✨️THINK PIECE✨️CREATING ART✨️

Writing for me comes easily, but I don’t say that without the weight of experience pushing down on my shoulders.

Art isn’t easy; I wouldn’t say writing is easy in a million years, even for people with innate talent: art must be worked at to be improved, it is part of the human experience, and it is a meaningful way to create and be a part of something bigger. It is not easy, no matter how “good” an artist may be – I promise you, they took a lot of time to get there.

When I say “writing for me comes easily,” what I mean is that I’ve spent a lot of years under the oppressive hand of perfection and fear to be able to see the other side of creation.

What do I mean here?

When we create, especially as youngsters or beginners, there is an expectation to do well at all times, even to the point where the craft isn’t fun anymore – take my youngest sibling for instance: she is a TALENTED artist, one who has experience through high school art classes, but drew a lot in her free time as well. As such, her portraits and drawings are PHENOMENAL… and yet, she is currently suffering from a huge creative block.

I think, and based on my own experiences, is that she is so focused on perfection (all of her pieces are polished, professional, and took hours to work on) that she is not allowing herself to make mistakes and to “have fun with it” – it has become a JOB of sorts, rather than a creative pursuit.

I think a lot of other artists, both beginners and even non-beginners, do the same – they focus too much on perfecting the pieces they started, without giving themselves room to breathe and experiment, and then the craft just seems daunting at that point: how can one ALWAYS produce professional, polished work?

The truth is – you can’t. You CAN’T always produce professional, polished work, and honestly, you SHOULDN’T HAVE TO!

Art is about experimentation; it’s about trying new things and seeing where you end up. Sometimes that means creating a masterpiece, other times it means a series of silly opossum sketches stuffed at the bottom of your art bag that could barely pass for anatomically correct. And even other times, it means starting something you love, finishing it, and then hating the end results anyway for whatever reason.

Some artists, especially beginners, find this daunting – “if I can’t produce my best all the time, why bother?”

Other artists have grown past this – “If I can’t produce my best all the time, I might as well just go for it!”

This is where I enter the chat.

I was a beginner. In some ways, especially when it comes to traditional art like drawing, painting, and coloring, I am very much a novice who only produces polished work when I have the motivation for it.

Motivation is fleeting, which is a whole other, but related, conversation I may write about on a different occasion. But for now, it’s relevant to the idea of perfection vs freedom to create in that a novice who is motivated will produce something, usually, pretty great. But with motivation being fleeting, the minute it’s gone, that novice is right back to “why bother?”

There are two issues working against creation here – perfection, and motivation.

Perfection is overrated, is the gist of what I’m trying to say about that. Motivation? Also overrated – in the same vein as “not everything can or will be perfect,” to create, you may not always FEEL like creating –

Create anyway, and don’t be afraid or upset when the piece doesn’t come out the way you want it to; you learned something, you MADE something, and that is what art is about –

And create anyway; then be pleasantly surprised when the piece DOES come out the way you want it to, or better.

This is a lesson that takes time to learn. I don’t expect my little blurb to be earth-shattering in any way, but I do hope it helps some artist out there realize that even the mishaps and the “bad pieces” are always GOOD because hey, you created! You did the thing! You are learning! You are an artist!

And then one day, drawing may come easily to you. Painting may come easily to you. Sculpting may come easily to you.

But you didn’t start there, you clawed your way to artistic freedom.

Now go do some art!