Crayon Liberation or How To Get Your Creative Groove Back

I have been spending a lot of time lately thinking about creativity. I think about what it is exactly, why it is important, how to we encourage it in ourselves and in children. Not too long ago, the ability to think and act creatively was not thought of as important. Today, child care professionals tell us that creative development in children is as important as their intellectual, social, and physical growth. Governments say that creative thinking and problem solving is more important skill than specialized abilities or even academic education. I also see a surprising number of posts over on the boards at Craftster that draw parallels between being creative and having good mental health – usually along the lines of, ‘I clawed my way out of depression by crafting’.

Speaking personally, I would go insane if I could not be creative. No lie, no exaggeration. Being creative is my life’s work and it exists in everything I do (mostly because I refuse to do anything that does not involve at least a little bit of creativity – see my many, many jobs that I worked for only a few weeks, or even a few days. Hell, when I was 16, I was a button pusher at McDonald’s for only five hours before I jumped off that train. My next job was chosen based on who would still hire me if I dyed my hair blue. Which was a record store, btw, where the boss encouraged me to do so since unnatural hair colour somehow confers customer trust in the sales personnel. Go figure.)

Anyhoo. My point is that creativity is important. And fun. And good for your mental health. But what if you do not feel like you have it? Okay, hands up, who here feels like they are not very creative or know people who are convinced that they are not talented at creative things. That they just do not have it in them. To make a very long story quite short, I think some people feel that they are not creative because they had their confidence in their own natural creativity squelched as a child.

How many of us have had our grade school artwork deemed inferior because we put colour outside of the lines, or used colours not specified by convention (a purple shamrock, anyone?), drew their own picture disregarding a photo copied illustration, or – my own personal burning humiliation of grade two – had crayon strokes going in all different directions rather than at a uniform 45 degree slant on my taupe (or brown, if we were feeling frisky) mushrooms?

Now, as an adult, I am keenly and vocally against labelling the creative works of children right or wrong. Because of this I keep in mind at all the squishing and breaking of my own creative expression over my young years, and I am especially conscious of the messages I now deliver to children about their creative endeavors. Especially with these wee creators in my home and under my care. My dearest wish for my children is that above all in life that they be creative because I believe it is a cornerstone for many other values I hope to impart, including the ability to find their own joy. Sometimes I do well. I love my four year old daughter’s expressions and find she is most happy when her art and crafts have been made unadulterated by her mother’s guidance or opinion.

Sometimes I goof. Sometimes my awareness of the ghost of my second grade teacher slips and I unconsciously start to treat my daughter’s creativity as something that could be done wrong or right. In examining my own hang ups I have discovered, to my great shame and horror, I am quite anal and anti-creative when it comes to crayons. Hello, my name is Vegbee, and I am a crayon tyrant

Here’s my crayon neurosis: When my daughter was a year and a bit and first introduced to crayons she would make a few marks with it on paper and then sit down and with great care and obvious satisfaction, peel the paper off of every crayon in reach. At first I was pretty okay with it, the peeling was refining her fine motor skills and it would keep her usefully occupied at the doctor’s office for a surprising amount of time. I took to carrying a couple of virgin, fully clothed crayons in my bag at all times. Gradually she began to do more with the crayons on paper. Sure, the crayon would rub off on her hands because the there was no paper to hang on to, but, whatever, as long as the kid is happy so am I.

At some point in her second or third year, as a holiday present, Smootch received a box of fresh, good quality crayons as a present, along with several colouring books. I think the sight of all those pristine crayons flipped some switch in my head. I got weird about it. I got… domineering All of our old crayons were delegated to my own craft stash for later crayon melting projects and Smootch was to use the new crayons exclusively. She was not allowed to peel the new crayons. Any peeled crayons got tossed in the bin. Horribly, this state of affairs continued for over a year until Smootch had hardly an interest in using crayons at all, except to use in colouring books where the pointy end on the crayon was a benefit when trying to stay within the lines. She was trying to stay within the lines! Crayons had been elevated from a tool of creativity to a tool of oppression, an instrument of conformity. I’m so ashamed!

Watching Smootch colour one night it suddenly dawned on me what a knob I was being. I was teaching my daughter to repress her natural curiosity and creativity to satisfy some misinformed adult idea of what a crayon was for and how it should be used. The exact opposite of what I believed. At the root of it, though, was my own early childhood training and my failure to stay alert to avoid repeating a cycle of creativity killing conformity.

Since then I have backed away from my crazy crayon rules, but I still think about it a lot and even sometimes have to look away when children use crayons. It has been bothering me that I still harbour unwanted beliefs about there being proper and improper ways to use crayons so I decided to hold a great crayon liberation for myself to help free up this peculiar crayon blockage I seem to have.

My great crayon liberation began with a couple of sheets of paper, some pretty new crayons, and my daughter and I at the kitchen table. The first task we had was to snap those pretty crayons in two. You should of seen my daughter’s face when I told her to break a crayon. She did it though - quickly, I think, to get a chance before I changed my mind - and with great glee. My own crayon snapping was very deliberate, and incredibly satisfying. A few more snapped crayons and we moved onto the next step of liberation. Much to my daughter’s delight, we peeled crayons. Next, we made marks on the paper by banging, smushing, rubbing them on their sides, drumming, and any other method we could think of. Dipping a crayon in water makes particularly bold marks, while freezing them makes them paler. When my six-month-old son woke up from his nap, he had his first crayon sensory experience. Smootch discovered that if you bit a crayon, some will become lodged in your molars and you can dig it out with your fingernail and create a nice soft, shaded look on the paper. After that I considered my daughter fully liberated from crayon repression, and I think I am getting there. I may need a few more crayon drumming sessions to make sure the liberation takes. Smootch is an excellent mentor.Are you wondering what this post is doing on my tutorial site, and not over on my other blog where I like to blather on in an unpurposeful manner? It is here mainly because my crayon liberation exercise was helpful for shaking me out of a creative rut and got me thinking about all the different ways I could use materials that I take for granted as having just one or two purposes. And it was fun. Try it.

I also would like to open up a discussion about what we have all learnt about being creative as children and whether that has helped or hindered us in later life. I think creativity is one of those under appreciated skills that we possess to some degree or another, but feeds into so many different areas of our lives. We will never go wrong to believe ourselves creative people, while to deny it can be harmful. Please, if you feel like sharing, leave a comment about your own creative liberations and repressions – I would love to read about your experiences and maybe learn more about what can be done to encourage the youngest generation of creatives.