Today I wanted to share the story of this custom creation I did a couple of months ago.
A lovely lady sent me an email wondering if I could paint her bunny on a jacket. She sent me through some photos and as we spoke about it, it became clear that this little guy was her baby!!!! She had a very specific idea, so I sketched it all out and sent her the drawing to approve. She loved how I had pieced all her ideas together, so I got to work painting it!!!
This one ended up taking about 4 weeks in total as I made the mistake of starting to work on it on a day I was feeling pretty tired and stressed. Unfortunately, the first attempt just did not come out right as I messed up the proportions and it kind of ended up looking like a rat.... no point lying about it!!! It just really didn't work.... so, I got to work again a few days later when the sting from messing it up had moved out of my body!!!
She was so touched that I had actually painted two jackets and taken double the amount of time I usually do to make it as perfect as I possibly could!
Here it is!
As much as I didn't really want to share this story I feel like its super important for other artists to hear.... we are not machines!!!!!!! We are trying to bring something from our heads (or even harder- somebody else's head!) into this world. If your not focused/ have other things are racing through your mind, maybe your tired, or in my case just completely over worked at that particular time, then you are not going to do your best work and chances are your going to spend extra time either trying to fix your mistakes or need to totally start from scratch (like I needed to in this case). Better off to give yourself a day moving a little slower, or get a chunk of things checked off your to-do list so you have a clear mind to paint properly.
It sucks, but its an important lesson! And in the end I was 100% happy with the way the piece turned out and the customer was beyond thrilled which is what matters at the end of the day with custom work!
I hope this story makes others feel its alright to mess up sometimes!!! The important thing is the end result, and sometimes we just need to give ourselves a little extra kindness to get there.
