pots theory of art (which was actually about film photography, which I think was unusually likely to benefit from more raw attempts, but chanting “pots theory” still helps me).
Zefrank’s Brain Crack video. This is the guy who does True Facts about [Animals] and the sad cat diaries, so he has credibility on artistic work.
Remember my taste will always exceed my ability and it would kind of be a bad sign if I could live up to my own standard of perfection.
The pots theory reminded of this bit about creativity:
In the mid-1960s, researchers Jacob Getzels and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi studied students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago to discover what led to successful creative careers. Giving them a variety of objects and asking them to compose a still life drawing, two distinct groups emerged: those who hastily chose an object and proceeded straight to drawing, and those that took much more time, carefully considering different arrangements.
In their view, the first group was trying to solve the problem that had been given to them: “How can I produce a good drawing?” The second group was trying to find a problem in the situation they were presented with: “What good drawing can I produce?” A panel of art experts reviewed the drawings and rated the latter group of “problem finders” works as much more creative than the “problem solvers.” Following up on the students 18 years later, they found that the problem finders “were 18 years later significantly more successful–by the standards of the artistic community–than their peers who had approached their still-life drawings as more craftsman-like problem solvers.
It struck me that, to extend the pots example, if you’re setting out to produce a god-tier pot, it entails massive resources and risk. It behooves you thus to avoid taking up such quests as much as possible, which in reality translates to creating pots when directed by an outside source, like a teacher or social pressure or whatever.
But if you’re out to churn out 50 pots a semester, it’s a cheap and risk-free endeavor. After all, you could probably make 42 or 52 or exactly 50 meh pots in a couple of days and still get an A. But that’s kind of boring, why not find something cool or fun to do with those pots? Make really slim ones that beg the question if they’re pots or pipes. Make a clay klein bottle. Make personalized pots that you will gift to your friends later. Make cube pots. Make a clay Rube Goldberg pot-device. Sky’s the limit.
Some other advice for getting started with the object level might be “start small and repeatable”. The worst case scenario is if you run out of energy before getting the reward for finishing, and can’t pick it back up. Plus you’re probably doing a new thing without expertise, so you’ll learn a lot from repetition with variation.
Projects that are technically object level but are too big or require too much learning to be practical are another meta trap for me.
Some things that help me with this:
pots theory of art (which was actually about film photography, which I think was unusually likely to benefit from more raw attempts, but chanting “pots theory” still helps me).
Zefrank’s Brain Crack video. This is the guy who does True Facts about [Animals] and the sad cat diaries, so he has credibility on artistic work.
Remember my taste will always exceed my ability and it would kind of be a bad sign if I could live up to my own standard of perfection.
The pots theory reminded of this bit about creativity:
It struck me that, to extend the pots example, if you’re setting out to produce a god-tier pot, it entails massive resources and risk. It behooves you thus to avoid taking up such quests as much as possible, which in reality translates to creating pots when directed by an outside source, like a teacher or social pressure or whatever.
But if you’re out to churn out 50 pots a semester, it’s a cheap and risk-free endeavor. After all, you could probably make 42 or 52 or exactly 50 meh pots in a couple of days and still get an A. But that’s kind of boring, why not find something cool or fun to do with those pots? Make really slim ones that beg the question if they’re pots or pipes. Make a clay klein bottle. Make personalized pots that you will gift to your friends later. Make cube pots. Make a clay Rube Goldberg pot-device. Sky’s the limit.
Some other advice for getting started with the object level might be “start small and repeatable”. The worst case scenario is if you run out of energy before getting the reward for finishing, and can’t pick it back up. Plus you’re probably doing a new thing without expertise, so you’ll learn a lot from repetition with variation.
Projects that are technically object level but are too big or require too much learning to be practical are another meta trap for me.