One of my biggest hang ups, creatively, is the idea of permanence – that all art is permanent and that means it needs to be perfect. This is unfortunate for me, then, because every time I look at something I’ve done, I find something wrong with it.
So to hopefully counteract that, I’ve decided to start carrying around a little Rhodia notepad with me. Why Rhodia? Well aside from the fact that they have, in my humble opinion, the absolute best tooth on their paper, they are also the only small, high quality, staple bound notepad with perforated pages. Why does that matter? Let me introduce you to:
Disposable art
Remember how I said that “art is perfect”? Well art that you create with the absolute foreknowledge of its eventual loss or destruction can be literally trash from the get go. Now when I get done with something in this book, instead of hoarding it for eternity, in a sketchbook I’ll likely not see again, I just rip it off, and leave it somewhere for someone to find, or throw it away, or loosely pile it on a desk until I eventually throw it away.
I still make things to “keep” (and even some of these I like enough to turn into something more) but the freedom of making something for the sake of its creation and not it’s finished product is so, incredibly freeing.
And I’ve gotten so much more prolific in the process.
Still have a ways to go before I’m “good” though.
