A Very Sweet Horse

In class last month, a student asked me to draw a horse so she could include it in her drawing. This happens a lot: I’ll be demonstrating a practice, and someone wants to add something they don’t know how to draw. So I draw it on a post-it, where everyone can see it via my overhead camera.

I grabbed a stack of blue post-its and started drawing the horse... and immediately, things seemed to go off the rails! If I hadn’t been teaching a live class, I would have crumpled it up and started over. And I could feel the urge to do that! But I kind of couldn’t. So I just kept going even though I felt exposed. I was making this face the whole time: 😬

The horse:

I felt consoled when she wrote in the chat "it's a very sweet horse." And I also recognized that seeing that horse would give everyone in class more courage and permission to make imperfect drawings! I took one for the team!

For some reason, when class was over, I didn't crumple up the horse. I stuck it on the bulletin board behind my desk.

A few days later, I was FaceTiming with a friend and texted her a photo of the horse. She loved it! She said she wants a t-shirt with a big print of this horse on the front. And she went to RISD, so she knows what she’s talking about! I made a mockup of the t-shirt:

I was looking at the horse post-it again this weekend, and I realized that it's a reminder that when we’re making something and it seems imperfect and messy, we often want to just give up. But imperfection isn’t failure. And if we keep going anyway, we might be surprised by how we feel. Something simple and sweet could be happening.