#8 - Public Learning and Public Failing
Public Learning and Public Failing
I am currently on holiday, so this week’s newsletter will be very short, but I hope no less interesting for that. Last week was quite a roller-coaster so I had to skip that issue but I don’t feel particularly guilty about that — life goes on, and sometimes failing a little bit somewhere to get a win elsewhere might be just what was needed at the time. With that, welcome to issue eight of Camp of the Children.
Learning digital drawing and painting
Over at my blog, I am starting a series of posts on my process of learning how to paint and draw digitally. In the past few weeks, I had become enamoured with the idea of learning how to create characters and environments, partly for the purpose of drawing for roleplaying games, but also partly for world-building and conceptualising the future.
People around the world, in different situations (game design, animation, comic books) create wonderful pieces of art, and the idea of participating in that, just a little bit, is thrilling. As I looked around a bit more, I was struck by wonderful work at every corner. This Twitter feed by @sylvainsarrailh especially is a treasure trove of all sorts of art.
"Poisonous Berries" by Sylvain Sarrailh.
With that, I bought a refurbished 12.9” iPad Pro and started the journey. The first post here describes much of my motivation for doing so, but I’d like to touch on the idea of learning in the open here on this newsletter.
Learning in the open
One of the things I am experimenting with this process is learning in the open, documenting the steps I’ve been taking for a few purposes:
- recording what it is like learning a creative skill in the digital age;
- recording the stages of development to be more aware of where I have been and where I need to go; and
- being open with the process of trying, failing, sometimes succeeding, and so on.
When we learn, we expect to fail, but we always try to fail in private. Naturally, we want the world to see the best of us. That’s not a bad instinct, but there’s a lot of learning to do in the process of being open about failing. Being open about that process means being honest with yourself, but also being able to see effort for effort, even if the results aren’t great. In time, I will probably come to regret having ugly pieces lying around, but that will be a time of coming to reckon with the fact of imperfection and the striving for improvement.
There’s also an element of sheer fun involved, showing the steps being taken in a very low-stakes environment gives an added incentive to just keep trying, because there is an avenue where even the most abortive attempts can find a welcome home. The blog becomes a warm home for otherwise unwanted sketches and drawings, a hearth around which imperfect little creations gather and find belonging, a small cozy cabin for the unrefined and incomplete to enjoy each other and to be enjoyed for what they are, not just what they could be or should have been.
So that’s that. If you would like to follow my progress, please do head over to the blog, Junglefowl. The tag “#learningtodraw” will show you all the posts, while “#drawingupdates” shows every update, with or without context depending on what I’ve posted. Most of the time, they’ll just be screenshots of sketches and paintings.
Status Board
Reading: Going strong with The Expanse series from James SA Corey. Finished Cibola Burn and Nemesis Games across the past few days, now enjoying Babylon’s Ashes. Politics, horror, war, terrorism, technology, all sorts bundled up into a great, world-expanding series.
Listening: I’m hoping to listen to some Edguy and power metal in the next few days. Holidays means fewer podcasts because there’s less commuting, but we’re heading down to the beach soon and might listen to something (haven’t decided what yet) on the way down.