Creative Graphing
Sometimes it's a Venn diagram, sometimes just a bar graph!
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Sometimes I think about all of the platforms we artists, writers, and other creatives, participate in, spreading ourselves pretty thin. We make our pieces, run our creative businesses, AND have to pigeon-hole our message for each social platform, and on a regular basis. It’s a lot.
We look at others in similar creative fields as ourselves and wonder how they do it, and do it so well with consistency. It feels like a high, and at times unattainable, bar. And then there’s the ‘algorithm’, that dreaded algorithm that we cannot figure out. I’ve put out something hastily, by the seat of my pants only to get rewarded by a huge soar in reach, and people really liking what I’ve put out there. Other times, I can work so hard on something, this idea that I think will be the thing everybody will want to see and respond to. That rise of the bar in the graph, the highs in the algorithm. And…it’s a bust. It can be deflating. I recently put out a ton of my recent work, studies, what I’ve been doing, and they were barely shown to anyone. How can the so-called algorithm not even show all this curated batch I bared to the world? I can’t even pretend to be able to wrap my head around how this all works. These aren’t the same ones below, but a similar share of some recent work and studies.
I know I hear other creatives saying the same things I am, or I see some really trying to push the boundaries for views. It takes away from what we’re here for in the first place. At least myself, I am looking to 1) share my work; art is like writing, you’re sharing your thoughts and views with the world. 2) a camaraderie and kinship with fellow creatives; fellow artists who are where I am at, were there before, or are coming up from behind us. We really should be there to lift one another up. I am so impressed by the many artists who have cracked the code to success, either financially and/or on a cognitive and creative happiness level. Either making a living doing what they love, or at peace with where they are, I guess you could say spiritually. And they want to share what they learned and how they got there. They share their mistakes and the things that worked. The roads they travelled, the good, the bad, and their conclusion. I am all there for that. There seems to be something in us in creative industries, and pastimes, that also want to teach what we know, whether the skills, the knowledge, or the mistakes. It’s fulfilling, if not altruistic on some level.
Sometimes I forget all of that, the reason many of us are present on these different platforms. I try to get stuff out there and do it all at once. I waste time tweaking things, looking for perfect. Then when either I get a great response, or my stuff isn’t even being seen I realize that the feeling you get either way is not the trophy. Doing the work we love, that’s what it’s about. I often feel that my time is not being spent well, all of the little extra tweaking that doesn’t change a thing in the long run is time I’m not in my studio, not researching art ‘stuff’, not doing the thing I most want to be doing. My husband recently told me he described my art profession to someone as “researching and jumping in, into all the things, all at once, fully, and then patching up the holes afterwards”. I had to think about that one. I suppose it’s dead-on, not that I want to admit that.
July's 31 Watercolor Pieces for the Art Challenge
I decided to just start sharing the journey, instead of this barely attainable idea of perfection. As I mentioned in previous posts, I recently had back surgery and didn’t have a choice but to do more mundane things. I pre-recorded some video, video that was the first video posts I had done, before I was to take it easy. I tried my hand at edit a few different videos for YouTube and Patreon, Meta posts, and some things here as well. I decided to also do an Art challenge. By the end of July, I had 31 different pieces, all imagined from one-word, unrelated prompts. I shared mine in batches during the month, and decided to bare it all in a video sketchbook tour. Some of these pieces were fun, a few were pretty good and there were several duds. I shared all of it. I thrive better that way. Not trying to match an unattainable perfection that I perceive from others, but a mindset of “we’re all in this together” and it’s not all pretty. But it’s human.
As often happens, I missed an online class today on cracking the code on the Instagram algorithm. I’ve been busy stressing over a weird thing on my website that I must have done to it, somehow. And the fact that none of my photos of my recent artwork for sale turned out the way I wanted so I need to shoot them over again. And also the series I just posted to Meta stories weren’t even shown to anyone for some reason. I’m worrying about the things I mentioned above that I want not to be so important. I can’t help myself, a lot of us can’t. Can we get away from that perfection and idealism? Maybe not, but I’m going to keep trying. I want to be more of a Venn diagram with my pursuits, than a slave to the bar graphs, as they let you down more.
Here are two recent posts I put out discussing two ancient, but not so mainstream, paints as I swatch the colors. The first is about Casein paint (made with a milk binder) and the second is Egg Tempera (made with egg as the binder). I also discuss helpful books on each paint at the end of each video.
Casein Paint Discussion and Color Swatch
Egg Tempera Discussion and Color Swatch
I hope this discussion resonated and as we all try to do our thing, we need to remember not to stress too much. Perfectionism doesn’t resonate as much with one another as humanism does. Be kind to ourselves and to others.
As always take care, Elizabeth
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