Letting go of Perfection and Expectations

I'm currently reading a book called Art Inc. by Lisa Congdon—yes, I love her—and I found a description in it of something that has happened to me many times and I didn’t know it was part of the process. A painting teacher that Lisa had used to talk to their students about the “painting curve” and how it resembles the letter U. He explained to them that when you first start drawing something you are at the top of the U—everything looks neat, clean and wonderful—but as you keep developing the piece, things can get really messy; that is the point when you reach the bottom of the U curve. You need to work through those difficulties and bring the piece back to the point where it feels great again—which means going back to the top of the U, on the other side.

I started thinking about times in the past that I tried to draw and discarded what I was working on because it didn’t look “good”. I remember one particular night after I bought a sketchbook—decided that I was going to draw again—drew a few sketches and became frustrated at my third attempt. It just “didn’t look right”. But of course it didn’t! It was just a sketch… I was at the bottom of the U curve and instead of working my way through it I just let it go, because I didn’t know better. Funny thing is that looking at those sketches now I can see the potential they had to be something great. But I wanted them to be perfect from start to finish and that stopped me from creating altogether.

This can definitely be applied to many areas. How many times have you attempted something—art related or not—and became discouraged in the middle of the process because things were not looking as good as you thought they should? Did that stop you from finishing or even giving it another try?

First and foremost let me clarify that I’m no expert—I am still working on overcoming some of these things. Nevertheless, I want to share what I’ve been learning in books, classes and empirically; maybe some of you can benefit from it. That being said, if you want to start creating again, whatever your field is—maybe you’re a photographer, a writer, a culinary artist, a videographer—these are some tips that can help you:

• Do not get discouraged during your first attempts doing something. Don’t be so hard on yourself, things aren’t always—if ever—going to be perfect. Try again.

• If things aren’t looking or feeling the way you want them to and you’re in the middle of the process, do not stop, work through it. See those imperfections as problems you need to solve and become a problem solver. I can assure you that if—in the end—you still don’t like what you see, you are at least going to learn from it and do a better job next time around.

• Let go of perfection. This is the hardest part and—to me—the most important one. Aiming to be perfect will get you stuck, every single time. Learn to love those imperfections, they might even be the things that will become your signature, the things that might personalize your work. If everything looked perfect everywhere, life would be incredibly boring.

• Don’t try to mimic someone else’s work. It is normal when you’re first starting out to have a fixed image in your head of how “good stuff” should look like. You will realize very soon that when you’re trying to imitate someone else’s job is not going to feel your own, it won’t feel inspiring and it will prevent you from finding your unique voice—I, for example, am still exploring, trying to find my own. Certainly, you can find inspiration everywhere, just take that inspiration and try to own it instead of trying to replicate it.

Changing the way you approach things can really have an impact in what you do. The other day I was drawing a camera for the Vintage Series—the drawing in today’s video and blog image. Everything was going great, I had finished the sketch with my microns and was going to start the watercolor process. When I went and look for water to rinse my brushes, I didn’t realize that a few drops fell into the drawing. When I tried to erase the pencil lines the ink started fading and smearing everywhere, it even broke the paper a little bit. At first, I was ready to yell and discard the whole thing—after trying to be so precise, this happens—then I remembered Pam Garrison's words in one of her classes: look at every mistake or issue as an opportunity to problem solve.

Guess what gave the camera the—even more—vintage look? :)

JessieAmo