I always find it so encouraging when artists post everything they do, unashamedly … I think we (as an audience) tend to forget that the things we see produced from an artist probably only make up a very small percentage of all the things they do draw. It’s so easy to fall into the trap of comparing ourselves unfairly - I mean, you, as the artist, you see 100% of everything you produce, but it’s unfair when you only see the best, say, 30-40% of someone else’s work and you decide to compare your everything against that.
I love seeing the garbage that other artists draw. I don’t mean the drawings that people were disappointed didn’t turn out right, not people’s secret best efforts captioned with a mopey ‘this is crap’ beneath it - I don’t mean those, you know that I never advocate for gloomy disappointment or negativity when it comes to art!! I mean the ones that you do with a real, carefree self-awareness that this isn’t the best thing that turned out, that you know you’re capable of, but it doesn’t matter. I mean the doodles you do mindlessly with one eye on something else, the stuff you purposely leave unfinished because you just can’t be bothered, the thing you drew in 20 seconds, purposely trying for bad, for a visual meme between friends, the sketch with a thousand stray lines but you were like ‘that’ll do pig’ and you colour it because you were only here because you fuckin love colouring, anyway.
I think we all get scared of posting our bad stuff ‘cause it’s scary to think someone might come along and think the best of what we can do is encapsulated in something we put like, 1/60th of our actual effort into. I think that’s a totally legitimate fear, but at the same time like, who cares?? It’s not like you see someone’s rough sketch with hastily placed colour that’s going everywhere outside of the lines and assume they don’t know how to colour in the lines, after all, right?
I’m just trying to be a less self conscious about posting all my visual junk food to this blog! I’m hoping my shouting into the void will help me with that haha. I hope you guys agree!! I hope this also encourages all of you to share everything that you do; I just think it’d be nice to break the illusion that everybody’s always firing at 150% all the time. I’m just all too aware that there’s a pervasive anxiety about ‘what do I share? Is this good enough?’ amongst the artist community and it’d be nice to break that; we should all be able to share our junk, because even junky stuff contributes to our overall progression as artists and even the worst drawings have their merit!
prguitarman
tangentwithtanner
romaincrisis
gummygunk
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origamiaround
areudirty
