Art doesn't always turn out the way you want it to, and that's okay! Not every art piece will be one you're particularly proud of and not every art piece is a masterpiece. But hey, not every piece is necessarily meant to be a masterpiece.
What should you do with art that you aren't proud of. Should you ripe out the page and throw it away? Well, you can if you truly want to, but I found that keeping art pieces that I wasn't pleased with has helped me realized just how far I've come. So, today I want to highlight some of my mistakes, as we should shy away from our less... aesthetic art pieces.
My gallery of mistakes
I find I have a love hate relationship with pens. I enjoy the feeling of not being able to go back and fix my mistakes, because mistakes are part of the art process... Then again, I wish so badly that I could erase a few things here and there. I enjoy drawing people in pen because I feel like I can experiment with the hair, the facial expressions, everything and not look back. I spend so long drawing in pencil but sometimes it's nice to crank out a few drawings with pen. Quick sketches that you may have fun making but might not end up how you wanted.
I myself have been guilty of trying to hide the "uglier" side of my art. The woman on the right has been completely scribbled out because she had no neck. I wrote ewww next to it, and I wish I wouldn't have crossed her out. Not because I feel like she should be displayed to the world, but because she is part of my journey in art. I also enjoy writing little comments next to my drawings that look less than ideal... My favorite one so far is on the bottom right, the guy looking slightly disturbed with a caption next to it saying, "me looking at my sketches without references." Accurate.
Here are some more of my drawings that are interesting to say the least. I like some of them and others are well...
Looking back, I wouldn't call the woman terrifying. That's just mean. It's okay to feel bad about your art, it happens to literally every artist. But don't discount the bad, because the bad is what you have to compare the good to. Without keeping your mistakes, you wouldn't know how far you've come. I feel I've come a long way from when I used to draw these pictures, at least I hope. Just because I have grown as an artist though, doesn't mean I won't make mistakes. Mistakes are part of being an artist. They are part of your journey and something that you should be proud of, because they show you how far you've come.
Experimentation
Another reason you shouldn't throw away art you don't particularly like them is to see what worked and what didn't. This piece was all over the place. I found a bunch of leaves that I really liked and just slapped them on the page... Art is about experimenting and taking risks, but not all of those risks will pay off. I smile every time I see this piece, because it just seems so me in every way. The leaves did not work out and some of the sketches look slightly off, but at least I took a risk. I now know that leaves don't make the greatest art supplies and if I was to do this again, I would probably make the leaves be the background or just make a sketch using leaves. The combination was a bit jarring. i like some of the faces I drew, but the person on the right side with their face divided in the middle summarizes why we should keep art we don't like. I was ready to give up on this face and just throw it away, but I really really liked the left side. So, I decided to divide it in half, showing what parts I liked from it and what parts I didn't.
Another piece that summarizes why you should keep your art mistakes is this one. Is she scary? Yeah... she is, but I was able to find parts that I felt looked decent. This was in marker and I was experimenting with line weight. As you can see, it didn't go exactly as planned, yet I am able to pinpoint this art piece as the piece I started using line art on hair. I still haven't mastered shadows or shading on faces especially, but I tried and that's really all that matters to me. She will permanently be in my sketch book as a reminder of why it's okay to make mistakes. Because I did learn from them. I took what was good in this art piece and continued working on it.
Redoing old art
The final reason I believe you should keep art you don't like is because later on, you can either add to it to try to modify it, or you can draw it again to show truly how far you've come. I redrew this drawing going in with just a marker and it didn't go as expected. I felt that I had grown so much as an artist and that it would really show in recreating this drawing... but it didn't. I felt like it didn't even look similar to the drawing, so I tried again.
My second attempt went better but it wasn't perfect. Art will never be perfect, because we are human. We have flaws, we mess up, and we make mistakes. But I think that is one reason why art is so compelling. Because it is flawed just like us.
In conclusion
You can be a professional artist (which I am not in any way, and if these photos don't tell you that I'm not sure what will) and still feel like your art isn't good enough. But guess what? Even the mistakes are good enough to keep, because they are a part of your journey. The mess ups and the mistakes along the way are what make us human. You wouldn't expect someone riding a bike to learn it the first time. And even people who have been biking for a long time can crash or wobble (okay, so that was cheesy, but it's true.) So cut yourself some slack and learn to embrace the good, the bad, and the mistakes along the way.
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