Following on from last week’s blog, I wanted to touch on making mistakes creating art you may not love, but learning from this and working out the bits you like and the bits you don’t. No mistake is a bad thing, just use it as a learning curve on your journey.

Kick-Start Your Art

We’ve been running our Kick-Start Your Art Challenge over on our social pages and seeing the realisation from people taking part, enjoying the process, joining in and their self discovery, it’s just been amazing. 

Now, this may sound weird but seeing other people making mistakes made me realise how important they are. They are massive lessons when creating art, and quite often people battle with making them when really we should just embrace them. This will make the creating process so much more enjoyable. We’ve had people joining in with this challenge that haven’t made art for over 30 years. They are putting pen to paper and have started to put themselves out there. Many of them have been scared to share, but they have, and the response they have received from other artists joining in has been amazing. 

The pieces they are sharing may not be perfect but they have taken the plunge, and seeing the response from others has only encouraged them more. I myself have worked with these battles of wondering if I should share something, thinking is it good enough, will people laugh, will people just think it is rubbish. I’ve had all these fears, but letting go has been the best thing I have done! Just think – it doesn’t matter what the end the product looks like, there is so much to learn from the process. 

Our Kick-Start Your Art Challenge is to give people the push to start to find the love in art again. The challenges are quick so you can fit them into everyday life with just 10 minutes each day. Doing these quick 30 second drawings and then reflecting on it. Do I like the output? If I did this again, what would I change? How would I do it? It’s the realisation of what you’ve created, and processing the finished piece. Filling up your sketchbook with little experiments like this is a great way to really analyse your work. 

Visual language

I had someone say to me ‘I have drawn three different spoons and I really like them but I can’t work out why.’ This is a good realisation. You can now start to question why. What is the difference between each spoon? What do I like about one in comparison to another? This all comes down to the visual language.

In fact the other day I saw a post from Lucy Mills. She had chosen a teddy bear as part of the challenge. She drew three. The first one was really delicate and fragile. She drew and she rendered, it was soft and looked really cute and vulnerable. The second teddy bear she drew had a lot more expressive lines and the fur was built up. There were lots of mark making in and around the teddy bear. It felt so different and it had energy, felt robust. The third one was created out of collage and again looked and felt so different. It was made out of tiny little strips of paper which described the form of the teddy bear. 

It was so interesting to see the same object, created 3 different times but all look and feel so different. This is the language of art! Now, to Lucy, none of these may seem perfect but what is important is to really look at each one and find the parts that you love and parts you’d change – this is how you create your voice as an artist.

Think about… 

To do this, question the following; 

  • What is good about it? 
  • Is there anything good about this? 
  • What would I change? 
  • What didn’t I enjoy about creating this piece? 

Make notes in your sketchbook on each piece – doing these quick pieces, you’ll be surprised at how much you can capture. Some people find it easy, others find it hard. That is okay. It’s all about the process and being afraid to make mistakes.

Develop your voice

Always remember there is no right or wrong, you are simply finding your own voice and learning about how to make art you love. Keep practising, don’t dismiss things and don’t give up. Practise and hone in, this is how you develop your artistic voice.

Much love, 

Michelle x.