I was really upset this morning that after quite a bit of preparatory and layout work on my #Letter365 piece I messed it up. I accidentally damaged the piece in a way I could not remedy. I remember as a child at school being upset once when I spilt paint on an almost completed painting – one that was going to be entered in a competition, It was a painting of a couple of children and a dog playing. My teacher, a wise woman, suggested that I could turn that spill into a tree trunk. It made it a better painting too. I didn’t win the competition. But today’s issue wasn’t one of those things where you can make the mistake into something else. I had just messed it up!

I had other things to attend to and it was quite a lot later that I returned to teh studio to decide what to do. When I looked at the morning’s piece I realised it was rubbish. I had been trying to shoehorn an idea that might work on a larger scale in a different medium into #Letter365. You could say that i was using #Letter365 as a sandbox, being lazy and trying something out rather than concentrating on making a good artwork for the project.

I then went on to make something rather nice, much more in keeping with the nature of the project. And of course it all came together with ease because I wasn’t trying to force it. Even though it required patience, care and precision I didn’t mess it up in any way: it was the right thing.

So although I  was upset and frustrated this morning I am now pleased that I messed up, otherwise I would have wasted even more time on something that was never going to work in that format.