Interpretations and expectations
It appears I’m still getting into the swing of things with regular posts vs an increasing workload and I have to say the tree making is currently up 1-0 as I missed last week.
It’s funny actually, when I’m creating trees to put in the shop, it takes me less time than custom orders and I think I’ve figured out why.
When I’m creating something for the shop there’s less pressure there. Whatever I’m making has come from my own head so there’s no expectation involved apart from what I put on myself. Then it’s photographed, so the image I post online is how I see it which is sometimes more time consuming than you’d think. I can take 20 photos of something at slightly different angles and maybe one or two out of that lot will make it. I guess if you've taken a selfie or had a bad photograph taken by someone else, you'll know exactly what I’m talking about.
Self image and how you view something can be subjective. Anyway I’m getting off track here .... my point is trees that I make to add to the shop are suddenly there one day and people hopefully go “oooh, that’s nice!” or something similar.
Commissions are entirely different as I have to interpret what is in someone else’s head and that isn’t something I take lightly which is why there’s a process of talking through what the end result should ideally look like. This is the bit that I get nervous about because obviously I want to do the best I can with it and come up with something that we’re both happy with. So size, style and colours are agreed on, or I'm given free rein and I start ...... and it takes me twice as long as normal because I’m so particular with it! Then there’s the big reveal at the end when I just want to hide after I’ve sent the photos because that mean inner self critic is trying to fill my head with negatives.
I do wonder if every creative person goes through this?
On the negative side (but it’s not too negative) it causes me to work slower sometimes to get everything “just so”. On the positive though it pushes me out of my comfort zone ALL THE TIME and that is hugely important otherwise I’d stagnate and what I do would become formulaic. I have a love / hate relationship with pressure and time limits and it’s a fine line between being motivated and having a shutdown over it.
Anyway that’s my musings for this week. If you want to keep up to date with what I’ve been doing (or not doing) then you can catch me on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter through the week.
Big love
❤
