Recently I was in the process of making a drawing that I was really pleased with. It was a piece made in fine liner pen, inspired by a beautiful woodland in Berkshire. I was using a photograph I’d taken to aid composition but the bulk of the drawing was made up of hundreds of tiny lines, marks and details - a bit of an improvised squiggly mess that works as a perfect shorthand for the tangly undergrowth and crisscrossing branches. It’s a technique I’ve utilised in many drawings over many years.
There was a particular part of the drawing that I was procrastinating over, in the distance were some trees that weren’t very clear but needed to be represented in such a way that the marks wouldn’t get confused with the foreground detail. I thought about it and then jumped in with some short vertical marks to denote the presence of branches and leaves but it didn’t look right, in my haste I added more lines and details. The section now appeared a little muddled in my eyes, but the thing with ink on paper is that it cannot be taken away. Unlike oil painting where you can keep reworking a piece, pen is permanent. What was done was done and though I gave the drawing some space by not looking at it for a couple of days when I did look at it again all I could see was the part I wasn’t 100% happy with - a small part of a drawing that otherwise was going to be one of my most successful.
As a lifelong perfectionist I agonised over it. It felt so disappointing as I’d originally intended to make the drawing to enter into an open call. With making art, not every piece is going to go exactly as planned or end up exactly as you might expect. But part of the difficulty for me is that as a full time mother I only get small slithers of time to make my work, a couple of hours in the evenings when I’m tired after a full day of ‘mothering’ also known as ‘toddler wrangling!’ The drawing had taken many hours spread over many days, a lot of time had been invested.
I shared my process on Twitter as I always do, I personally think it’s important to share the good, the bad and the ugly side of being an artist. Reassuringly the majority of people could only see the good in the drawing. I asked if I should sell it, the alternative being to keep it in a drawer as I would no longer want to enter it into an open call as initially intended. Again, the majority thought it was worth selling, that they couldn’t see any flaws, that it was beautiful. Of course there were a few who disagreed, “why would you sell something you are not happy with?” was one persons response. It’s a fair reply, why would I sell something I wasn’t happy with? I pondered over the question. Another said I shouldn’t sell it because “you'll always think a drawing is out there that you were not happy with.” This comment got me thinking too. The thing is, there are probably drawings out there that I wouldn’t be 100% happy with if I saw them again today. As the years have rolled on I feel that my work has improved, hours of practice has meant my mark making has gotten better. The drawings I made in the past were the best I could do at the time and people liked them enough to purchase them to display in their homes but when I see them I think, ‘I could’ve made that section work better’, ‘the mark making there could’ve been tighter’.
One comment that struck a chord was “I don’t think there can be mistakes in art. You see things you wish you’d done differently but to others it’s a beautiful piece of art.”
I started looking at the drawing differently, yes - there is a section that didn’t turn out how I’d have liked but maybe that flaw makes it what it is. Perhaps my perfectionism is getting in the way of appreciating the drawing, the vast majority of which I am very pleased with. If the people viewing the work can appreciate it as it is and can only see the beauty in the piece then perhaps it doesn’t really matter what I think? Reading the comments that praised the work gave me the reassurance that despite my feelings towards the piece it was still good, worthy of a life on somebody’s wall. It gave me confidence in the work which is something I always lack, whether a piece comes out as planned or not. Knowing that the drawing was worth the time spent on it has eased my disappointment. Overall I’ve learnt a lot from this piece and am now using it as a reference to draw another so I can see if I can work out how to do the background trees better.
Let me know your thoughts in the comments, perhaps you disagree entirely and would never even show work to anyone if you thought it was a failure. Or maybe you’ve sold work knowing it wasn’t your best. All opinions are valid and I hope I’ve put mine across well.
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