May 9, 2011

Doubt In The Midst Of A Creative Mess

Yesterday I had a moment of panic while painting the 16'x10' set.  I had to call Kim to explain the mess I was in.  I needed to talk to her to get some comfort.  I called her like a kid needing some reassurance.  I was sitting in front of a huge scribbled mess and thoughts like these were swinging in my head:
  1. Professionals sketch and draw before attempting something like this.  They know what they are going to do before they do it.
  2. How can you expect it *just to work itself out*?
  3. This is a disaster and I don't have time to erase it
  4. Why didn't you just stick to the small semblance of a plan you had?
  5. What made you think you could just get in the spirit of Van Gogh and "throw some paint"?  Van Gogh didn't throw paint.  He painted.
  6. This isn't working
  7. This is really bad.  Really bad.
  8. Looks like a kid with an over-dose of Ritalin had a hey day with paint... and his drunk grandpa was trying to help here and there... and then some wild monkeys grabbed paint brushes
  9. How am I going to fix this?
  10. Why didn't I just plan it out?
  11. It's going to scare people
  12. Everything you do is a mess
  13. NASA should fire you
  14. You need process
  15. You are a crazed madman
  16. You need to start going to meetings and become part of planning things out
  17. You are too old for this nonsense
  18. You are unprofessional
  19. Real people know what they are doing and execute with precision
  20. Why do you take on this "creative persona".  What you really are is a slob that doesn't want anybody telling you what to do.
  21. Who are you kidding?  You can't get lucky forever. 
  22. If somebody saw me right now with this painting, I'd be so embarrassed.  How am I going to get it to a point today so that tomorrow they don't see this???
  23. I even heard "Billy Blazes" from the Rescue Heroes cartoon say, "Stick to the plan.  Always stick to the plan.  We stick to the plan."
 Somehow, in anxious terror, I kept at it.  I fell back to more of a tonal plan of the original idea.  Then the scribbles and colors began to do what I wanted them to - they began to pulse with energy.  The field mellowed.  The trees began to lean over.  The ivy popped out of the shadows.  The light began to dance off the water and blend into the stage.

But really, what a mess.  But somehow, in the end, it's going to look like a sedate scene from an English Manor.  That's funny.

5 comments:

Robert said...

Keith - What you described in this post and the next is what often happens to me with a new mechanical design. It used to cause so much stress, but somehow things/problems would always get worked out if I kept at it. It has happened so often now that I cautiously "expect" problems to get worked out over time. Glad everything worked out for you.

Keith said...

Robert - Thanks.

Keith said...

It would be fun to get your opinions on "process" in mechanical design. I'm sure you guys have a fairly rigorous process for some things. I had to attend a week long class on CMMI where the teacher began with the question, "Did Picasso have a process?" The answer was supposed to be "Yes. Of course! And Picasso optimized his process! He would have loved CMMI!" I think I argued with the guy for an entire week. BTW, I am not against process, process control and all that. I think that can be creative. Maybe it's something about the managerial measurement of ideation or something. I'm sure I'm wrong too if you were to match what I say with the strict definitions in CMMI.

Robert said...

For me, the rigor in mechanical design is just continuing to work on a solution until all of the details are worked out. Many times it is like running into a brick wall over and over until somehow I get through it (only sometimes to find another brick wall). It is not really a defined process for me. I think you need more of a process when many people are working on the same design. Most of what I do is alone, then my work gets critqued by a team. This works well for me. Most of what I am doing in mechanical design is identifying constraints and variables (geometric variables, material property variables; mechanical, thermal, and acoustic constraints), then iterating on the variables while reviewing the responses so as to stay within my constraints, then optimizing. Basically it is multi-variable optimization, where most of the variables are not continuous.

Keith said...

You sound like an engineer I'd support. I do simulation. Engineers simulate a system by writing math models and do monte carlo analysis of the systems variables/constraints. Some engineers are "controls" guys and understand this more. For a tutorial, I wrote an optimization deal based on a simplex method. Neat stuff. Most of the time, I'm not having that much fun though.