Just Make Ugly Art. It’s Fun!
Recently I found it a bit more difficult to get into art and crafts, because I always feel like there are so many other things I need to do. I don’t feel relaxed enough to sit down and make art.
But maybe that’s when it is most important. To give myself some time in the day or in the week where I just create something without a plan or to do list.
After I wrote this yesterday, I went out for a bit. When I came back Lenja (16) and Ronán (11) were sitting on the kitchen floor surrounded by lots of art & craft materials.
They had found them in a cupboard from years ago. Stickers, craft paper, glitter, stars, nail polish for little girls, stamps, etc… Some of the sticker books were still from the early 90s, when I was a child.
The two of them were just crafting, glueing and drawing.
I wanted to start doing something for work but then I remembered what I’d written that morning. So I sat down with them.
And immediately felt awkward. I didn’t know how to start.
Lenja told me to just randomly put ugly stickers on a blank page. Just create really ugly art. It’s fun.
So I did. I used teddy bear stickers, red and pink hearts, and dinosaur stickers! Some washi tape in the corner. And then I drew a big ugly water dinosaur, just copied the outlines from a sticker, and started filling it in with colour. I used these plastic twistable crayons and just kept layering colours randomly, drawing over the lines, scribbling here and there. Then using a black pen again to add dots, stars, more scribbles.
It was so much fun!
Creating ugly art on purpose is hard to explain but so good. It’s like going back to being a really young child and not having any expectations, just letting yourself waste paper, materials, time for the sole purpose of having fun and expressing yourself randomly.
I even kind of liked the end result in a way. But maybe that’s because I really didn’t expect it to be good and because I had such a good time creating it.
So I did it. I spent a blissful hour creating without purpose, while my son made bead necklaces and let my daughter paint his nails with glitter nail polish.
What would you make right now if nobody would ever see it?
