Meaningless But Beautiful: Moving Past Artistic Skill

When I initially considered the Persepolis project, I could not stop imagining Journalism, a book by cartoonist Joe Sacco which uses vivid drawings to convey the suffering of people in conflict zones like Palestine and Chechnya. As I planned my graphics, the beautiful drawings amplifying Sacco’s stories loomed over my head, a reminder that such unattainable detail could have brought significant value to my project. 

I wasted hours trying to refine my drawing skills to mimic Sacco’s, but avoided actually working on my project. Finally, I sat down and began to draw, but soon eraser shreds piled up and my frustration accrued. After an hour passed, having moved at a snail’s pace and with my agitation growing with every crooked line and garish face, I realized that I needed to relax my expectations of visual perfection and look more deeply at literary meaning in my drawings.  

Progressing through this project, I recognized the detriment of my own perfectionist mindset, which manifests itself in obsession with (even tangential) detail and determination to obviate every possible problem. While driven by a well-intentioned wish to make as few mistakes as possible, my perfectionism often cripples my ability to manage my time well, as I am usually stuck on one part of a piece for a dispreportionate amount of time, moving on only when my belated panic at the prospect of a half-filled page wins out over my particularity. 

In the future, I need to preface major assignments or projects by taking a moment to think about my overarching goals: what, ideally, should the piece convey to the reader, and what element do I need to focus on the most to accomplish that goal? I can manage my time based on these observations, spending the most time on the most important and meaningful elements (like analysis) of my piece, helping me to avoid getting caught up in minute details. 

As much as I struggled with the visual details of my Persepolis project, I experienced difficulty streamlining the aspects of the plot of my story to find a middle ground between creativity and clarity. When designing a plot, I initially decided to write about a religious youth’s  rebellion against Catholic orthodoxy. I jotted it down and moved on, but later reconsidered: did I really want to use the same absurdly generic plot as Footloose? The question answered itself, so I decided to flip it: the daughter of two liberal politicians discovers orthodox Catholicism as her father runs for President (with this, I could allude to the Clintons!)

However, when delineating this plot in cartoons, I felt obligated to invent a plethora of details to legitimize the slightly far-fetched plot. I only realized the weakness in this choice when I received feedback from my peers. Each noted the canon of my story and the importance of each visual element were somewhat unclear and confusing due to an overload of visual elements. I suddenly understood that I had, as I have many times before, skipped an important part of the creative process: approaching my story from the perspective of the reader. Had I provided myself with more constructive feedback during the Persepolis project, I may have realized the necessity of simplification, avoiding what I now recognize as a problem with my final product. This project helped me recognize that I need to work on developing my ability to objectively self-assess. 

Moving forward, I could gain from setting checkpoints throughout the project or assignment where I will take a break from working (clear my mind), then return to reread and critique (as though I am grading my own project) the content which I have produced so far, developing my self-assessment skills in the process.