OMG, it's UGLYYYYYYYY.......

I remember years ago, I used to go to the hairdressers to get my hair streaked.  Sitting in front of the mirror with the cap on, hair pulled through tiny holes sticking out everywhere, it was an ugly sight. (i'm giving my age away!)
As I sat there waiting for the colour to develop I would put up with it knowing that when the cap came off, my colour would be vibrant and my hair would feel great.  Of course, there were many steps to getting my hair from looking like I had put my finger in an electric socket to coiffed and ready to take on the world with my new hairdo.  Can you relate?

So often in art classes, I hear from the room many times, OMG, this is ugly, followed by a big sigh.  Sometimes, I am asked for some more substrate to start again.  The fact is nothing is beautiful during a process.  Building a home, you start with an empty block, building on it and developing it over years to get it where it is today.  Baking a cake or cooking your favourite dish, you wouldn't eat part of it during the process, it would taste awful without all the ingredients put through the process.

The same is true when creating art.  It is a process, artwork has many layers to it.  Building on it, lovingly adding a brush mark here, a pen stroke there, mixing colours, adding subtracting, highlighting, toning down, mark making, pulling back.  All of the different components make up the work.  All artwork as with everything that has a process goes through an ugly stage. 

We wouldn't get up from the hairdresser chair and with the cap on and say "hey, this is ugly, I'm giving up on getting my hair done." or "Stop building my house, I wanted a landscape garden with a path to walk up to the front door, even though it's not there yet."  Get my drift? 

Art work is the same, it takes time, patience, perseverance, vision and faith.  Not every artwork will work out how you thought, it could work out even better.  If you give up, or walk away and not go back to it you will never know and you will never learn. 

I find if I am stuck and not sure what to do, I walk away for a little while and come back, looking at it with new eyes, a new perspective. I work through what I need to do to take it from the ugly stage to developing it further.  You never know you might just make your most perfect masterpiece if you work through the ugly stage. 

Does your artwork go through an ugly stage?  How do you overcome it?  Share your ideas and leave your comment below.  

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