Art can help express your emotions while making the viewer feel something. Are there “bad emotions”? Bad example. People demonize emotions all the time. People just take what they don’t deem as perfect and label it “bad”, even if it’s not. Imperfect doesn’t equal bad, it’s just uncomfortable or not socially acceptable or not visually appealing to you. 

Bad art isn’t bad.

Bad art is just a different way of expressing yourself that doesn’t fit the status quo.

Making art will always be unique to you because you are creating something only you can. Everyone has their own lens of life: worldviews, biases, experiences,  and emotions making all art individual and special.. The art that comes out the other side of creativity will always be unique, no matter if you find it visually appealing or not. 

Experiment. Use things you wouldn’t normally use, do things you wouldn’t normally try, such as new techniques, colors, mediums, materials - or even all of the above. This develops your unique personal voice, your raw unedited style that is personally authentic and unique to only you.

Art is also therapy. The emotions and experiences that build up inside of us need a way out, whether it’s through our actions, expressions, or speech. If expressing your thoughts and emotions is difficult, art can help those emotions make their way out. The movement, color, words, and all of the different types of mediums that art embodies can help with emotional expression. When creating, you sometimes reach a “flow” state which is a kind of meditation. So if breathing deeply and counting ten red things in the room aren’t doing it for you, there’s always art. Therapeutic art can be integral to processing. “Art is how we cope with being human (The Cozy Creative)”.

Art is a universal language because of the emotions it can evoke. If you feel trapped in life and can’t express yourself through words or actions the way you want, art can provide you with a language of freedom. Freedom to create and feel and express in ways that weren’t possible before. 

Creativity is all around you and art is more than paint and a paintbrush. It’s the colors you wear, the way your words flow together when speaking. It's in the way you cook and the way you move. None of those actions can be bad, inherently. If we want to use the “bad” scale, something is only truly bad if it’s meant to cause harm to another. We can do bad things with art, with language, with words - but these things can’t be inherently bad, so how can there be bad creativity and bad art?

Outside pressure to be perfect or to do things that may be perceived as “normal” prevents us from doing the weird art, the art that doesn’t live up to the impossible standard you have in your head. External and internal barriers make it hard to give ourselves the permission to create bad art. If you have the compulsion to create bad and weird art, don’t shut that down because you think it isn’t “worth it”. Do the art for yourself. Do it without thinking if it’s going to resonate with anyone. It doesn’t need to resonate with anyone but yourself. It only matters that it resonates with you. Art doesn’t need to have a purpose. Sometimes purpose isn’t something that we start out with, it shows up while we’re creating. 

It lets your inner child loose. People describe baby steps as small, tentative steps into the water, but in reality, they are giant leaps made into the unknown. Take the jump to make the art without knowing where you will land or what you will create. Children don’t care if it’s “good” or not, they just freely create the beauty they see around them and that their imaginations dream up. They don’t care about making it perfect or making mistakes, they just do. Be free to just put a brush to canvas, hand to clay, artist to medium and just create. 

Mistakes are just a stepping stone to good things. Learning how not to do something is just as important as learning how to do the thing. Edison learned 10,000 ways how NOT to make a lightbulb, for goodness sakes. As you make art it may not feel exactly “right”  to you but you are refining your creative style and artistic eye to find what resonates with you. “If you can let go of rigid rules about how something should look, you are more likely to take risks, explore new ideas and push yourself to create something new, interesting and exciting (Kore Sage Art).” It’s better to express yourself authentically than trying to make your art look visually appealing to everyone who looks at it. I once heard someone say “You could be the juiciest peach in the world and there will still be someone who doesn’t like peaches.”

It’s okay to have fun while creating. Creating art does not have to match perfectly with what you have in your head. Sometimes it’s about the journey, not the destination. “Every artist has thousands of bad drawings in them and the only way to get rid of them is to draw them out (Chuck Jones).” 

The only way to improve is to fail over and over again. Learn how to let loose and have fun with art. You do not have to be perfect at your passions and hobbies for them to be enjoyable and valuable. Making bad art doesn’t mean you’re wasting the time you could be making “good” art. Not having any expectations and not restricting yourself can help to generate ideas. Showing up for yourself is what makes it important and “good”.

You have to be willing to take risks and be uncomfortable to make art fun. You have to use the good and bad art supplies in equal measure. You have to leave behind the perfectionism and tell it to sit its ass down, you’re creating right now and it can come back later. It’s not cringey to do something badly, it’s cringey when people judge others for not always being a master at something they are trying for the first time. Stop trying to prevent mistakes before they even happen. It stifles you, freezes you, hinders your movements because you’re afraid of making mistakes. Make the ugly art ON PURPOSE! All of a sudden, you are free and creating better things because you’re letting yourself be open to whatever this piece could be, not just what you’re trying to force it to become. “‘Mistakes’ Are Often More Interesting Than Intentions (Jenna Rainey)”. Because the goal isn’t perfection anymore, the inner critic deep inside has less to argue with you about, making it get quieter and quieter. Aim for curiosity, not beauty. Aim for learning, not knowing. 

No one can say art is perfect. There is no perfect art. What measurements are we critiquing it by? How do we know it’s perfect? We don’t and we can’t. And what may be perfect for one person may not be perfect for another. Why are we aiming for perfection anyway?

Aim to make more mistakes. “Mistakes can be ugly, beautiful, interesting, terrible, accidental, intentional, infuriating and insightful (Lydia Makepeace).” So why not embrace them instead of running away from them. So make bad art. Maybe it’s actually good.