How to not be “precious” with your drawings?

[akitsukino]

One things some of my art teachers in high school would say to me when I was having trouble finishing an art piece was too not be so “precious” about your pieces. Can anyone speak to that? Does anyone have any experiences with having to give less than a 100% on something when you may have really wanted to? Did you regret not giving it your all? Do you think only giving it 60% or so on a project helped you? Did you feel like you learned anything? Do you have any suggestions for powering through some of those parts? Thoughts?

[Berserker]

I try to do an illustration a week. So at the end of a week I have to wrap it up, one way or another. Some pieces I remain more focused during the week than others, but either way I move on to a new illustration the next week.

[Aleksei]

I try to understand that advice as to 'don't overwork' the piece.
If you think that the piece needs more and more, its probably a good time to stop. Maybe drink some tea and take a look the draw again later will help to see if the piece really needs more work, or if it was just the impulse of the work.

[rajillustration]

No one knows what your art is "supposed to look like" so when you give it 90% or 60% as you're saying--it's still 100% because that's what you did. That's what exists. There's nothing to compare it to.

As for regret, only if it didn't reach my intended goal for the project. So if I didn't fit the client's needs, or if I spent waaaay too much time on a project that was faulted on a foundational level and would never pan out.

So going along with that, I think if you're focused on "I must make every project perfect," then you'll lose sight of the forest for the trees. You'll never be able to finish anything--especially if the foundation is flawed. Being able to step back and say "we are done here." by ending a project, or starting over a project so you fix those flaws, or accept "this is about as good as it will be" or to say "this fits the bill" is a skill you have to develop as an artist. It takes time to do that.

I had a teacher who would say that being an artist is as much about destruction as it is about creation--you have to be fully willing to destroy every part of your piece if you want to make it better, and that includes ideas that never happened, details that didn't get drawn, and parts of the piece you just don't have the time for. When you edit out the extraneous, it makes the core piece better, most of the time.

And as for being precious with our art--I think there's also this sense that the art reflects who we are individually--which it does not. Some people get attached to their art and their characters on a deep emotional level, and that can make some really passionate art, but it can also make a lot of unfinished pieces because it must be perfect. But...the art is not a person. It's not real, it's not you, it's just a piece and you'll make many like it. It takes some humility to show a piece that is...unfinished in your mind, but finished in the mind of anyone else looking at it. Because...especially if that's where you store your value, then it can feel like showing your flaws as a human (which again, it is not)

[Scarlet_Cryptid]

Do your best-- but be aware that 'your best' is not the same from day to day. Your 100% on Monday and your 100% on Saturday are probably going to be different, and that's fine and normal because you're a human, not a machine.

Finished is better than perfect. Perfect is the enemy of finished.

Give it an honest effort... but know when to stop, I guess.

[migxmeg]

Finished is better than perfect.

As a person that naturally wants to fuss over drawings/do my best and always finds something to be unsatisfied with, this is the mantra that I repeat constantly. Out loud... usually 1-3 times per day :<.

Something that helps me have peace with that is that I can do 3-5 pieces at what I would consider 60-70% in the time it would take me to do something at 95%. By finishing more things and moving on, I'm learning more so that pretty soon my 60-70% is (significantly) better than my old 95%.

It still hurts a little to finish drawings when I don't 100% love them, but a quick look through my old art usually convinces me that it's the right call.

The exception is commissions and uuuuuuh they are stressful compared to everything else.

[Scarlet_Cryptid]

By finishing more things and moving on, I'm learning more so that pretty soon my 60-70% is (significantly) better than my old 95%.

THIS. You get so much better so much faster by doing MORE work, not necessarily BETTER work. I've only been drawing my comic since October (I have a 30-page buffer, so the 3 pages I have actually posted is just the tip of the iceberg), but I've been working on it nearly every day since then, and the difference in the artwork, especially the backgrounds, is astonishing. And I'm not a beginner artist.

[margodraws]

Making a lot of art (specifically animation) for school and work taught me to be efficient and detach emotionally from the work I was doing. It's good to try your best, but if you have to create a lot of stuff to meet deadlines, you start to get a sense for when something is done/good enough.

Tbh I still struggle with overworking my personal art though, because there are no real deadlines. I just consciously remind myself that done is better than perfect, otherwise I'd never get anything done!

[Puck]

I´m an overthinker and an overworker and I have not been like that when I started.
As a kid I was drawing at least one page a day every day. The overthinking started
when I relearned to draw and started with the theory. I´m still stuck with the fundamentals.
I finish some pieces now and then and I also did commissions but I´m far from happy with my
art. The fundamentals are still not how they should look like.
The simple drawings now start to look good but I don´t want to draw in a super simple style
so I keep on training and don´t get much done

[darthmongoose]

One of the best antidotes is to make or join in projects where you have to draw a lot of completed pieces for a deadline. Comics are a great option for this. Five panels per page that all need to look like a reasonably finished illustration for multiple pages will soon teach you the lesson that most things you draw you'll need to settle for "good enough", because they can't all be the best thing you ever drew or you'll shoot past your deadline or start killing yourself by eating into your sleep schedule or get a repetitive strain injury.

As you have to create lots of illos to a reasonable level of quality, the quality of your "good enough" artwork will inevitably increase with practice as you get more confident with your pipelines and are able to integrate new learning about things like anatomy and perspective, or tricks with your media or software, into your work. Most professional comic artists, their "interior art" on panels isn't as good as cover art or promo illos because it has to be produced a lot faster, but it's still so much better than an average person can draw it can seem intimidating. It's really just practice though. Their "good enough" has become so confident through experience that it seems effortlessly incredible.

So my advice is set yourself a deadline and rules. Have a solid update schedule and don't compromise on sleep or responsibilities. Prioritise finishing pages over making them incredibly perfect. You'll soon start innovating ways to make the pages look as good as you can on your limited time budget!

[Kaydreamer]

This is something I struggle with a lot. A really good piece of advice I heard recently was this:

Figure out which panels the audience will likely linger on, and put 100% into those. Conversely, the panels you know the audience will likely breeze right past only need half that effort, and it doesn't matter if they're a bit 'off'. You've made the most important ones look gorgeous, and that's what will stick with your audience.