Practising art on the blockchain — Part Two
Showing how “Show Your Work” works
We’ve all heard the advice:
“Do something creative every day.”
“Make sure to publish something every day.”
“Share your journey, not just the destination.”
“Show people your process, not just the end results.”
(Note: I’ve made those up, paraphrasing; so, if any of those are actual quotes from someone, sorry for the lack of attribution!)
No matter how many times we’re told that this is the key to real progress, we don’t often seem able to act on that knowledge. (Or, is that just me? Until now, that is!)
“On the spectrum of creative work, the difference between the mediocre and the good is vast. Mediocrity is, however, still on the spectrum; you can move from mediocre to good in increments. The real gap is between doing nothing and doing something.” ~Clay Shirky
Share something small every day
In Part One of Practising art on the blockchain, I mentioned the book by Austin Kleon, Show Your Work. In the book he talks about the many reasons for showing your work (highly recommend reading it, if you haven’t!). Here’s his list again:
I’ve been sharing my digital images (dare I say art? I’m not sure yet) which I’ve been making as I learn about creating things in digital medium on Creary for a few months now… every day. Sharing what I’m working on, techniques, themes, breakthroughs, and of course, some failures. It has been this process, the creating and sharing daily, that has led me to a very real feeling of progress. I’m starting to ‘recognise’ my own work. Below I’ll share images so you can see what I mean, but first, I want to talk about why I think this is important.
I’d read Show Your Work quite a while ago now, but I found myself doing many of the things outlined in the list above without intentionally ‘following his advice’. (Maybe that’s the key for me? Maybe I need to internalise the advice before I can follow it?) In any case, I found myself acting on several things mentioned in the book without realising at first they were from the book!
One of the best metaphors I’ve seen to get this idea across is encouraging artists to think like chefs. Chefs often share their recipes. They write whole cookbooks for others to follow. (In fact Kleon’s books are rather like cookbooks themselves.) Great chefs don’t try to make things seem harder than they are. So share your ‘recipes’!! Inspire others!! Show them that they can do this too.
“I saw the Sex Pistols. They were terrible… I wanted to get up and be terrible with them.” ~Bernard Sumner, New Order
Be an amateur
Being an amateur means it’s okay to take risks. It’s okay to not know all of the answers. It’s okay to try things that might not work. All of this is incredibly freeing, and ultimately exactly what helps you grow as an artist.
It can also be incredibly refreshing! It takes a lot of pressure off if you start from a place of “I don’t know how all of this stuff works, but I’m going to try to figure it out and see what happens…” mindset.
I wasn’t concerned with putting together a ‘professional’ portfolio of work. I was focused on documenting my journey, my experiences, and my learning along the way. This gave me the freedom to try different things and not get stuck in trying to create something with a particular ‘look’ or, worse in my opinion, trying to make things that other people liked. The point in what I was doing was the process and the learning experience more than the final product. (This is true in a lot of my physical artwork as well, but it is especially true being new to creating things digitally.)
Don’t turn into human spam
In the process of learning, I’d try dozens (or more) of different variations of images. There were some times that I liked most of the results! (There were also times when I liked none of them!) I didn’t want to bore my audience to death (remember, attention is valuable — don’t abuse it!) so I would try to edit down to just one image per project each day. This in itself taught valuable lessons in stepping back and critiquing my own work.
Evaluation skills are one of the key components necessary in any artistic practice. It is the level to which you develop these skills, I think, that determines both how much you progress as an artist and also how successful you are at building success.
Even if you aren’t sharing a final piece (see above) the process of being able to choose a single image that embodies your learning, that shows the promise of things to come when skills are developed further, is critical to building the kind of self-evaluation skills required to keep growing as an artist. It trains your eye, repeatedly, to notice things. And that, after all, is the real essential skill of being an artist!
“The best way to get started on the path to sharing your work is to think about what you want to learn, and make a commitment to learning it in front of others.” ~Austin Kleon, Show Your Work
You can’t find your voice unless you use it
And this is where blockchain comes in. You might not think it is important. Or, you might actually really hate the idea of a permanent record of your development as an artist. We are taught these days to always edit ourselves. Carefully craft the picture that we want others to see. (Literally and metaphorically.) This is a mental barrier that we need to overcome.
I think that in order to learn and grow skills you almost have to share. Not just finished pieces, but your ‘practice’ pieces as well. You need to get (and accept) feedback, objective feedback ideally, so that you can progress. Yes, you are building the skills of self-evaluation. But by sharing your work, you have an inbuilt ‘check’ on whether your self-evaluation is accurate or not. This means that not only can it help directly improve your work, it also helps to improve your critical thinking about your work. This is artistic gold.
And this is what I’ve found by posting my work on Creary, the dApp built on the Crea Network. It was the perfect platform for me and what I wanted to do. (It is also a great way to build a ‘professional’ portfolio of your work, if that is what you are looking to do. That’s just not me right now.)
What I have found is that practising all of this, consistently, over the months — incorporating the feedback I’ve been given with the self-evaluations I’ve done and combining those with simply what interests me next — has meant that even though my images or ‘style’ may not be consistent, a definite visual language (colours, shapes, ideas) is developing and getting stronger. It is this focus (along with the community and incentives I’ve found on Creary) that will keep me engaged for the foreseeable future.
I am sure that this practice, in digital, will certainly (already has started to) spill over into the physical paintings I make.
An immutable record of what I’ve learned
By recording my work on a blockchain, I am able to have a record (public record, at that!) of what I’ve learned, what I’ve tried, the feedback I’ve got, and when. This in turn helps me to see my progress over time — which is a great tool when I’m stuck or searching for ideas to develop. It helps me to have a record of ideas that I can go back to, both for inspiration as well as out of curiosity. (I’ve found myself looking back at images and trying to figure out why they didn’t ‘work’ — which can lead to new approaches, rethinking, and improved techniques.) All great stuff that has contributed immensely to my creative practise!
I really do count myself lucky when I get feedback, particularly any details, from someone else. And that feedback is also part of the record of works. I may not always agree with the feedback — that is life; but I will always take the time to listen and to consider their view. I then have a record of my ideas, and the feedback and ideas of others, that traces the development over time of my current work. To me, this is invaluable to my learning. I wouldn’t have this opportunity if I didn’t regularly share what I’ve done online, and share it on a blockchain based platform. I’m lucky to have found Creary. I’m not sure any of this would have happened if I hadn’t.
This probably isn’t anyone’s intended use case when they think about blockchain technology. But it is one that I find incredibly useful! It is also something to think about, perhaps, as a blueprint for other kinds of self-education. It also feels right to me that I’m able to make this technology work for me in the way I want it to — a way that works for me.
Do you have a practise that has really helped you develop as an artist? I’d love to hear about it!
