Sharing my bad art

No filter, straight outta the drafts folder

Author

Katelen Dusek
September 17, 2024

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Hello! This post is inspired by today’s morning page:

📝 Saturday, September 14, 2024

Here’s the thing: I don’t want to write my newsletter.

Why?

  • It takes a long time. Longer than I expected. Like, a whole afternoon.

  • It involves sitting at a computer and doing deep creative work, which is what I do all week (I have some big, mentally taxing projects looming at my full time job)

  • I don’t feel passionate about a topic right now

    • I’m overthinking the brand - want to diversify beyond tech, which I think is totally fine. But that requires more work.

…or does it?

If I changed my overall message every time I felt like it, I’d never get anything published.

I need to focus on momentum, not what’s in my Instagram bio. Frankly, no one cares what’s in my bio. Attention will be grabbed when I hit Publish. And the more I hit Publish, the more I find my groove.

tl;dr - lower the bar.

Got it.

I feel a really loud calling to share creative projects, but let so much self-inflicted pressure get in the way. My interests are fleeting - I can be in love with a hobby one day, and completely disgusted with it the next. If you experience this, then you know how tough it can be to consistently put yourself out there, let alone explain what you do at the annual family gathering.

I don’t have the answers to remedy this, but my hope is that I can help one person feel less alone when they look at their pile of “not good enough” drafts.

All that being said, here’s some bad* art I made recently:

I painted a ton as a kid/teenager. I randomly picked it up again this week, and I forgot how fun it was.

If these next pictures reveal anything, it’s that I need to clean my iPad screen.

I don’t know why a dragon is on a pen. I think I was going to add more storybook-type stuff.

Was I…imagining Taylor Swift as a plant? You can cringe and/or laugh out loud - I did both.

A friend suggested I make a sticker that says “more plants, less pants”. This is as far as I got.

Okay this one’s cute though?! I think I wanted to make this a sticker for my Etsy shop, but just felt like something was wrong with it.

I think this was a sweatshirt idea, also for Etsy. It didn’t feel “worthy” of sharing for some reason.

A spur-of-the-moment video that I never edited. It’s sat so long now that I may not be able to hype myself up to finish it.

*To be clear: This is not an invitation for feedback on the above art. This is not a comparison game. This is not an attempt to fish for compliments or whatever. (Ask my brother, I’m definitely not a fisherman. The bait is disgusting.)

The point is: We should be okay (dare I say, proud) to produce sub-par (or maybe par! Sometimes we surprise ourselves) work. Simply for the sake of creating. Not everything has to be shared or monetized, and also sometimes it’s fun to share art just for the sake of sharing. Not in a SEO-ified, <60 second video with all the correct hashtags and posting time. Just hit Post, for shits and giggles.

📺 I’ll leave you with a quick clip from an interview with my favorite rapping ginger, Mr. Ed Sheeran, about turning on the faucet of creativity.

Have a lovely week 😊 

Katelen

P.S. What questions or topics do you want to see in the newsletter? Hit reply or leave a comment and let me know! 💬

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