Let's Make Mistakes

Imperfection as a creative good

I’ve been thinking about mistakes lately. But not as a bad thing. As a needed thing

In the past year or so, I’ve felt that my illustration style needed to evolve. It’s a sensation akin to wearing a once beloved sweater now grown small and scratchy: it was good once upon a time, but now it needs a rethink.

The candy-colored tween book covers I started my career with evolved into a looser watercolor style. That was a hard shift, but once it clicked, felt right. But now? I’m not sure. I find it unpleasant to admit uncertainty, but I find dishonesty even less appealing. So here we are. There’s been a lot of false starts on illustrations in the months past. Texts sent to friends and family, “What’s your take on this?” The age-old artistic lament, “I’m a washed up has-been!” Lather, rinse, repeat. But increasingly I’m realizing that style evolution is just going to mean a whole lot of mistakes.

When my sisters and I were young, there were a handful of children not allowed to play with us, “Because you make too much of a mess.” This neighborhood directive was handed down after we built an enormous dirt volcano and fed the garden hose up through it, setting off our own mini Vesuvius one autumn afternoon. Its eruption was glorious, mud spattering everywhere and on everyone. Our enthusiasm, however, was not universally shared by the other childrens’ parents. More’s the pity. The “You make too much of a mess” episode still gets my siblings and I laughing. We were never willfully destructive or chaotic. But we did play in the woods and get scrapes and build forts and in the process, acquired a nice patina of dirt. And we were the happier for it. Not only were we happier, but we became adults not afraid of hard work, occasional chaos and getting dirty in the pursuit of dreams (literally and metaphorically).

But in terms of creativity, it seems as adults we skip the messy parts. At least I do.

I hate watching an expensive piece of watercolor paper end up in the trash. If an artistic experiment goes awry, I count the minutes lost. But is it a mistake, really? Or is it rather an imperfection, a growing and a gathering?

A mistake is speeding in a school zone. A mistake is not painting a portrait where the features go a little wonky. Do you have things to learn, areas of improvement? Yes. But true mistakes are things you can do without, like setting off a fire in the toaster. In art, the ways we fall short paradoxically contribute to our growth, unlike the flaming piece of toast. It’s like how muscle is strengthened: through repeated small tears that eventually repair and become killer abs. Or biceps. You do you.

I was reading about the Ingres painting, “La Grande Odalisque” recently and was floored to realize that the model is depicted with a super-human number of vertebrae. In all the years I’ve looked at the painting, it’s never registered. I remember the enigmatic gaze and the sumptuous bed linens. But the extra vertebrae? Nope. There’s some debate as to whether this anatomical unreality was intentional, whether Ingres wanted to create a certain kind of shape in the curvature of the spine. But history isn’t sure. So is it a mistake? Your call.

And art is full of “mistakes.” Da Vinci used a fresco technique on “The Last Supper” that failed. Monet’s cataracts completely altered the look of his later paintings. Pianist Glenn Gould, an absolute force of nature, took multiple takes in order to get things to sound just so on recordings. And Marlo Brando’s hand is visible when it shouldn’t be in a scene in “The Godfather,” because Coppola didn’t want to lose the magic of the moment and cut filming.

I remember going to an Andrew Bird solo show eons ago, back in 2008. What floored me was when a particular piece went off the rails he stopped midway through, regrouped, then started over. I remember thinking, “You can’t do that!” But he did. And it worked. And it has stayed with me ever since. You can course correct. You can start over. You can make mistakes, learn from them and move forward.

I am not thrilled with this sketchbook painting I did Monday. It’s a bit of a mess and I overworked things. But it’ll take a lot of missteps to get where I’m going. So I figure I might as well start messing things up.

It’s time to become the kid that sets off a faux volcanic disaster in the backyard again.