8 March 2010 journal page and Musings on doing the WORK in art

Some Blog Love-
One Artist Journal
Made By Girl

My friend Tracey is selling some goodies here. She's trying to raise some funds to take a workshop :) (I love Tracey. She gets uber super excited about taking classes so this will help to put a big smile on her face.)

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I've been mulling over a subject that seems to keep coming up lately. I have to talk about it, or else I'm going to go crazy!

Let's say, "Billie" wants to be an artist. Billie sees amazing art online, in books and magazines and thinks "I want to do that, too." So, Billie goes out and buys art supplies. Billie takes the art supplies home and plays around with them a bit, but gets discouraged after a few attempts and thinks that things aren't "working". So, Billie decides that she needs to take an art class. Billie takes the class, but Billie doesn't like everything that she did in class. She's still new to the art. She doesn't understand why her work doesn't look exactly like what she sees in the books and magazines. Why? So, Billie beats herself up over it and puts away her art supplies and decides that she's not an artist and that she can't do it.

What's wrong with this story? Why did Billie "fail"? Was it because she gave up? No, though, that's part of it. It was because she didn't realize that she needs to do the WORK in order to make it work. Billie didn't realize that she has to learn technique. Billie didn't realize that she needs to learn what works and what doesn't in order to make it work. Billie was overwhelmed with all of the pretty pretty out there and didn't realize that in order to succeed as an artist, she also has to fail some times.

I've noticed that a lot lately. People compare their work to this person or that person. People take a class or learn something and immediately want to master it. They don't realize that, just like with everything else in life, things take time and they take hard work and dedication. How do you succeed as an artist? You WORK. You learn everything you possibly can learn. You take the techniques and ideas and you make them your own! You do the WORK required. You make good pages and you make crappy pages. You make pages you love and pages you hate. That's the beauty of working in a journal. You can go back and see how you've changed over time. You can go back and see what works and what doesn't work. You can see what you like and what you don't like. This is why I'm a huge advocate of working in a journal and leaving everything IN the journal and not ripping things out.

So, don't put down your paint brushes. Don't throw away your glue sticks. Don't give up. Do the work. Do some more work. Push and prod. Keep at it. Do messy pages you hate. Finish the page and turn it, move onto another page. Don't look back. Look forward. When you finish a few pages or the book, then go back and assess what you like and what you don't like. Stay positive.

You can do it. If I can do it, you can, too. Just remember, it takes hard work and a lot of effort, just like everything else, to be an artist.