Windows Within My Really Bad Art

Have you ever had a day in the studio where everything you tried to do just ended up as really bad art??  I had one of those days a couple of weeks ago and no matter how much I tried to fix it to take it to a place I was happy with, it just kept going south until I found windows within!

The muddier it got, the more discouraged I became.  So, I decided to close the sketchbook and walk away for a few hours.  In the past I would have ripped it up, and given up,  but this time I tried to start putting into action  that saying I hear around the art ridges of  “you need to make a lot of bad art to make good art.”   I started telling myself that I was just having a bad art day and it was okay, and didn’t mean I was a hopeless artist.

After a while I came back to look at it again and decided to take a photo of it, and then with my phone camera, started to zoom in closer on some sections.  To my amazement I started to see areas that I liked.  I had found that by looking through ‘windows within’ the bad art, I could discover pockets of beauty.

It made me realise that sometimes we can get caught up with the big overall picture of life and art making and totally. miss the small, simple things and the moments of delight in our day to day lives and in our artwork.

So instead of giving up, ripping it up and walking away in discouragement, all is not as bad as I initially thought!  I’ve now got some small pockets of art I can crop and use as gifts, cards or just to keep a record of in my sketchbook.