When results fall short of the inspiration it can be deflating, but that is due to the natural (unrealistic) tendency to expect the desired outcome on the initial attempt.
Failure is a fundamental component of success, almost a requisite, just as it ever was. Riding a bike or learning to skate didn’t come without a lesson on how not to do it.
Failure leads to understanding. Understanding failure leads to success.
You weren’t born knowing how. "You have to be a caterpillar before you can be a butterfly."
Tripping over your ignorance is just a step on the journey. Embrace the failures, they are your teacher.
The real failure is telling yourself that “I can’t do this”.
“Argue your limitations, and sure enough - they are yours!”
I’m very hands on with projects and still am trying to get the digital workflow process down, but it does help. I’ve had the Silhouette Cameo for five months and have only made use of a little bit of the potential. I’m sure I could be learning so much more, but really don’t have any specific needs that I want to fulfill with the Cameo.
I would say that YouTube videos are the number one inspiration at the moment. A well-crafted video that explains the steps and “cons” me into thinking I can do something are really powerful. Like the Mathias Wandel bandsaw: just started with a video.
@Jules’s tutorials are inspiring to me and may force me to hook up a second monitor finally. I know I will be doing a lot off tutorial following in the months to come.
Agreed. Also, I don’t know what I would do with myself if I only had one monitor! I was extremely happy when I arrived at my first day of work and found that I had multiple monitors!
Also, a line from a friend about 35 years ago: “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.” Don’t let the fact that the first (and second and third and nth) attempts are going to suck discourage you, as long as you’re accomplishing something.
I’ve accepted, for example, that I have no aesthetic ability to speak of. That’s why I design in openscad, and all my parts are ugly. But some of them do indeed perform useful functions, and that’s mostly good enough for me. Same with the GF: if anything I make is pretty, that will be a bonus, but it’s not expected.
“I didn’t fail, I found 2,000 ways how not to make a light bulb; I only need to find one way to make it work.” Benjamin Gates (a.k.a. Nicolas Cage) in National Treasure
One of my art professors had a friend who studied art as it pertains to child development. I think she was a psychologist of some sort. Anyway, according to her, most kids stop drawing when they get to a stage (usually around 11 or 12) when what they want to draw and what they can draw are different. Exactly what you’re saying, they see the flaw in their work and give up. You just have to wait for your skills to catch up to your imagination. I mean, you’re probably never as good as you want to be, but you get much, much closer with practice. Lots and lots of practice.
My niece gives up for just about everything except drawing. She’s 12, but she’s devouring YouTube and spending a hefty chunk of that time watching “how to draw” videos. We tried to keep her off the computer all the time, but if she’s actually using it to improve her skills, we can’t say too much.
But as a simple example of her “giving up” she would rather not eat than make herself a sandwich.
That was the age my son almost quit drawing. Their class was supposed to draw a pair of sneakers from a display at the front of the class. His sneaker drawing did not make the art show.
But he had 4 sneaker drawings in the art show.
We had to explain the whole thing about teacher subjectivity and how sometimes they let their personal feelings color their judgement (she wasn’t his biggest fan - he liked to draw the things he wanted, not necessarily limited to the things she wanted).
She never knew he drew the sneakers for more than half the kids in class
Today he does flash art - all that stuff that you see inked on people. He draws the masters and individual tattoo artists copy them onto people. He has books of his stuff out there. Not exactly the art career his mother envisioned but it pays his bills
There is a voice in the back of my head telling me I should delve into the Arduino world.
I suspect a project to arise from the laser that will require it of me.
I have that voice as well, but in the end I think “but what would I make with it?” It’s a cool idea being able to have a micro-controller to program with whatever input and output devices we can think of… but I just haven’t had any inspiration for an actual idea that I want to bring to life. Slows down my diving headlong into the hobby, but doesn’t remove it completely.
