What is the #1 most important trait for an artist?

Patience.

Being an artist is all about learning– learning about yourself, learning new techniques, learning how to develop ideas… the list goes on. But taking what you’ve learned and using it to create an work of art is a lot harder than you expect. It’s hard to slow down when the ideas are rocketing around in your brain.

The artists who create really wonderful art are the ones who have the patience to focus on making something really good. The ones who are willing to spend 51 hours on a tiny engraving, or uncounted hours smoothing a sculpture (check out the time-lapse video on the top right).

In other words, the ones willing to spend as long as it takes to get the quality they demand. Once you hammer out a process, it’s easier to estimate how long that takes, but when you are constantly learning you often underestimate the time a new process will take. That means that sometimes schedules get thrown away and deadlines aren’t met.

I am constantly making lists of things I will do this day/week/month, and usually I run into the fact that there simply isn’t enough time for me to do all the things I planned. As a result, long and complicated projects get put off.

For example, this weekend on my “day off”, I sat down and worked on a project I’d been avoiding, and ended up working all day and into the night. I finally felt like I had the time to just work on it until it was good. I’d only budgeted a couple of hours in my self-imposed schedule for this task, and in reality it took at least nine!

And you know what? I was really happy that day. The time pressure was gone because it was my weekend and I could do what I wanted. The hours flew by, and when I was finally done I had the results I’d been trying for.

So I’m making it a goal to trim down the list of things I do each day, and expand the time budgeted for each project. My schedule of projects completed may not be as impressive as I’d hoped, but the projects themselves will be better and I will be happier as I work on them.

Category: General

Tags: patience, reflections