Kim and the Buddha Board

Drawing #4

So, I bought this thing called a “buddha board”. If you’ve never seen it, it’s a little plastic easel with a piece of “paper” on it, and a brush. You draw on it by dipping the brush in water and when you wipe the board with the brush, it makes brush strokes and leaves an image behind.

What makes this an interesting project, however, is that the image evaporates. It may evaporate quickly or take a little longer depending on how much water you use. There is something about creating and then letting it go that I thought would be an interesting practice to take on.

A few things about “me” – I don’t consider myself an artist, at least not in the drawing sense. This is not about the artistic creations I can make. Creating art, even for myself, is a continual project in letting go of self-judgment - with mixed success! I am also someone who defaults to planning, and then I want to capture whatever it is that I do. What happens if I “forget” a moment? I’m always trying to photograph things to capture and hold on to the memory of them. It’s not lost on me that sometimes I miss BEING in the moment because I’m so busy trying to capture it. And thus, the other reason I decided to pick up this whimsical purchase.

I’ve now tried it out a few times, and had some interesting experiences – some unexpected, some reinforced.

My first try, I tried to draw something – in this case, a flower. I wasn’t trying to be detailed, but it honestly didn’t resemble a flower. In fact, partway through my drawing I gave up and just started making some other random lines. When I was done, the “abstract” flower, so to speak, was more interesting than any flower I would have drawn had I planned it. And so goes my first observation: planning to an extent is OK but leave plenty of room for change as you go. Trust your read in the situation – your intuition – for that can lead to more inspired creativity than you can ever plan for, because you are experiencing it in the moment.

Next, I started abstract. I did a bunch of dots with my brush. I started with dots, and that was going to be my theme. I had accidentally done a few presses of the whole side of the brush in there and realized I liked how they looked. They didn’t fit my initial vision and plan, but I allowed myself to do it anyway. I then watched as the lines and dots started evaporating – not in any particular order. The pattern kept changing as some lines disappeared, and others spread. I watched in fascination as something that started as one thing changed over time into something else, equally odd and beautiful in its own right each step of the way. And so, my second and third observations: I may accidentally do something and like the result. It’s OK that it wasn’t planned, but it was only made possible by doing something. Once I have done something, what there may be to do next is simply observe and reserve judgment. I may not anticipate the full impact of whatever it is I did – I set out to do one thing, but there are other consequences that can be favorable if I take the time to notice and appreciate.

Onto my third image… I wanted something simple, and so I did three brush strokes one direction, and three the other. It kind of looked like a fern when done. I liked it, it was simple and clean. This one stuck around for a while, and slowly but continually started to change. What started as nice, clean lines started dripping. The “fern leaves” started to become jagged and run down the page. First one, then another. One ran into another. Two others formed almost step-like structures. It went from smooth and flowing to jarring. It was taking a long time to evaporate and so it stuck around what seemed like a long time. Slowly, it started to evaporate. It seemed the jagged parts stuck around the longest.

What was my observation on that last one? I didn’t like the final image. I kept staring at it, especially the parts I didn’t like the most – the jagged, elongating lines. I didn’t like that one ran into the other. I couldn’t wait for it to go away and yet I fixated on it. And in the end, after what felt like a long time it eventually evaporated, and once again I was left with a blank page. 

Creations are a thing of the moment, whether beautiful or ugly (and who’s to say which is which?), planned or improvised or occurring totally accidentally. We may create things that last a long time or that live in the moment, and we can always create newly. We aren’t stuck with plans, and in fact many of the most beautiful things can happen by altering what we do in the moment, based on what’s right there in front of us. If we don’t like what we create, we can fixate on it and get stressed and think about all the ways we could have done better (in my simple example, if I would have just used less water on the brush it wouldn’t have dripped that way – but/and it wouldn’t have lasted as long), or we can wait until the time comes to create the next one.

Dipping my brush now….

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