Experience. Every job requires that you have it, but you can't get any if you're unable to get a job without it. And so the frustrating, endless cycle continues. I need experience so I need to get a job. I need to get a job so I need experience. On and on it goes.
But what is experience really? Experience is just the things that we go through, the things that happen to us. Every instant of our life is an experience, and something we can learn from.
With work this usually means that I take whatever jobs I can get, sometimes stretching slightly the bounds of what I'm familiar with, and taking advantage of every opportunity to learn on the job. To soak up that experience.
Behind most gigs is lots and lots of research as I teach myself how to use Illustrator, or what file types to use for different jobs. Color profiles, DPI value, vectored shapes. All these things and more I have tried to teach myself, often while actively working on the project that requires it. Then next time I know how to do it even better.
Unfortunately, I recently had a situation arise where I made a mistake, and an obvious one at that. I was hired to draw an illustration for Guide magazine of a young girl on a horse, to go alongside a story. So I read through it, did some sketches, chatted back and forth with the team, and completed the final version. I even made sure to use their page template to ensure I left enough space for the margins. Then I simply sent it off to them. Easy peasy.
Two days later they emailed me letting me know that when they sized up the image for the page it came out blurry. What!? I hurried to the original drawing, checked the settings and, sure enough, I had drawn the image way too small.
Suffice it to say I felt embarrassed and even ashamed. Thankfully, the client was gracious, saying that they would simply sharpen it up in photoshop and go with it anyway. That didn't change the fact that I felt horrible. Even when I had worked hard and made sure I was following the guidelines, I still managed to mess up. I had failed.
It took a moment, but eventually I had to remind myself that that's just a part of how things go. We work, we try, and we fail. We fail a lot. No matter how much of an expert we are, no matter how much experience we have, we are bound to make mistakes. As cliche as it is to say, the only thing we can hope for is to learn from those mistakes. Mistakes are an important part of the experience!
You can bet now I double, even triple check the size of my canvas before getting started. I won't be making that mistake again for a while yet. I learn, I grow, and I move on. On to the next knowledge-filled experience.
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