Make Bad Art on Purpose (It’s the Only Way to Get Good)

In today's art tutorial we're making a mess, painting flowers and talking about the bad art that comes before the good. Also I'm sharing my brand new postcards. Hi friends welcome my name is Shada Campbell and look who's back it's her the flower color guide. My mom started a trend on the internet when she gave me this book for Christmas like eight nine years ago because so many artists I follow now use this as a reference material and I like to think that it was all because of my mom. Anyway so we're using a reference photo we're using the Shada Campbell watercolor set which I do think has an excellent color selection and you can purchase it on amazon.com but the point of today is not any specific color it's not any specific supply although all my favorite supplies are linked in the video description. The point of this video this project is to make a mess and make something a little weird a little bad even and just free ourselves up to do that because that is a very very tricky thing to do. So you're going to want to start with watercolors I'm working in my favorite sketchbook remember supplies are linked in the description and I have my velvet touch brush here blah blah blah it's not about that okay grab a reference photo if you have the color guide great if you you know just go on google images that's good too pick a flower and then you know have the image sitting there and try to represent that flower but in a fun playful kind of way and that's what I'm doing here I'm painting larger than I'm usually comfortable I'm making the colors a little more interesting I've mixed sap green with lots of burnt umber to give me a really warm green and I'm just looking at the china aster that was the flower I picked uh but it's not really about that and I'm trying to show you know what the leaves look like and and show the sort of general shape of the flower but I'm trying to do it in a sort of messy way that just says I'm having fun in my sketchbook and I wanted to ask you how do you get over the fear of making bad art how do you let yourself go and just play with the materials how do you just make a mess because I find it so difficult to do that and it's something that I've been thinking a lot about this year so comment and please uh let me know because I think it would just be make for a great discussion and speaking of discussion this winter and this whole year really 2025 I've really been pushing myself out of my comfort zone and you will be surprised to hear it's been very uncomfortable out there out of my comfort zone it's just not a comfy place to be y'all and so if you follow me on instagram you might have seen me talking about creating this series of postcards I've worked on my architectural illustration a lot and I wanted to do a series of postcards of my hometown of Stratford Ontario because it's a tourist town and I haven't seen anything like illustrated postcards in the shop so I thought it'd be fun to make them of course I don't really do architectural illustrations so I had to do a lot a lot of practice paintings and not only was it uncomfortable to sort of paint something and be like oh that's not what I was going for but I just had this horrible sense of wasting time wasting my time wasting my husband's time you know if I had child care that day I remember one day my mom came over to spend the day with sully that's my four-year-old he's four that's crazy he just had a birthday anyways my mom was babysitting and I spent the whole day painting and at the end of the day I didn't like what I had created and it just oh like when I tell you that I was upset annoyed those words don't even cover it like I just felt so down I'm wasting time I'm not painting the way I want I can't capture the style that I want to and in those moments it doesn't really matter if you tell yourself okay but you just got to keep practicing all practice is good like it just it doesn't feel good to make art that you're not happy with I think letting I think for me sitting with the feeling like yeah that was really crap like that just wasn't a good day it didn't feel good to work really hard on a painting only to be like that's not really the thing um that was like sort of helpful and then to just the most helpful thing was just to keep going to get back on the horse the next day and paint some more and maybe it gets a little better but sometimes it doesn't but the next day you do it again that's what worked for me and I just kept trying and eventually I was able to come up with a series of four postcards that I really love and was really really proud of and I had way more than four paintings that didn't make it in there was four winners and there was probably 10 uh we'll call them not winners and I'll show you those the final postcards at the end of the video um but yeah pushing myself this winter this spring has been a theme I've been painting more animals more people and even though some of those subjects I've taken a really playful approach it's still been a little bit scary and uncomfortable so comment below if you're there as well I think with art a lot of us are going through it so let me get back to what we're doing here what I'm doing I picked two flowers the china aster and the beautiful anemone and I just did a really messy watercolor when it comes to simplifying forms watercolor is a great medium for that you can kind of just put down some messy shapes and then let it dry come back in with a colored pencil or marker and those mediums are great for adding the detail so that's what we're doing here it's a really comfortable way I think to experiment because you get to be messy with your paint which a lot of us are not as comfortable with a paintbrush in our hand and then you get to play um and add detail with the pencil or marker which most of us are more comfortable with a pencil because we grow up holding a pen and pencil and so the idea that you can still be comfortable and yet play and make a mess I think that's what I like about this sketchbook practice so I hope you'll give it a try you obviously do not have to do the same flowers or use the same colors um just do the colors and the flowers that speak to you for this one I wanted to do a background color so I just did like a messy blue you could lay the blue down first instead of going around the flowers and then I felt like it needed red and I felt like it needed darker blue so we're just getting very I mean it looks a little childish but that's kind of the point I think so have fun with this and definitely comment below and let me know what do you do when if when you have like the the horror of creating bad work do you sit with it do you just keep pushing through do you beat yourself up or are you just like hey that's okay like it's just another fun page in the sketchbook or are you normal and do you oh gosh I can't wait to read these comments thank you for being here this week friends and for doing something a little different with me these are the postcards they are here I just got them in the mail and I've already found a bunch of businesses in my hometown to stock them so exciting uh one last thing I didn't think there was a natural Patreon bonus material to give this week so if you recall the June bonus video was the animals I got so many uh requests to do a little coloring page slash reference image so that's what's up watch that and and get the coloring page thank you for being here I will see you soon with a new tutorial