Idea vs. Execution

Course Correcting in Life and Art

Do you have certain voices that follow you over a lifetime? When I’m parking, I hear my Dad saying in his New York accent, “Straighten your wheels!” If I’m trying to carry an unruly pile of laundry upstairs sans basket because I couldn’t be bothered, I hear my grandmother saying, “Lazy Man’s load.” And when I’m stuck on an illustration issue, one of my professor’s voices reemerges.

This particular instructor was one of the most blunt, most exacting and (therefore) the most impactful educator I had. I actually dropped him a line a year or two back, a belated, “Thank you” because I would 110% not be doing what I’m doing without the formation I received from him. And one of the key things I learned from him was differentiating between “Idea” and “Execution”

Idea is… well the idea. It’s the concept. It’s the plan. It’s where you intend to go. Execution is how you did it. You can think of Idea as the destination on the map, but Execution is you making it to that spot. And when illustrations go wrong, I find it’s usually rooted in either the Idea or the Execution.

So to illustrate, above is my sketchbook from second grade featuring a fairy turning winter into spring. On the right is my reinterpretation, this year. The idea of the fairy is the same between both pages. But the execution in the adult version is more fully realized.

So when things go wrong or right in illustration, this is usually how it goes down for me:

1. Bad Idea / Bad Execution: This is an easy one. Things were going south from the moment you left the gate. An example: you’ve been hired to illustrate a Halloween card with the tagline, “Boo!” But for inexplicable reasons, you decide to stick a pumpkin on the card, when including a ghost is the most obvious answer. And you drew the pumpkin with a broken pencil at 1 AM while binge watching a box set. So not only was your idea, “Meh,” but your execution was bad. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Start over.

2. Good Idea / Bad Execution: So you cooked up a better idea than the sad pumpkin. You were hankering to draw a seasonal gourd, but you decided to still find a way to incorporate the tagline, “Boo!” In your sketches, you come up with a concept featuring a pumpkin wearing a sheet, yelling, “Boo!” at a ghost, who is, in turn, dressed as a pumpkin. It’s creative and quirky. So you sit down to paint the card in oils. And you’ve never used oils before. An hour later, you have a “finished” painting, but it’s a hot mess. The colors are muddy and the paint application, inconsistent. Your dog walked across the drying paint. You forgot to add the word, “Boo!” So in this case, your idea was good, but your execution, poor.

3. Bad Idea / Good Execution: This is where things get tricky. And it’s a really hard failing to admit (speaking from personal experience). You’re still working on this Halloween card. And you come back to the idea of the pumpkin. You love pumpkins: the plant, the spice, the color, the vibe. You can’t see anything but pumpkins. You are besotted. Ghost? What ghost? So you sit down and you spend hours meticulously rendering a pumpkin in colored pencil. Every bit of the shading is *chef’s kiss*. The colors sing. You letter the words, “Boo!” in a Victorian style that would make a 19th century sign painter green with envy. It is a masterpiece. Your execution is sublime. But your idea is still bad. And this is the hardest spot to end up in, because what you’ve done is technically good, but creatively bad. And if you’ve spent hours and hours laboring on something only to realize your starting point was off? That stinks. But this is a much easier point to course correct from than good idea/bad execution. You have the skills, it’s just a matter of harnessing them.

4. Good Idea / Good Execution: Pretty self-explanatory. But how do you get there, practically? A good idea means you take the time to brainstorm, to daydream, to think. You don’t rush to the execution stage: you do all the heavy lifting in your head before rendering. You don’t go with your first idea. You try out a couple concepts. You settle on a clearly defined course of action. And once you’ve zeroed in on your idea, you get going with the execution. You illustrate the piece with a style you’re confident using. You take your time. You get outside feedback. You give it your all. Good idea meets good execution.

Is Idea vs. Execution an idea that’s limited solely to art? Not by a long shot. I think it’s something most of us know instinctively. For instance, a few years back, I ran a 5K. I’d never run a 5K before. I thought using a running app would be enough. But I didn’t anticipate that running isn’t just about running. It’s about strength training. It’s about wearing the right shoes. It’s about recognizing limitations (high humidity is the worrrrrrst). But I didn’t catch on to this until a few weeks before the race when a pulled tendon benched me. I’d reached a point where I had the endurance to cover five kilometers in a reasonable time, but I hadn’t realized the need to do deep knee bends, to strength the muscles in my leg. In retrospect, I should have developed a more comprehensive training regime that focused on my entire body’s preparedness.

So when things go wrong in life, it’s not often because EVERYTHING IS AWFUL (although, I’ll admit, that’s a tempting mindset to adopt). There’s often multiple contributing factors (some out of our control) that play into a success or failure. And even the term success and failure can be deceptive. In the case of the 5k, I was in the middle of the pack for my age bracket. It was a pretty average finish. But in my book, I’d gone from being the kid who looked for every excuse to get out of gym class to actually moving my body three miles. So that? That felt like a wild success. So just tuck that in the back of your mind when analyzing anything.

So here’s to good ideas and good executions. Unless you really want to draw a terrible pumpkin, in which case, well, you do you.