Daily Practice, or, The Myth of Good Enough
- Halloran Parry
- Feb 27
- 8 min read
There's a particular type of brain rot that afflicts creatives, especially aspiring creatives: those people whose ambition vastly exceed their current skill. If you're an aspiring illustrator, you're mired deep in a slog of skill building. You're getting portfolios reviews but no jobs and you have artists and art directors telling you your anatomy needs work and your lighting is off and your forms are flat. And so you're practicing your figure drawing and doing some extra still lifes and generally treating the feedback you received as a list of tactical enemies to be summarily defeated one by one through any means necessary. Because, deep in your subconscious, you're harboring a secret fantasy. It's buried so deep you can't put words to it. You may not know it's there. But somewhere in the abyssal plains of the psyche, there's a part of you that desperately believes that if you address all these issues, defeat the enemies, the criticisms will stop. You'll be good enough. And because you're "good enough", the jobs will roll in. The bills will get paid. The art will get easier. All of artistic and creative success is just a matter of getting to that point, clearing that one hurdle.
This is a lie.
It's a lie and I've seen it ruin people.
But first let's unpack the psychology of "good enough" because there's a lot to it. If you subscribe to the religion of the "good enough", you believe the following:
1. There is some singular point along your skill building journey that delineates good enough. Before you get to that point, you'll get nowhere. After that point, you have it made.
2. It is, therefore, in your best interests to get to "good enough" as fast as possible.
3. Until you're "good enough", your work doesn't matter because it's not "good enough", so why bother showing it to people.
4. Once you've hit "good enough", you can get off the treadmill of constant self improvement and skill building and get to what really matters, which is nailing that one particular trophy job you've always wanted.
5. Because you're good enough, you'll get that job with no problems.
The best lies all have kernels of truth and this one is no different. It is, in fact, a sneaky oversimplification of reality that manages to avoid the inconvenient details to such a degree that it turns the truth flat on its head.
The underlying relevant truths here are as follows:
1. Art - particularly figurative art, and especially illustration - is a skills based pursuit. No one is born knowing how to illustrate, and there is such a thing as more and less skilled. Or better and worse.
2. Clients who commission illustrators are looking for, among other things, a certain level of skill. They're commissioning art to promote their brand and their property. The art will be the face of the company. It has to appeal to their target audience and it has to represent the company in a way it wants to be represented.
3. While not all clients are the same, in general, the higher your skill level, the more clients you'll be "good enough" for.
4. The early stages of an art career are focused mostly on skill building. That's where most of your time is going every day. As you get more skilled, and particularly as you become "good enough" for more clients and potential clients, you spend less time in raw "get better" mode and more time doing client work, business administration, and business development (finding more clients). Interestingly, many illustrators wish they'd spent more time in learning mode.
Nuance:
1. The real skill in illustration isn't light or anatomy or volume or composition or anything else. It's intent, execution, and audience. Do you have a clear intention with your illustration? Did you execute on that intent? Did your intention reach your audience? Everything else is tools to buttress that singular skill of communicating a message. We learn anatomy because if we have to draw people, it's important that it look like we meant to do it the way we did. If an arm looks broken, it's because we meant it to be broken to support the intent of the image, not because we don't know there are bones in arms. If we want to show a glowing candle, that candle flame better be brighter than everything surrounding it because it gives off light.
2. Every client has a different goal and a different audience they're trying to reach. The concern that every art director has is not "can you draw a hand well?", it's "can you reach my audience?" There's a reason you see many companies targeting children or parents of children with colorful stick figure illustrations that look like they might have been done by a five year old. There's a reason Berkshire Hathaway is not going the colorful stick figure route.
3. "Good enough" in this case is shorthand for "able to reach the audience with the right message." The more skills you build, the more effectively you can reach an audience and the more audiences you can reach.
So, to sum up, you start with the premise that skill building is a life long endeavor and with only a few crass assumptions you end up thinking it's something to get out of the way as fast as possible so you never have to do it again and you can get to the good stuff.
And in the beginning, that's not really wrong. When you're a novice, your taste exceeds your skill. Everything you do is going to fall short of your vision for it. There is a big chunk of foundational work you have to do before you have enough skills to start making paintings you're happy with. And until then, everything is hard and you mostly hate the things you create. There's no shame in wanting to get through that horrible stage as fast as possible.
But after that, you'll hit a decision point. Lack of skill won't be your biggest problem anymore, and you have to choose whether you're going to keep developing over time at a slower pace or stop all together. I think there is a right and a wrong choice here, and it won't surprise you to learn that the right choice is to evolve your learning practice to be a smaller, sustainable part of your practice long term.
I do mine first thing every morning. I pour my coffee, sit down at my kitchen table, and get out my watercolor kit so I can spend 30-60 minutes focused on a single practice task. This month, it's color. Specifically, seeing it and learning how to use it to tell a story.
And next month, it's plein air. That theme of continuous improvement through sustainable and sustained effort is what led me to imagine a plein air week.
The tradition of plein air, where you drag all your materials outside so you can paint on location, from life, observing nature as closely as possible, is a relatively new thing, only becoming prominent in the last two centuries or so. Before then, there were no paint tubes, so paint wasn't portable. Landscape painting really came into its own in the 1800s and plein air is the reason.
As beneficial and irreplaceable as a plein air practice is, it's also downright hostile to beginners. It's too warm or too cold or too windy or too buggy or too sunny or too rainy. And the outside scenery is overwhelming. There's so much to paint. And by the time you've hiked to your spot and set up your easel and your canvas, the light has changed and now you don't want to paint it anymore.
For those of you content to live this experience vicariously, I recommend the Landscape Artist Of The Year tv series. You can watch a bunch of people tackle plein air from the comfort of your couch. They can deal with the rain and the wind and you can sip tea and cheer them on.
I can't live it vicariously. It defeats the whole point. If I want to learn how light acts in nature, I'm going to have to go out into nature and paint it. I've resigned myself to this fact. lt's time to rip off the band aid.
I know how my brain works. Painting outside is a skill and I don't have it. So the first few attempts are going to be miserable. I'll be cold. I'll be hungry. I'll be bored and frustrated and I'll realize I hate my setup and I chose the wrong scene and I'll probably spend the first few sessions doing literally anything but painting. I'll grumble and kick rocks.
I also know that once I've done that a few times, I'll start solving the problems that crop up and then I can get to the good stuff. So I'm devoting a solid week to getting over those hurdles.
From March 27 to April 2 I'm going out every day for a few hours. I've got locations scouted around the bay.
Art On Display:
This month, if you're around the Bay Area you'll have three opportunities to see my work in person.
Firstly, if you're in Livermore, you'll want to stop by the Livermore Civic Center Library any day in March for the Livermore Reads Together Art Show. The reception is Saturday, March 8 from 2-4pm and I'll be there!
"This year’s Livermore Reads Together explores the captivating world of Artificial Intelligence and Technology, inspired by the featured book The Wild Robot by Peter Brown. While the book’s narrative highlights robotics and AI, it also delves into the profound intersection of nature and technology, exploring themes of coexistence, adaptation, and how innovation shapes our world. Art and technology share a unique synergy, reflecting the connection between human creativity and technological advancement. From the way innovation sparks artistic expression to how art influences our understanding of technology, their interplay offers endless inspiration."
I'll have three pieces on display, all exploring the humanity of Greek Mythology through the eyes of robots. "Narcissus", "Pygmalion", and "Pygmalion II" will all hang from March 1-31.
Additionally, you can see my latest Plant Systems series on March 23 at 3191 Diablo View Road, home of Mollie's Organics. You'll also be able to buy seeds and seedlings for your garden and you'll be able to sample some of Lynn's artisan cakes. Definitely an event not to be missed!
And finally, Chapman Street Studios is having an open house! We're the new studio on the block and we want to meet the neighborhood. Stop by if you're in the area.
Saturday, March 29, 2-4pm
2908 Chapman St
Finally, this month, I'm leaving you with something from my tool box.
Learning is hard, and if it's not, you're probably doing it wrong. It can be fun, it can be exhilarating, but easy it ain't. Ideally you find a challenge hard enough to stretch your skills and force you to grow and adapt without being so hard that it's discouraging and impossible. In practice, it's a hard line to walk, especially if you're the one in charge of coming up with your own challenges.
And sometimes you misjudge it. Wildly. Or you took on a client project that turns out to be way beyond what you've done before but you have to finish. It's hard and it doesn't matter because it has to get done.
Those are dark days.
For those days, I keep a list of books and videos that I watch to make myself feel better. To remind myself that even the best of the best still run into really hard challenges and they slog and curse and spit their way through just like the rest of us. It's not pretty and it's not pleasant but that's what it takes to get the job done.
This particular video is a highly skilled guy trying to do something really, really hard. And he curses all the way through it. And I keep it around because the highly skilled guy keeps a really good attitude about the whole thing, invectives notwithstanding, and he gets through it. And it's a little sloppy and a little sideways and on fire, but sometimes that's what it takes. Even the greats have hard days. The difference is they find their way to success, by any means necessary.
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