Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Quantity Produces Quality

Mice have invaded my work space.
Why 100 mice?

Because by creating a large quantity of mouse themed illustrations - I am forced to stretch in my ideas of how a mouse could be drawn and what situations a mouse might get into.

In addition, I'm reminded of a story I read years ago in the inspiring book, "Art and Fear" by David Bayles and Ted Orland:


"The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.
His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the "quantity" group: fifty pounds of pots rated an 'A', forty pounds a 'B', and so on.
Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work and learning from their mistakes the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.
So...I'm producing a quantity of mice in order to improve the quality of my mice....oh yes, and to improve my skills with ink and watercolor.

What activities have you spent hours freely doing? Aren't you pretty good at them?
What are they?
What skill would you like to get better at? Try the quantity experiment.

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