Why You Should Make Art (Even if it's Bad)

A lot of the work I do is messy, awkward, or just plain bad. But that is exactly why I paint. Making art, even when it doesn’t turn out, is valuable in ways that success cannot teach.

Art is a Practice of Attention

When you sit down with a brush or a pencil, you’re committing to looking, noticing, and responding. You notice the curve of a shadow, the way a color shifts when you mix it, or the weight of a line across a page. These things don’t always produce a “finished” painting, but they train your eye, your hand, and your mind. The act of making becomes an education in observation and thought.

Some of my favorite artists are ones whose early work looks uncertain, awkward, or experimental. Philip Guston, for instance, spent decades moving through abstraction before developing the cartoonish figurative work he is known for. His paintings are full of tension and contradiction, but they are alive because he allowed himself to explore, to fail, to try ideas that might not work. Making “bad” art is a way to discover what matters to you and what your own voice sounds like.

Painting as Thinking

Making art is also a form of thinking. When you put marks on a canvas, you are externalizing ideas, feelings, and observations. Even mistakes become data. They show what works, what doesn’t, and what you might try differently next time. This iterative process of repeating, experimenting, and correcting is how painters develop skill and style. In a sense, every “bad” painting is a step toward understanding yourself as an artist.

There is also freedom in letting go of expectations. If you only make art that looks good to others or to yourself, you limit experimentation. You stop taking risks. The Japanese concept of wabi-sabi celebrates imperfection, asymmetry, and transience, reminding us that beauty often lives in the unpolished and the flawed. When you allow yourself to make imperfect work, you unlock spontaneity and surprise. You create space for discovery, and that discovery often leads to unexpected breakthroughs.

Making Art for Yourself

Art doesn’t have to be for anyone else. Many of the most meaningful paintings, sketches, or objects are ones no one sees. Making art privately allows you to explore ideas and feelings safely, without judgment. This practice develops confidence, curiosity, and a willingness to experiment that eventually shows up in your more polished work. It’s a kind of training ground, where risk and failure are the primary teachers.

The Practical Value of “Bad” Art

Even from a practical standpoint, making “bad” art is essential. Every time you paint, you build muscle memory, improve your color mixing, refine your composition skills, and understand how materials behave. These lessons cannot be learned theoretically or by looking at other artists’ work alone. They are embodied, discovered through touch, observation, and repeated action.

In the end, the value of making art lies not in the final product but in the process. Painting is a way to slow down, to notice, to think, to feel, and to move your body in concert with your perception. It trains your eye, clarifies your thinking, and even reshapes the way you experience the world around you. You don’t need a gallery or a market to justify it. You just need to begin.

So make art, even if it’s bad. Make art that is awkward, incomplete, or ugly. Allow yourself to explore and to fail. That failure is not wasted. It is part of the discovery, part of the training, part of the adventure of seeing and being seen. Every “bad” painting brings you closer to understanding what you want to say, how you want to say it, and why you paint at all.