Activity: Do something that was a deliberate fail.
I am scared of failure- its something I perceive as a weakness of mine… to be strong all the time, to always know the answers.
When you have a disability, and as an artist with a disability who makes very precise pieces of work using technology… the free reign and free realm is a daunting prospect for me.
But, I quite enjoyed doing something that made me ‘JUST GO FOR IT AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS’.
This scared me as I always rub things out on my iPad. Drawing a face in particular is difficult for me as I have never done this freehand before. It took me out of my comfort zone but actually enabled me to produce something that I was quite proud of. It took me about 15minutes to do and I didn’t erase anything. I just selected a pencil, drew the face, shaded it and then added coloured splodges and a dark background to add contrast. It was fantastic to do this and enjoy working with the process.
What did I learn?
- Accepting failures is not a bad thing- but we learn from our mistakes.
- Art can never ‘fail’ if you’ve had a positive time making it.
- Creativity is enjoyable without focusing too much on an end result.
- Improvements can be made, but the most important things is having fun with the process.
I’ve been reflecting on failure a lot in my practice; there seems to be a discrepancy between my feelings about failure and my thoughts about failure which I cannot seem to resolve.
I think it’s an ongoing process! And sometimes ‘failiures’ are things we try to define as bad or negative… but so am changing my mindset to see them as things that just help me to define my practice as an ever evolving art form. I don’t need to be edited or changed as sometimes these ‘mistakes’ actually turn out better than the planned result or lead us in different paths of discovery!
You do you 🙂