Rough Drafts Only

February’s prompt in The Art Lab was Vitruvian Man by Leonardo Da Vinci. It was a meaty prompt that gave us fodder for rich conversation and interpretation. During our initial zoom, the notion of perfection came up. Vitruvian Man’s geometrically sound proportions and ability to fit into a circle and square with the navel being the center, points to this man’s representation as some sort of ideal.

Can Vitruvian Man be the measuring stick? Should he be? What harm does it do to have a sort of gold standard? What good can it do?

Wrestling with these questions led our conversation to the harm of perfectionism and the ways it stops us from putting certain work out into the world.

*Feb 2024 The Art Lab submission: view of the flat image*

When perfection is the standard, we will always fall short.

When perfection is the standard there is no grace.

What if, instead of viewing anything we put out as a final product, we viewed it all as rough drafts?

On our share date for February’s prompt, one of the members of The Art Lab submitted a piece he said was still a work in progress, but he wanted to share what he had. (Which was interesting, because his piece looked totally “complete” to me, but I can’t wait to see what else he does.)

For my piece, I didn’t even photograph anything new, but I used old work I had already put out into the world and reimagined it.

*view of the front and back of the folded image*

Nothing is finished. And everything is a step toward the next thing. But we can’t stand still if our goal is to reach the next thing.

We are personally never finished products. We are constantly evolving and improving, so how can we expect anything we put out into the world to be a finished product? Everything is merely a marker along the way.

When I was a kid, I would acquire things like stickers or paper to use on crafts and art, but the really special ones I would keep to use for the “perfect” time. Not surprisingly, these were the items that never got used, because turns out there is no perfect time. And the stickers that were so special got lost and the paper forgotten. They were perfect at that time because they represented ME at that time. As time passed and I changed, the special things lost their specialness and didn’t hold the same power.

Remove the guesswork so you can focus on empowering yourself.

Click on the image for the free PDF

What could I have created if I realized that the reason they were perfect wasn’t because of the items themselves, but because of who I was at that moment?

All work is like a diary entry; it’s a reflection of the here and now. It puts out into the world the questions we are wrestling with and the bits of life we are alchemizing into beauty. It’s an emblem of a moment and time and it isn’t meant to be hidden away until it’s “perfect”.

Life keeps changing and your questions will change too. Just like the special stickers, the work loses its power when it’s held on to. The diary entries are ever-evolving. The only way to continue down the path is to bless and release along the way. Each art piece is a step, a footprint indicating you were here. The bless and release of each rough draft allows forward movement to take place.

And yes, movement is scary. Sometimes it’s so much easier to stand in place and cross your fingers that better things will come to you, but the only way to see the vistas is to keep moving.

Bless and release. Step. Bless and release. Step. Bless and release.

There’s always more and better ahead as long as you keep going.