From Robert Birming on his blog:
I want to get better at not waiting unnecessarily long before showing off my ideas and creations. I want to embrace the ugliness along the way and learn early from others.
Basically since the inception of this blog I’ve been trying to decide if I should take the time to post some of my work-in-progress stuff. I personally love looking at progress posts from other artists; getting to watch as something grows from a simple sketch to a polished piece is very satisfying and a great way to learn.
There are many good arguments for being more open about one’s creative process, and the act of making art “in public”, if you will. For purely selfish reasons I’m sure that it would help me in the long term to improve my own skills and make me a more competent artist.
But then do I want to spend the time to actually create these progress posts? I spend so much time making things that, for one reason or another, never end up as a finished piece. And so now I potentially have progress posts with no final result. But maybe that’s OK?
And like so many others I also suffer from a minor case of impostor syndrome, and that voice is telling me that there is no reason for me to be posting my unfinished pieces as I’m not that good of an artist anyway, and so I don’t really have anything to offer anyone so just wait until it’s finished and post your mediocre art then. This is not a call for sympathy comments, I’m sure I’m not the only one experiencing this on a daily basis. It is what it is.
And the fact is that I’m not that great of an artist but some people like my stuff and every once in a while I make something that is actually kind of cool. The point is that at least I’m trying to improve.
And maybe being more out in the open about that whole thing wouldn’t be such a bad idea. We’ll see.
This post is a part of JulyReply 2025.