Thursday Seeds:  Forced Progress

You’ve made a deadline for yourself. You picked it out more than a year ago. So much has happened since then. And yet still you are going to make this happen come “not heaven or high water.” (See what I did there? It falls flat doesn’t it?)

It comes together.  The browns should in fact have a whole lot more depth and shades to them because your work is centered around the theme of dirt.

Your empire of dirt is flat because you forced it. If you had found out that the theme of dirt was the case earlier, then maybe your mix of paints would be the very thing to give this depth. But you also need texture and that can only be done with more out of the box thinking and several more hours to get the tools together to pull it off. You have that better version in your head the moment that you make the deadline and put the paint brush down.

“Maybe on the next project” you tell yourself.  Are you being true to your art?

Are these forced deadlines a good thing? Sometime they are absolutely essential and those are not the times that I’m knocking here. 

It’s the times when you are walking down the wrong trail and it takes you 2 more hours to get to the car than if you had just waited 10 minutes. Then the ranger would have been along and could recommend the best turn at the crossroads.

The days that you don’t have it in you, you are in massive pain. You should stop and rest.  And then you do stop and rest and the time passes you by, you don’t turn in the work. Your art is lost and you lost. That is NOT what I’m talking about.  

It’s when you won’t let go of a specific idea even though you have trusted friends tell you that your use of yellow is going to need to dry before you place the green on. They mix together and muddle the shades because you just couldn’t wait. It’s pie crust dough worked with until it really is too tough.

It’s that way with some chapters. If you start asking your characters what is wrong and they can’t tell you, you should listen to them. Have another project you can work on in the mean time because this one may not be the one?  You could spend hours on this one and have to chunk the whole scene because of some pivot moment that you discover needs to happen after a good night’s sleep.

How do you keep these things from happening? How can you honor your deadlines and honor the art too?

It’s a delicate balance of discernment. Sometimes, you are faced with the choice of “deal or no deal.”  And the very best answer for you and your art is in fact, “no deal.”  Another artist can understand this and you can both move on.  Some of these lessons are just so painful. I wish that all the internet was trustworthy and that they come here with the best intentions even if they don’t agree with every view you have ever had.  But it’s not the case every time.  It makes me sad.

Perhaps that belongs in my art. I’ll see about making it so with a light hand and a light heart.