On making mistakes

On making mistakes

For the longest time, I stressed about every tiny mistake in my illustration. I’d spend hours on the layout and sketches before starting a piece of work, and I have notebooks full of variations of ideas. 

I didn’t want to waste time creating artwork that didn’t make sense, or looked strange, or just could have worked out better. In searching for the perfect approach, I put off creating personal work and worrying too much.

While I learn a lot from sketching and creating thumbnail illustrations, I needed to push myself to start the final work before I felt ready. I learned more about layout design by completing pieces and noting what worked and what didn’t, than I ever did by making dozens of sketches and trying to imagine the end result. I learned more about colour from completing paintings than from endlessly tweaking a finished digital artwork in a million different colour palettes. I learn more from sketching animals from life and getting things hopelessly wrong, than from searching for the perfect reference photo.

I think underneath all of this preparation work is a fear of making ugly work. I had attached my identity to being an artist, and any work that didn’t turn out exactly how I wanted it undermined this sense of self. The bad drawings not only needed to be hidden from other people, but from myself. A bad drawing is proof that I am secretly a terrible artist, and if I am not an artist, then who am I?

On a logical level, I know this is not a helpful way to look at the world. It has held me back from making the things I want to make, from drawing outside, from having more fun with art and connecting with others. The work I made still didn’t live up to my expectations anyway. 

I’m now experimenting with being less precious over my work, and trying out things without expectation of results. I’m embracing digital work again, so nothing feels permanent, while also making time to play around with paints in a low-stakes sketchbook. I limit the preparation time before each piece, and remind myself that I may not know the answer to whatever creative problem I am working on until it is done. Personal projects are fantastic for this, as unlike client work, it doesn’t matter if it goes ‘wrong’. Creating more finished work stops you placing too much importance on any individual one, and gives you faster feedback on your strengths and weaknesses. 

Sometimes, those weaknesses turn out to be your style developing on the page. Some of the most exciting artwork out there is born out of ‘mistakes’: things the artist tried out because they were curious, or couldn’t draw something the same way drawing books and art teachers told them they were supposed to, or they draw an animal with a weird expression that became their signature style.

Instead of asking if work is good enough (and therefore questioning if we ourselves are good enough), we would do well to ask ourselves “What am I curious about? What do I want to learn, feel, and communicate?”

Maybe this will result in a percentage of our work turning out ugly, but maybe a percentage will feel more ‘us’ as a result. Either way, I’m more interested in art as exploration now, than the final result.