Why Messing Up Your Artwork is a Good Thing

I know, that sounds so wrong. I don’t mean messing it up intentionally, of course. But often when we work, it’s easy to get attached to our work and be afraid to do anything more to a piece out of fear of messing it up. It happens to me all the time. But I let got of that, and push through.

About a month ago, when my friend Juliana Coles was getting ready for her solo exhibit, we had a conversation about this very thing. She had several pieces “almost” finished, but she knew they weren’t done yet. Time was running out, and she didn’t want to mess them up. She called me back later, a little freaked out, because she messed up a piece that she probably should have decided was finished.

I told her to take a break from that one, and work on something else. Then chances are when she went back to that piece, she’d see it in a different light and it wouldn’t be as bad as she thought.

She called me the next day, and said my advice was spot-on. The piece wasn’t as bad as she had thought, and she was glad it all happened. She worked through it, and it came out even better than if she had just stopped pre-mess up.

That is so true of not only artwork, but also life. Things can be scary, we are afraid to make the wrong decision, or to make the wrong move. But if we can get past that, we can deal with whatever happens and more than likely, the result will be better than if we had just stopped, called it good, and settled.

I was thinking about all of this while working on my windmill piece yesterday and today. The conversation in my head was a roller coaster of:

“This is turning out so great!”

Then minutes later . . .

“Oh shit, I shouldn’t have done that.”

Then I would scrub some of the paint off and problem solve, adding more paint or collage.

Then, “Oh, it looks even better now!”

Then back to “Oh no, I ruined it.”

Lather, Rinse, Repeat.

The beauty of feeling like you messed up your work, is that you then have nothing to lose by working on it more. That opens you up to taking a chance you might not have otherwise taken.

This windmill piece I’m working on right now has gone through such a transformation from this process of messing it up, then pushing through that, to come out even better on the other side. It’s not quite done yet, but it’s getting there.

 

There’s an earlier version in my last post. Then yesterday when I looked at it, I hated the yellow green color. So I jumped in to change that.

 

 

Each “mess up” leaves little traces of the journey that adds to the piece.

 

 

I love how you see different things depending on how far away you are while viewing. Up close, you see the little details of collage and wrinkles.

 

 

Because of this process, I like to have several pieces going on at the same time, in various stages of completion. That way, I can step away from a piece when I need to, and work on a different one. That gives me some distance, and my subconscious artist brain can problem solve about what to do to make it even better.

 

I started this piece yesterday, and I’m just about ready to put one of my photos on it.

I’m so glad I’m backing to starting off my day with art.