Today’s prompt from the Ultimate Blogging Challenge is for me to offer one piece of advice on something that I know. I spent the day wondering what sort of advice I could give to anyone. As I was working with soft, not-always-cooperative pastels, it came to me. When you’re creating something, whether it be visual art, a musical composition, poetry, a play, etc., let go of expectations. Your creation may be nothing like the work of art that you had previously visualized. It’s tempting to judge yourself negatively for that. You might be bothered by the idea that change is failure. It’s not. It’s just change.
In art and in life, change is good. It is, however, scary to lose sight of your expectations of yourself. It’s scary to realize that you are creating art that you realize might not live up to your expectations. It doesn’t mean that you should give up art. Maybe it’s telling you to let expectations go and just let art happen. Let your imagination fly and who knows where it will land.
As someone who doesn’t have an artistic bone in her body, I always admire the work of people who are artistic. Beautiful pictures.
I think many of us get caught up in the “it must be good to be worthwhile” thinking. So we try, it isn’t good, and we give up. But we will never create good until we create.a lot of bad, and then mediocre, and then okay, until we get to the good. It takes time and patience.