Two creative morals from my childhood

I’ve been creative for as long as I can remember. I don’t remember how it all started but I do have some key memories from my childhood that confirm my suspicions.

Who’s ready for storytime? Turns out they actually contain some learning points, almost like an Aesop’s fable. 

The cutting and sticking box

I used to have this blue box, called the cutting and sticking box, that contained a lot of scrap paper for making things. There were magazine scraps, coloured paper, some tissue and crepe paper, all the fun things a kid under 10 needs to make art. There was this one really large piece of blue crepe paper that I had been saving for something special. However, I remember a kid from my class came round to my house, as his younger brother was friends with my younger brother, and he used that piece of blue crepe paper. I was gutted. So gutted apparently that the memory has stayed with me almost 20 years later. 

Have I learnt from that experience? Nope. I still save things for that special thing that never comes. I have so many stickers lying unused because I worry if I use them I may regret it and want to use them in another project that they would be perfect for. Who else is the same? 

The red poppy above I painted in Reception class, aged 5, that actually went on to be displayed in my local town. According to the note on the back, it was inspired by Georgia O’Keeffe, but I’m pretty sure I never actually knew who she was until high school.

Anne Boleyn and her unfortunate face

In year six for art class, we had to paint a portrait of one of the people we were learning about in history. The exact person I chose is blurry but I have a feeling we were doing Henry VIII and his six wives and I had chosen to paint Anne Boleyn. I don’t know why but she’s my favourite of the six wives. 

I was really proud of my painting until it came to the face. I just couldn’t get it right and in haste, I decided to paint over it and start again. Unfortunately, the peachy skin tone didn’t quite cover the black I had used previously and it was a mess. I was heartbroken. No matter how much more paint I added it couldn’t fix the problematic skin tone and I gave up. All the paintings got hung up on the wall for weeks, if not months, and Anne Boleyn and her poor face stared at me the entire time. I should’ve just painted her without her head, a cute post-execution shot.

Do I still struggle with faces and continue to work on projects trying to ‘fix them’ and instead make them worse? Why yes I do. I am getting better at leaving projects at ‘done’ instead of trying and retrying to get things to be perfect, but it’s still a real problem. 

I did in exchange have some excellent happy creative memories from my childhood, but obviously they don’t really have hearty teaching moments haha. The moral of these two creative childhood stories? Stop waiting for perfect, don’t wait to use the stickers or continuously rework a piece when it’s clearly done. 

- Sophie

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