Comparison and self-doubt are the thief of creativity

Eleanor Roosevelt wrote that "comparison is the thief of joy." Comparison is also the thief of production and creativity. It is deadly and antithetical to the artist, the creator and the creative process. Philip Larkin said to the Paris Review:

"Everyone envies everyone else."

He also wrote a poem, 'On Being Twenty-Six':

"I feared these present years, 
The middle twenties, 
When deftness disappears, 
And each event is 
Freighted with a source-encrusting doubt, 
And turned to drought."

Quentin Blake said: "As soon as I knew something was intended for print, I tightened up."

Hitchens wrote, embrace the doubt and comparison:

"The main thing as I keep saying, I never tire of saying is, to keep testing yourself against other writers who are better than you. That’s what qualifies one as a writer I think, permanently running the risk of having to say I don’t know why I bother."

He elaborated on this:

"[With George Orwell] you don’t get the sense for example when you’re reading Proust or Nebokhov or George Eliot that you shouldn’t be in the writing business."

Ralph Steadman and Quentin Blake on the term cartoonist

If there's one thing I struggle with it's what to call the Live Drawing aspect of my work. The name for me is a little clumsy. As are the terms cartoonist and caricaturist. As Ralph Steadman said:

"In some ways ‘cartoonist’ is a derogatory term. People have said it to me dozens of times – you’re just a cartoonist. But I’m rather keen on the Wittgenstein bit about the only thing of value being what you cannot say. That’s the thing about drawing: when you try to say something in pictures, it gains a dimension that language can’t match. I like that.”

And I wouldn't even use the term illustrator. As Quentin Blake said:

"There's a snobbery about illustration." 

Ralph Steadman said that he's an artist, not an illustrator, but prefers cartoonist to illustrator:

"I always wanted to be an artist, period: I hate the word illustrator - it just sounds so limp - I prefer cartoonist. Goya was a cartoonist, Daumier was a cartoonist, even Picasso used the cartoon form to express himself. But cartooning has got a really bad name now hasn’t it? People think it’s just something for filling up a column in a newspaper [adopts condescending voice] ‘Oh, it’s only a cartoon, here’s a fiver…’ I’m not trying to be artsy-fartsy but I don’t like the division that one thing is fine art and another thing isn’t."

And:

"Cartooning meant more to me than just funny pictures. I needed to apply it as a weapon almost."

And finally Ralph Steadman said:

"I try to use cartoon as an artist. I hate artistic snobbery. It’s bullshit. You should have no truck with it whatsoever. Have no truck with it."

Quentin Blake on his relaxed style

Quentin Blake is one of our most popular illustrators. Best known for his collaboration with Roald Dahl hid work is immediately recognisable and is full of joy and happy chaos. Quentin's father worked as a civil servant, his mother was a homemaker. At 14, he began sending drawings to Punch. At 16, his work was accepted by Punch. Quentin also produced work for The Spectator. 

Appearing on Desert Island Discs with Kirsty Young here, he was asked: "If we were to leave through some of those 1949 editions of Punch, would we recognise those drawings as notably Quentin Blake?" Quentin Blake responded:

"You might do. They were quite economical but. You might recognise them. But that way of drawing, that people now recognise, happened really when I was 20-something. Gradually I relaxed and in fact if you draw relaxed you draw much better. You're thinking about what that is, what that gesture is that that person is making. You're not thinking about, am I going to spoil it which is the important thing."

In a 2008 interview with The Telegraph here he said was asked about his idiosyncratic use of line to convey depth and movement. On that style he was asked: "is this because you're relaxed when working?"

"Not really. I remember someone saying I’m deceptively slapdash. Well, thank goodness for the deceptively. I think I’m relaxed in a way that is focused."

During his Reith lecture series here, the cross-dressing potter Grayson Perry spoke of the need for "relaxed fluency" and of the need to break away from "the crippling effects of self-consciousness."

2006 interview with Kirsty Young on Radio 4 here. 2008 Telegraph interview in full here. My blog post on Grayson Perry and "relaxed fluency" here.