The Barter Project

A Welcomed Addition: Limitations

When I was in art school, I had a professor that would just walk in and say “Take out all of your paints and paint something”. I remember when he did this the first day of class, and thinking Wow, we’re going to be so creative. 

I had another professor who was very strict and formal. She taught drawing, and would have a perfectly balanced still life set up for all of us to draw every class. We drew in charcoal or pencil, never using any color. I remember the first day of class, and thinking Ugh, how boring. 

I’ve never been so wrong in my life. The painting class turned out to be a huge upset, because ultimately we would all pick a space in the room and paint it, assuming that no one would pick the same spot. However, in the drawing class, we would all try our best to figure out unique ways to express ourselves as individuals in our work, because we knew we would all be drawing the same thing in the same color. 

They key to limitations is this: You can’t think outside the box if there is no box. Thinking for thinking’s sake is absolutely wonderful if you’re doing it on purpose, but if you have a problem to solve, you’re just fumbling around and wasting time. The reason the painting class failed to produce creativity was because there was no goal. We had limitless subject matter, color, tools and texture, and all we had to do was get paint from our pallets to the canvas. The drawing class, on the other hand, gave us something to fight against. We were creating with a purpose, and we had problems to solve.

Limitations create results. Limits and boundaries help define problems, and force us to find efficient and creative solutions. I think this is one of, if not the most, important thing I’ve learned over the past couple months. Like everything, this is all new to me and I’m still developing it, but I want to plant the seed. I think that by applying limits and boundaries, life becomes more simple, productive, focused and enjoyable.