I think going to art school was my biggest mistake but also I wouldn't be where I am today without it so
I'm not really sure how I feel about it anymore. But given that I was under so much stress because of it
that I brought myself to the point of complete burn-out in the third year, got diagnosed with a chronic
illness related to stress and ended up in a hospital following a mental breakdown I can confidently say that
it wasn't the best time of my life. At the time of writing this I am no longer in school and yeah... rough
four years for my mental well-being. The pressure to perform, the criticism and close-minded teachers was
just not great for me. If the system wasn't enough I also faced incredibly childish teachers that were
spiteful, unprofessional and sometimes outright mean.
The product of my four years of education was a broken, burned-out shell of a human being that started to hate the one thing that gave his life meaning.
This probably sounds really dramatic and well that's just how I roll but really I became such a bitter
person in my final year. I hated art. Hated the mention of it, hated creating it, hated seeing. It all just
reminded me of the feeling that nothing I make is good enough, that I'm dealing with expectations that I
simply cannot reach and I only seem to be criticised. There was no space for experimenting, no space for
personal enjoyment. Yeah I learned a lot, I improved greatly, I could've improved more if the toxic
environment didn't drive me to insanity.
Losing that spark that I had was really devastating. I felt aimless, if art is the one thing that was
always mine, the thing I was good at and enjoyed... what am I meant to do without it? I wish I had a proper
answer but really the thing that got me to fall back in love was taking a step back. This isn't possible for
everyone, I'm aware of that. But when I finally got out of school and I got the opportunity to scribble the
ugliest set of sketches in a cheap notebook again, it slowly started coming back to me. The thrill of it,
the passion I guess.
I realized that there's so much more to art than just being good, making money, being the best. It's such a
natural human instinct to create, it's a part of us and all that it took for me to realize it was a hospital
stay and a bunch of really ugly drawings. How very facebook motivational post of me... I wish there was a
grander conclusion, some wisdom to leave you with but honestly the art world is a messy place, no matter
what you create.
So I started writing years ago. I never took any classes, maybe watched some youtube videos or half of a
skillshare lesson during my free trial but I never really learned how to "properly" write. This didn't stop
me of course, and I have pages and pages of unfinished drafts to prove it, and I would actually say that
treating the whole thing as just something fun I do on the side and I probably do badly is what kept me
writing all these years. Maybe it was bad but no one ever read any of it so as long as I liked it, it didn't
really matter. I probably don't have the best prose, I'm not sure I use commas correctly and I won't be the
next Shakespeare but man is it fun. I love just indulging whatever current interest I have, making up
stories and reading them later. This is the most simple and genuine hobby I have because there was never any
real pressure to be great at it, I'm not making money off it, the most I've ever shared is the odd
collection of poetry on wattpad or a pdf file I sent to my friend once. And that's that really. I still
consider myself a writer because I don't think you need to be the best at something to do it. You paint
something and you're a painter - that's what I believe. The point is more the actual process of creating
something and enjoying it. I guess that's what I'm really trying to say in the end.
I rarely finish things that I start which is both a blessing and a curse, not even gonna lie. What I like
about it is that I never really feel burned out by writing a scene that is logically important for a story
but I personally just don't find entertaining. I like jumping straight to the meat of it and when I get
bored, I move to a different scene. But then of course I never have any finished pieces to show off. I'd
like to write a longer story one day but who knows when I'll get to that. Until then I'm pretty content with
making my little blurbs and calling it a day. I love a oneshot what can I say.
When I was a kid I was way more ambitious about this whole thing. I wanted to be an author at one point
thanks to which I created my most ambitious and never finished project. In short it was supposed to be an
epic fantasy trilogy akin to lord of the rings (which I loved and still love dearly), detailing the journey
of a group of characters on their quest of saving the world from a great threat. It's really charming if you
ask me. I still love that story, those characters didn't disappear when I didn't write the actual book and
they live on in my art as ocs. I once had a conversation with someone who told me they felt all their
unfinished projects were "a waste of time." They felt so ashamed of themselves for not sticking with a hobby
for more than a few months. And it honestly made me a bit sad. Me, with my short-lived interest in playing
the piano, crocheting, skating and other things, I never really felt any of it was a waste of time. You're
trying things, you're experiencing things, who cares if it doesn't last decades? Plus those experiences
aren't going anywhere and you might still find them coming back in one way or another.
Similarly, I started countless comics, novels, short stories, fanfictions and how many of those are
"finished"? Probably exactly zero. But does that matter? Not really, I'll still read them, maybe I'll add to
them, maybe not. Those things are pieces of you, pieces that you don't have to always share. Take the
pressure off yourself and make something you will never show anyone, it might just be the thing that you
find yourself in.
I've been working on some projects recently and I realized just how completely poisoned my brain has gotten by the way art was taught at my school. One huge thing I struggle with is perfectionism, a lot of people do. And in my classes (especially with one specific teacher) we were told to always aim for excellence. That might be an okay sentiment on its own but man did it mess me up. Because that meant reworking your projects over and over until the teacher thought it was "up to your standards". I remember being told specifically that "I can do better" and I was sort of pressured to perform at a certain level even if that wasn't achievable. Learning to create art isn't linear, sometimes you have a period of time where everything you touch comes out horrible and it feels like the things you created last year were somehow better but that's just the way it is. I have my so-called "experimental era" every once in a while where I make objectively worse pieces just because I'm trying a new technique or what not. But you weren't allowed that in my school's environment.
So you re-work your piece, you create a dozen variants, you ultimately waste time and you still end up coming back to one of your first ideas. Because they really often are the best. I'm not against researching before a project, hell I make a ton of sketches and thumbnails nearly every time but to be forced to make variations just for the sake of having them feels counterproductive. You get stuck in a loop of making more and more attempts to create something perfect. But you never do. And then you have wasted your time.
It's crushing honestly, especially when you are forced to approach every piece like this because you're being graded. But I can see now just how unhelpful this mindset it. Sometimes the first idea is the best idea. Sometimes "good enough" is all that you need. Because not every single one of your projects can be a masterpiece. And a man-made thing will never be "perfect". Yes, aim to improve, strive for great things but never at the cost of creating something in the first place. An ugly, unpolished piece of art is still better than no art in my opinion.