FAFA Project – f*ck around, find art

But I’m not good at it

Through conversations I’ve had with friends and clients over the years, I’ve found that one really big thing that keeps people from even trying their hand at creating any type of art is the fear of not being “good enough”. But what does that even mean, and who decides?

Humans are weird in a lot of ways, and that includes carrying an expectation of perfection. This isn’t something we’re born with – the people and situations that form us in childhood coupled with societal pressures can really do a number on what we think we’re supposed to be and how we’re supposed to be it. Whether it’s our parents pushing us to succeed or social media using photoshop and AI to shove unachievable “standards” down our throats, we’re constantly inundated with whispers of be better and you’re not good enough and I didn’t do this new thing really well the first time so why bother?

The truth is, when you were born you could cry and shit yourself. That’s it. You have learned how to do every fucking thing that you do since then. You learned to walk and to eat with a spoon and to stop crapping your pants, and all of those things took time. And you’re still not perfect at them, because perfect isn’t real. We all miss our mouth with the straw sometimes, or dump coffee on our shirt, or (I do this a lot) roll our ankle when we’re standing completely still. (I’m doing well on the potty-trained front though, I hope you are as well.)

What I’m saying is, learning new skills takes time and the desire to learn it. If you want to learn something you’re gonna need to put in a lot of consistent effort, and then once you’ve learned it you need to keep doing it.

So what’s “good” and what’s not? Creativity is fully subjective, and I think most of the time we make the mistake of equating “good” with “preference”. If I like a work, I can say it’s good. If I come across a painting that makes me think, “I’d rather remove my own eyes with a spork than look at that a moment longer”, it would be easy to label that painting as bad. The reality is that it’s just a preference, and my opinion doesn’t invalidate it as art.

We can quantify skill: is the perspective correct, does the color palette work well for the subject, does this drawing have enough contrast to convey depth, does this portrait actually look like the subject? Those are all things to be learned. What we can’t measure what makes our heart skip a beat. We can’t measure the amount of joy we feel in creating something or the happiness it can bring to other people.

All this to say, if you want to create, you can. If something interests you, start. Start small, one step at a time, and don’t give up. Ignore the voice in your head that says you’re not good enough, tell it to fuck right off and get its own hobby. If you’re feeling stuck about how to start learning, there are a bajillion (I don’t know the actual number but it’s a lot) free videos on youtube from creators who want to help you.

Go fuck around and find make art.