80/100 - Like clouds
My body is like a finicky, unpredictable spaceship. Most of the time it feels like I'm steering it, even through turbulent areas, and sometimes it just steers itself, and it shakes out of control as I try to get someplace. And no, I don't suffer from any physical spasms, I'm writing in metaphors as I think about the past few days and how hard it was to get some things done.
I was feeling some discomfort on my back likely from spending hours inking these things so I built myself an inclined drawing board to put on my desk, and I don't know why I waited so long. Also some things at my dayjob started moving again so I felt I had less time to spend with this project and that made it a bit more difficult. But what I find surprising is that the output didn't change that much even though I subjectively felt I had to put more effort into it.
I've discarded the idea that on any given project more effort means more success. Too many extremes have showed me otherwise; some projects I did casually went viral, like that time I posted a video of an animation using a drill, and well, the things where I put a lot of effort and didn’t go anywhere are too many to recount. I suppose it evens out overtime and the only thing I've learned so far is to keep on trying, keep on making. Something will stick eventually.
The other lesson I've learned is that sometimes when you produce a lot, the failures are masked by the impression of the whole. The example here is the little machines project, several of those when seen by themselves are pretty sad, I only need to show this poor dragon as an example:
But watching all of them creates an impression (here is a one minute compilation if you would like a quick refresher).
At the end though, I'll forget all the times when I struggled to come up with an idea to draw, or the many times I looked at the blinking cursor with no idea what to write. All that pain will be gone, the forms of that pain forgotten like the shapes of clouds. And although this is probably a blessing, I still want to remember it somehow, maybe next time I'm sitting in front of the blank page I can think that the discomfort is just a passing cloud.
I think the creature on this 2.5" by 4" chunk of wood is having much wiser thoughts than these as it watches these curly clouds, but it also marks the 80% completion point, which feels like a milestone so I wrote something to remember the difficult parts that are part of any project, I'm sure you've felt them too. This drawing is available here(sold).