Why You Should Finish the Sculpture and STOP Leaving Work Half Done

How many of you have half finished things sitting around your studio? Or maybe I’m the only one. I know for a fact I’m not after our live FaceBook get together in the 2018 Polymer Clay Challenge Group earlier in the month, in fact many of us laughed about it together. Why? Because we all have half finished, somewhat started, ‘almost right’, or ‘not quite there yet’ pieces sitting around our studios. That has got to stop, for each of us. And this is the year to finish the sculpture!

What Finished Sculpture?

We laughed and joked about my jar of heads in the Challenge Group. Many of you saw these as weird heads without bodies. Yet I saw them as what they were … practice. But it brought up a good question and a great point, do we finish the sculpture?

The main goal of the 2018 Polymer Clay Challenge is not only to get you into the studio but to get you to start and finish one piece each and every week. (This is about the point in the live broadcast where everyone began to laugh at me…) It’s rarely starting a piece that we struggle with. It’s the finishing.

Why is it so hard for us to finish something? Here’s the biggest reasons most of us have trouble making it to the finish line:

We get sidetracked. *SQUIRREL; Shiny thing; COOL!*
We spend so much time on the “main portions” that we exert so much energy and either get tired or bored along the way.
We hurry, take short cuts, and end up not liking the “almost finished” piece so we abandon it somewhere midstream.
But it’s not perfect … yet.
If I only had _______ supply. *Runs to Amazon. Add to cart. Checkout. Wait….*
If I only had _______ tool. *Spends hours scouring internet for perfect tool.*
We compare our work to someone else, decide we fall short and give up.

Finish the Sculpture Already

Here’s what you must learn, right this very minute. I hope you’re writing this down because it’s that very important …

Perfect does not exist. Even the masters find faults in their work or things they wish they had done differently. That is the essence and the process of art. The difference between them and you is they finish things. *wink*
Done is better than undone. Imagine what you will learn about yourself and your art by finishing that piece. Okay, so maybe you did screw up the eyes, or make the hands too big. But look what you learned to improve on for next time. If you didn’t finish the sculpture you would not know those things!
Good enough is okay. Everyone is learning. And if you are a wise enough person, you too will know that we all should be in the process of learning and growth every single day. Very few people in the world can claim mastery over any one material or art form, indeed that is a very rare gift. So for today and for your art, let your finished sculpture be good enough.
Don’t stress out striving for a level of achievement that doesn’t exist. You are you. Period. End of story. There are no other “you’s” in the world. This also means that no one can achieve what you can. Therefore, no one will ever make the sculpture you are working on right now, like you will. But in order for that to happen, you have to finish it. Your achievement is your own and no one else’s. So who are you trying to beat?
Who’s grading you anyway? Unless you are striving to get into a high end gallery (and congrats to you if you are) there’s no one grading your work. The idea is that you are working toward bettering yourself and your art with each and every piece you make. Your constant evolution will become apparent the more you create.