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Welcome to Art for All, the Sketchbook Skool podcast. I'm your host, Danny Gregory. I'm the founder of Sketchbook Skool. I'm a sketchbook artist and I'm the author of a dozen or so books on art and creativity. I do a lot of different kinds of things. I write, I draw, I teach, I run a company. I make podcasts. The list goes on, but before you start hating on me, know that there are many things, in fact, most things that I do, I do rather badly. I suck at lots of stuff. As a surprise. I signed up for ballroom dancing lessons with Jenny, my wife. I had rosy visions of twirling her around the floor while brilliantined men in dinner jackets played peppy tunes from the band stand. Alas,after two or three sessions, it was clear that I suck. While my wife is as graceful and athletic as a prima ballerina, I appeared to congenitally have no innate sense of rhythm, no ability to remember steps. No actual understanding of music at all. Despite her brave smile, I'd finally acknowledged that I'd have to buy Jenny steel cap boots or hang up my dancing shoes. What if you tried doing something and you find you're not very good at it. What are the consequences? First the cons. You get frustrated. Ashamed. Humiliated. And then start beating yourself up for wasting everyone else's time by doing this One failure metastasizes into a blanket condemnation of your ability to do anything at all. Ever. You're a blundering old idiot with two left feet. No opposable thumbs, jackass ears, and a tail. Now, what if you could turn your abject failure into something a little more useful? Consider your brave venture into new territory as a quest to discover your limits. Failure is a great way to grow your self-awareness and see what you're actually made of. It also helps you to shed fantasies that you might have about yourself as a great golfer or balaleika player or Texas two- stepper. To dwell firmly in reality, however, bleak. Even more productively, failure is an opportunity to explore other ways to improve yourself rather than give up. Start by looking for inspiration from others who have failed before they succeeded. Ask for guidance in overcoming your hurdles. It's a great way to make connections and to meet others with similar ambitions who are just a few steps ahead. Failure isn't necessarily an all or nothing proposition either. Break down your failure into its components, and see where the real problem lies. What did you actually fail at? Maybe you can fix that one part, and others will fall into line. Take true stock of yourself. Maybe you're giving up too easily. Get some grit and push yourself a little harder. Success might be just around the bend. Or perhaps you need to alter your ambitions. Maybe the jitterbug isn't for you. But you were born to merenge. Keep pushing yourself to try and to learn new things. No matter how they turn out. You'll find yourself growing stronger, more capable, more resilient, and courageous. Failure is an option. Especially if you succeed at it. What could you suck at? Give it a whirl. Have fun. Just try to avoid stepping on too many toes. I mentioned to you at the beginning of last week's episode, that this is a continuation of a podcast that you know, has had a season one. This is season two. And a few days ago, I was doing my regular weekly show on YouTube, which is called Draw with Me. And I talked a bit about this, about this podcast and that I was bringing it back. And I also talked a bit about how I think it's going to be different than it has been in the past.

Here's what I said: 5:47

So this is a podcast that I put a fair amount of energy into and then kind of burnt out about two years ago. So I did this podcast. It was pretty cool. It was fun. I talked to a lot of interesting people about art, and now I've decided to rethink it and to do a version of it that fits more with what my priorities are now, what I think you'd like to hear. And so I've relaunched Art for All. and, uh, the first episode came out this week and my plan is my ambition is to do a new episode of this podcast every week and just to, just to kind of talk about stuff that I think it will be helpful to you as you're creating. I'm trying to make these episodes a little bit more to the point, a little shorter, a little less fancy so that I can make them every week. the ones I was making before, it was kind of like making like a movie or something. The amount of effort that I had to put into it to make it kind of polished and nice. That's an, that is a battle that I fight. Maybe you fight it too, between, well, perfectionism... Perfectionism , is Perfectionism is the, the COVID-19 of creativity, always lurking. Always looking for a way to get a grip on us. A lot of times perfectionism means that you just keep polishing and tweaking the stuff that in the end probably doesn't really matter that much and most people won't really notice. Might be good but.... I think the problem with of your actually moving on and learning and growing because you're finagling. I think even worse, perfectionism stops you from doing stuff in the first place because you 're Ah, it'll probably never be that good, shouldn't even bother to start. So you've got to get your perfectionism under control. It is not helping you. It is not making things perfect in part, because perfection is an illusion, it doesn't actually exist. We're human beings. We're animals who fart and belch and you know, have hair growing in the wrong places. We're not perfect and you're not going to make anything that's perfect. And who cares, who wants to see... Computers make perfect stuff, right? That w we don't need humans to make that, to make perfection. So just get it out of your mind, get it out of your life. It's not helping you. Perfectionism sucks. It's imperfect. All right. So, so anyway, so because of this kind of need, I had to do the level of production that was the goal when I was doing advertising. Because in advertising, you have to, it has to be perfect. You can't put a TV commercial on the air and then like, have something misspelled or have something wonky or have something, you know, cut out. The music cuts out in the middle of those kinds of things. Things you can sort of get away with a podcast, although they were annoying. But when it comes to like the level of finesse that you have to do, when, when you make a TV commercial, I was applying that level to doing stuff by myself, stuff that I used to have a whole team of people to work with and, and experts and polish. People who really you know, really this is their job and, you know, you would spend months and months making the 32nd commercial. I didn't want to spend months and months making a podcast anymore. I don't have months and months to do that kind of stuff. So I wanted to just get it out there to you. So anyway, so this imperfect podcast has relaunched it's out there. You know, it'll take you five minutes of your life. It might be worth that. Okay. Alright. So I guess that was a bit of an exaggeration because here we are, and we are, I don't know what eight and half minutes into this thing. Not five minutes, but anyway. It doesn't really matter. Because, you know, I ain't perfect. Obviously. But I want you to struggle with your perfection as well. because... perfectionism.. is. Let me start this again, because I'm kind of dithering a bit because I'm looking at something out the window as I'm talking to you, which is rude. And I probably shouldn't be doing that, but... the point about this podcast and about the various forms that it's going to take is. It's a creative endeavor. Like many of the things that I do. And so it's going to change it may start out with certain intentions and then we may come upon. you know, something that's distracting, like the view out the window, and that moves me in a new direction. and I think that's okay. And I hope you do too. I'll try not to make things that sound awful. I'll try to avoid having a lot of you know, humming and humming and hissing and pissing. But other than that you know, there's going to be in perfection, built into this thing. So consider this apology preplanned. I'll always refer back to episode two of season two and say, well, I warned you. but, you know, meanwhile, I hope that you're taking this and you're saying, you know what? I've been blocked on this damn thing for too long. I've got to just plunge in and start doing it. I've got to just start making something and if it sucks, it's okay. It's okay. Because Danny Gregory is doing this lousy podcast and you know, it sucks, but it's out there and people are listening to it. So if he can get away with it, I can do. Why not. Take the plunge. Explore. Make stuff. And then see what happens fiddling with it and niggling with it and trying to make it be something that may in the end. it couldn't be. Well, That's just not the point. The point is to make. Okay. This may be a thing that I look back on with regret. But, you know, life is studded with regrets and yet we live on. So thanks for joining me. Until next time, this has been Art for All. This is the Sketchbook Skool podcast. I'm Danny Gregory. Imperfect. But human. Out of here see you later. Bye!