’s fine; don’t beat yourself up over it, and it’s good that you’ve at least tried something else first. Each attempt is practice, and as long as you try to break out of your comfort zone, there’s no shame in realizing it’s not working right now and doing something else. You got some experience points in practice, and still got to have some satisfaction with your drawing in the end.

So… How often has this happened to you? Share a comment with something you’ve tried before, and how much it changed by the time you were done. Draw and chase that passion, whether it ends up with art you meant to make, or something by accident. I won’t tell anyone. See ya!