show me the bad

Sparked by a text convo I had earlier with a dear friend:

I read a lot of really lovely, lovely blogs. They are chock full of inspiration, tutorials, and beautiful pictures. They are also chock full of perfectly presented projects that look like they were photographed by a top notch photographer and housed/created in these super clean, near pristine conditions. I have yet to see a tutorial that isn't put together best picture forward. And I get that, I really do. I really, really do. Blogging is a platform that a lot of people use to promote themselves and their work, their livelihoods, so I understand the need to present the best of what you do.

But I don't know of anyone who works perfectly, who has a perfect result every time they sit down to make something. So I find it somewhat disingenuous, the entire blogging thing. I appreciate the beautifully presented photos and the tutorials, but I want to see the messes too. With some blogs, not all of them, but with some, you are fooled into thinking that all that person produces is perfection. That they don't make mistakes, they don't ever make duds, they don't ever make anything that you would make a face at. Blogging is a very carefully cultivated thing and I wish more people would share their mistakes, let that perfect persona go a little bit.

I fall guilty of the same thing sometimes - I use this blog as an addition to my shop, which is how I make money. So *of course* I want to put my best foot forward, but this conversation I had reminded me that I am not a perfect crafter. I'm fairly certain she was surprised I'm not.

She asked if I felt like I put effort into these...pieces...pages from old art journals. Yes, yes I did. I tried *really* hard. In some cases, really, really hard.

These are some examples of just awful work in my art journal - they were taken with my camera phone (and shared by text) and not edited. I didn't adjust the light, didn't crop, nothing. What you see is what you get.

Trying to be relaxed with a paint brush and make something akin to a watercolor-esque background. That didn't work. So I covered it with gesso then used a stencil I don't like and the end result was this. 

Ink on...ink. And a stencil. That I tried to outline with a Sharpie. 

The PI symbol. But. I, um, meant for them to be mushrooms. I. Cannot. Draw. At all. I tried. 

I thought I'd try to doodle. With a marker. And some colored pencils. 

What I've learned since I started keeping art journals: 

-that there really isn't any ugly or wrong or bad. Just because it doesn't look right to me doesn't mean it's bad. 

-that for every few duds (and there are a lot of them, believe me), I come up with pure gems: 

Distress paint. With a stencil I used gesso on. A piece of ephemera that has a filled in heart, some wooden letters and wooden butterflies. 

A page in a friend's art journal. The background was already done. I just added the stenciling. I was going to add more too it, but it's perfect just the way it is.