Early in this daily-posting journey, I had the inner struggle of deciding whether to show only artwork that had been created on the computer, or if I should pull back the curtain a little and share some pieces in sketch-form.
What will people think? Is that a little ‘too real’?
I kept going back and forth between thinking it would be a good, healthy thing to do and that I would probably lose what little following I had, if I did.
The days marched on and I had a trip coming up; an opportunity to put something into practice. Either I’d work out all of my pieces and bring the printed artwork to post or take a chance to share sketches.
I landed on a balance of the 2 ideas. I would create enough artwork to cover every day of my trip, but I’d bring my sketchbook if the mood struck me to create on the fly.
How wise and well-balanced of me, but fate had other plans.
A week before I was to leave, I turn on my computer in the morning and …nothing. No sound, no little icon letting me know it’s coming up, just the computer version of a flat-line.
Frantic calls go out to try to resuscitate the machine. My savvy IT guy (a.k.a., my husband) tells me that he is unsure whether we can ultimately revive it, but it definitely won’t be happening before needing to post for that day.
Do I keep my commitment to post every day or do I put out a message to “Stand by… we will return to our regularly scheduled programming once I have a functioning computer?”
In that moment, it became clear that the best choice was to post my sketches.
Guess what happened? People said they enjoyed seeing those as well as more polished pieces.
Ultimately, we weren’t able to bring my computer back. We have a good back-up system so nothing was lost, but between being out of town and computer problems I had almost 3 weeks of posting sketches.
While I found myself “forced” into a moment of showing less-polished work, I learned the value in setting aside a slick finished product and instead putting out pieces from an earlier stage.
In addition to the positive feedback from my audience, I discovered that I really enjoy what happens when I am only working on paper for a post. There are different solutions that I will find that wouldn’t have happened on the computer. For example, in “The Struggle is Real” I discovered a way to link the 2 g’s in the word “struggle” while sketching the letters. The way that I create on the computer wouldn’t have resulted in that same solution.
Today, I still periodically post sketches even when I don’t “have to” because I like the variety it gives when looking at the body of work …and because I enjoy it.
I hope this gives encouragement to share your work no matter what stage it is in. In this day of highly-polished Pinterest-perfect visuals, people really do like to see the curtain pulled back.
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