Q&A with Hannah Drossman: Let Spontaneity Be Your Guide
I think a lot about perfectionism in art, whether I’m practicing piano or writing. Sometimes I think perfectionism is not so bad—what’s wrong with wanting your work to be the very best it can be? Shouldn’t we aspire to high standards? But, ultimately, I know it leads to tension and often manifests itself in paralysis before a work has even gotten started. (The ideas in my head are great; why write them down and ruin that?)
Hannah Drossman is an artist who understands the importance of spontaneity in the fight against perfectionism. Her work has been published in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Boston Globe, Buzzfeed, FiveThirtyEight, and more. An internationally-exhibited illustrator, Hannah received her BFA in Illustration from Parsons School of Design and has been honored by American Illustration, the Society of Illustrators, and 3x3 Magazine.
Also active as a graphic designer, Hannah designs work for everything from magazines to concert series to comedy shows. In 2018 she designed graphics and titles for the short film Sherry starring Angela Kinsey. She has an impressive oeuvre of personal projects including colorful grid drawings, “Tiny Mets” (a series of tiny portraits of the New York Mets), and quotes from radical writers and abolitionists.
In this week’s Q&A*, Hannah talks about the joy of working in mediums she can’t control, making choices in the moment, and letting the subconscious flow—all excellent tools to have on hand when perfectionism rears its Barbie-perfect head.
*Okay, not all of the Q’s in this Q&A are actually Q’s, but in the interest of combating perfectionism, just roll with it.
Q&A with Hannah Drossman, designer & illustrator
Q: I know you as an illustrator but I understand you’re getting more into design these days. Is that an artistic path change or are you doing a lot of both?
A: When you first reached out to me about doing this, I thought, “Oh, I don’t know, I don’t really know what I am or how to explain myself,” and I still don’t, but I thought maybe that would be okay. I studied illustration in school and I still occasionally do illustration for editorials, but two things happened that might be related. One is that I really don’t want to work freelance. Maybe if I lived in a country with universal healthcare or any kind of social safety net it would be different, but it’s not my personality. And that’s sort of how it works as an illustrator. The second thing is that drawing for most of my life was like a compulsive thing—I just had to be drawing all the time. I carried a sketchbook everywhere. It was almost physical, that I had to do it. And that started to fade a handful of years ago. I think I started to be less depressed, and I didn’t feel like I needed it as much. I remember friends in school saying, “Wow, you have such a strong work ethic that you just keep working,” and I was like, “Oh this is just what I want to do; I’m not making myself do it.” Eventually I tried to make myself. I sat down and started drawing and I just didn’t like what I was making. I also got kind of bored with the medium I was working with, which is generally ink and watercolor. That was appealing to me in large part because it’s difficult to control. But the more I used it, the more I understood how to work with it, and it became less spontaneous. So that was part of it, and then I was also nurturing other creative outlets that were interesting to me—improv comedy, a jewelry class. Graphic design is something I studied in school and I’ve always been interested in it. I personally don’t see as big of a division between the two fields as others do. There’s a lot of overlap—ultimately, you’re representing things visually.
Q: You said part of the appeal of ink drawings was that it was a medium you couldn’t control and you were learning about it. Is that sense of discovery important to you in other mediums?
A: That’s also what draws me to improv comedy, which is a wildly different field, but it’s based on being spontaneous, so, yeah, that’s appealing to me. I’m so anxious and I can just stay doing the same thing if I’m not prompted to make a choice. I’ll be going over every possible outcome of every possible thing I could do. But if I need to do something immediately or if I need to be like, “Oh, the ink moved in a way on its own and now I have to do something about that,” rather than just like, “Where should I make this mark on the page?” it moves things along better.
Q: Would you consider yourself a perfectionist as an artist?
A: Yeah, probably. But I’m the kind of perfectionist who won’t do something if I feel like it’s not going to be perfect—versus someone who will be up all night working on it forever and ever. Eh, sometimes I’m like that, too.
Q: Has your improv experience affected your visual art process at all?
A: As a person it’s helped me immensely. It’s helped me in general to be more comfortable talking to people. I feel a little more trust in myself, and a little bit closer to being like, “What’s the worst that could happen?” I don’t care if people like my work as much as I used to. Maybe that’s kept me from feeling like I need to draw all the time like I did before, because I don’t need to. I’m not trying to do that for work and there are just so many ways to be creative. I don’t need to keep an Instagram up to date.
Q: That sounds freeing.
A: It is. Sometimes I’ll look at other people’s work and I’ll go, “God, that’s really good,” and I’ll get jealous—and that’s why I try not to look at it!
Q: Do you feel performance anxiety as a visual artist, i.e. anxiety about what the viewer is thinking?
A: It depends on how much I like what I’ve made, and if it’s in line with other things I’ve made that have had a good reaction. If it’s something with ink and watercolor that has a similar style to something I’ve done that’s been published, I’ll feel like, “Okay, it’s probably good.” But if it’s something that’s new or that I don’t like, I’ll feel some dread about it.
Q: I love your “Tiny Mets” figures and your Women in Baseball Zine. It seems like your personal interests come into your art a lot. What’s the role of fun in your art-making?
A: When I’m interested in something in or outside of art-making, I really like to learn a lot about it. With baseball, a lot of my interest is just learning more and more about how it works and the history of it and doing my own research about the parts of it that aren’t covered so much, like women in baseball history. In some ways I’m processing my interest in it through drawing. It’s the fun that makes me think of spontaneity, too—like, “ooh, what’s going to happen?” That’s definitely something I look for. I don’t do a lot of big pieces that take a long time. And part of that just goes back to all the decisions. I like small things that can be done quickly, otherwise I spend a lot of time working on it and then I feel precious about it.
Q: My mom has said that watercolor is the hardest medium because as soon as anything touches the page you have to work with it, whereas she likes oil paints because you can redo it as you go. In some ways that sounds nice to me, using watercolor—like, “Well, that’s there, that’s just part of this now.” Kind of like what you were talking about before with choices.
A: I don’t know if you ever open up a new document in Word and just have the blank screen and it’s almost paralyzing. I used to just do a splatter of ink and be like, okay, now it’s less pristine, and also there’s something there for me to work from, so it’s less pressure.
Q: Anne Lamott writes in Bird by Bird about the “shitty first draft.” You just start by putting something down, whatever it is, so that you have something to work with.
A: There’s also an improv warm-up where you’re just doing deliberately bad improv. It’s a similar thing. You’re just trying to warm up, and also be like, “Oh, we did that, and also we’re still alive!”
Q: I had a piano teacher who used to remind us, “If you’re playing a concert and you forget all the notes in the middle of your performance, the world keeps spinning.”
A: It’s just art. We know that to be true but it doesn’t feel like it.
Q: It can feel very life-or-death. Artists are dramatic people.
A: I know, and it’s actually kind of self-important to be constantly worrying, “What if they laugh at me?”
Q: What’s your ideal creative day? Do you have any rituals around working artistically?
A: I like to listen to comedy podcasts when I’m drawing or designing, if I don’t need to incorporate any writing. Or sometimes I’ll listen to audiobooks. Or baseball. It’s stuff that keeps my brain sort of active so I’m not obsessing as much over what I’m working on, so it’s a little more like an automatic process. What’s the quote—“Write drunk and edit sober”?
Q: I have that framed on my wall in front of me.
A: I think about that often. I remember once in high school being so, so tired, like half-asleep, and I had to write a paper. It was the easiest thing I’d ever written, because I was so out of it that the words just flowed out of me. So yeah, with art and design, having some sort of media in the background to distract part of my brain helps me to let my subconscious stream out. In the past, I would just sit down at my desk and start drawing for hours and hours and not know that I have to pee until I stand up and then think, “Oh, I’m also really hungry.” That doesn’t happen as much anymore. Well, it will happen at the computer, I’ll get really stuck on something. I’ve been trying to make schedules for myself. I have like five alarms for everything that I need to do: “Five minutes from now! Two minutes from now!” I’ve been writing a lot of lists of things that I want to do. Maybe my ideal creative day is when I don’t have to do anything.
See more of Hannah’s powerful art on her website or follow her on Instagram.
Here’s a little sliver of women in baseball history: “Every day after practice, Mr. Wrigley sent us to Helena Rubinstein’s charm school to learn how to put on makeup.” (!)
Feeling blocked? Maybe some ASSSSCAT improv will inspire you to take risks.
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