How long should you work on any project before you “walk away”? This is a question that really beleaguers a lot of artists. I’d like to think I’m a quick illustrator. I’ve worked on developing my artistic muscle memory so that even when I have an “off day” I can at least put out something acceptable. Sometimes that means walking away too soon, and I look at my Instagram and wonder if I’m focusing too much on quantity over quality.
Deadlines are every artists best and worst friend. On one hand, there’s a definitive date and time when you have to walk away. That direction and structure helps in planning, execution, and finishing. Autonomy might equal freedom, but time management is efficient and pays the bills.
A quick and easy Kermit just for “likes”?! Yes! A little too quick? Also yes.
I have many very talented friends whom shall remain nameless (*cough Jamie!) that have a hard time walking away. Not because they don’t know when to quit, but because they’re perfectionists. This is a real blessing and a curse. Knowing something can be better verses knowing something should be better verses simply wanting something to be better (polishing a turd as it’s known in the business) can really keep a creative person awake at night!
Then there’s personal projects you just can’t put down. I’ve had a few of these pop up in my life. Usually, the size and scope of these projects are meant to be big and time consuming, so you buckle down for the long haul. I’m not talking about rendering something over and over or fixating on one little detail instead of the big picture, rather a personal project that just lets you vibe. It’s more therapeutic than technical, more cathartic than artistic.
This was a quarantine project I started in March 2020 when everything closed down because of Covid. I worked on it sporadically for months. Sometimes for just a minute or two, sometimes for longer. Sometimes I wouldn’t touch it for weeks and sometimes I couldn’t pull myself away from it. It’s certainly not a masterpiece, but it did let me turn off my brain and just sketch and ink, sketch and ink, sketch and ink.
We moved at the end of summer that year and this piece came with us to our new home where it sat in our attic for almost another full year! Spatially it was nearly complete (full), but mentally I wasn’t done with it. That ate at me, but mainly because I didn’t have that closed–off–from–the–world quarantine atmosphere that was originally fueling it. Even though that seems like an oddly specific mindset, the reality is that sometimes your work is actually done with you before you’re done with it. That’s where that giant head at the top with it’s screaming maw pointed skyward came in to close it off. Not a fitting coda for its original tone, but its final note regardless.
One of my absolute favorite “Life In Hell” strips by Matt Groening
I often think about life’s end and how no matter what we accomplish, our “to do lists” will ultimately have several items left to be checked off. Knowing when to walk away isn’t always up to a creative person, and as is also my personal drive when it comes to video games, I’m a completionist. The benefit to working on my own stuff at least gives me the opportunity to say, “when,” even if my heart’s not in it. I think what makes something you’ve worked on satisfying regardless of whether or not it’s actually good is accepting that that’s okay.