That got me thinking: how do we decide, individually, what is "good" art and what is "bad". Of course, there is no such thing as good or bad art, but why does one piece go unnoticed, while another stops us in our tracks.
We know it's not the craftsmanship, or subject matter, or how much time was spent making the piece. It's none of those things and it's all of those things.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to quantify art, especially when it comes to creative endeavors. I don't spend every waking hour in search of the "magic formula". To me, good art is a reward in itself. But wouldn't it be nice to have some kind of guideline as we put more and more hours into our work?
I think so. And that brings me back to Jim Rohn's observation. Sometimes an artist will manifest something that's never been done before. And that is amazing when it happens. But it rarely does. So what should we do with the rest of our lives? What do we do when divine inspiration doesn't seem to be coming through?
Doing ordinary things extraordinarily well sounds like a worthwhile goal.
Here's an example. We use words everyday (or almost every day). Everybody can do it, everybody has to do it. Some people use words in such a way that nobody wants to listen to them, others make a living using words, and there is a select group of people who say a single word and the whole world listens.
With that in mind, let's see how this applies to visual storytelling:
letters and sounds are strokes and lines,
words, idioms and grammar correspond to tonal values and structure,
sentences and paragraphs are composition.
All these elements come together for a single purpose: communicate a story, deliver a message.
When these ordinary elements are prepared and presented extraordinarily well, it makes for an extraordinary story. When done right, amazing results appears to be effortless. To quote Jim Rohn once again, it's easy to do and it's easy not to do. Time will go by anyway. Best to put our time to good use and do small ordinary things very well, one little thing at a time.
Here is my final for Anthony Jones' Painting with Confidence class.
Final week was rough for me. I finally took my painting to a refined finish. Getting from a blank page to first image was easier and quicker than getting from the first one to second. Learned a lot in the process.
