Failing Creatively: An Evolution
How do you feel about evolving as an artist?
Over the years of starting my website, I have picked and changed the look countless times. If anyone ever did a wayback on my site you might be able to find old versions, that in my opinion are not very good.
We all evolve and try new things and what I am realizing about my art is that I struggle to find time to do the fun work that will hopefully get me more projects. This does not help me as an artist/illustrator because we creatives are constantly told by others (usually those who are “peers” or self proclaimed “experts”) that the key to being successful is to have a niche, be present on social media, and post daily.
I would love to know how any of that is realistic? What these “creators” are telling me is that I have to churn out my worst/fastest art to please an algorithm that doesn’t care about me, and uses my posts to make the platform richer. That is assuming the social media companies don’t punish me for using hashtags wrong or because I am not creating enough meme worthy art or video.
So what is someone like me to do? I think I have a solution, it may or may not pay off in terms of social media. However, it will definitely give me more work for my portfolio.
So what is this solution you ask? Well, as most of you know I alternate my blog between posts like this about my artistic journey and good news. With the good news posts I usually have some art I share and then I will write up a summary of some articles I find across the web. The truth is I am not really a writer though, and could always use an excuse to push my art in creative new ways. So instead of writing up summaries I will make art that ties into the article and have links for you to go check out the good news at the source.
I would love to hear what people think of this idea, I know it will benefit me more to try and capture the article in a visual way but I don’t want to do something that will annoy the readers. What I realize is that by forcing myself to be creative for a computer or for some art challenge doesn’t really help my creative journey and it certainly doesn’t inspire me as much as this does. Maybe it will truly help me grow and evolve as an artist?
Also for those of you who are here just for this … here is this week’s sketchbook page.
Till next time keep failing creatively, and see you next week with some good news.
Thank you so much for joining me on my journey.
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I think that you should do what makes you happy, and what works for you. This is your blog, after all. Don’t worry about annoying your readers: you can’t make everyone happy anyway. It’s more important to find people who vibe with your art and content, and I highly doubt they would be annoyed with this new format. And yes, me too, I really hate how Instagram and other social media platforms force us to constantly produce content. We are creatives, not task rabbits…