another really long one sorry, but think it finally clicked as why despite loving visual art so much i struggle to practice making it. i think it’s because the fuck ups while just practicing are a lot more permanent, like especially when working with a non digital medium.
when practicing music if i fuck up it just happens and then that moment is lost to time. i can assess what mistake i made then start moving again with a clear head either restarting the section to work over it or just keeping on going. i’ve been listening to a lot of jazz and jazz fusion lately and it’s made me pretty interested in learning how to improv in a key decently. so when practicing that if mistakes happen i can literally just keep going and eventually it’s forgotten, and like hey it’s jazz! atonality and weird timings can be cool anyway lol.
the part that gets rough for me is when i decide to recorded myself. suddenly it’s not an ephemeral moment in time, it lingers and lets me overthink about where i put my finger just a bit too far forwards on the fret and the note rattles, when i pluck a string a bit too hard for a single note and the compressor pedal doesn’t reign in the volume, when i’m not fully on top of muting unplayed strings and you can hear one droning behind what’s being played, when i completely miss a note then panic and you can listen as my brain tries to pull my tempo back into the pocket. all of these things in the grand scheme are fairly minor mistakes but them being there for me to listen to and fixate on over and over kinda just makes me feel like ass (idk why tbh brain just bad??).
and that’s sorta how i feel when it comes drawing, especially when it’s a physical pencil or god forbid pen on paper, i have a “recording” of all the mistakes. even when erased i can see the impression the graphite left in the paper and know it was there and something about that bothers me and makes me wanna restart from scratch. it’s definitely an irrational thing but the fact that even practicing is inherently not ephemeral seems to make it a lot harder on me mentally if that at all makes sense? sure drawing digitally can help that to a degree, i can literally just undo or delete a file leaving not even bytes behind but for some reason it still kinda feels the same to me? it’s just kind of an odd thing to feel caught up on especially when it’s practice, i can literally throw the paper in the trash no one ever has to see it. and i’m honestly just not sure how to overcome it? like i definitely want to, art and music mean a shit load to me and it’d kinda be cool to be fairly good in making both i’m just unsure of what needs to happen to get over this hurdle on the art side of things