Thursday 12 June 2008

here again

It seems to me that whenever I have a decision to make and I have to push myself that tiny little bit more I turn to procrastination.


Like today. I was happily multi-tasking away; whilst waiting for my silk screen to dry in between stages of printing I was gluing the spine of a book. Whilst the glue was drying I was taping up the screen ready to print. Then when the screen was drying again I was gluing on endpapers, trimming the edges. You get the idea...

But then I came to a tricky decision; what colour to print the legs? Yesterday I tried three different colours and they all looked rubbish (I feel I have no clue when it comes to colour, I find it very hard, and this is why I'm practicing...) Anyway, instead if deciding I went upstairs and fiddled about with the book for a bit until I discovered that I cut it a little off square.

Great.

Now, it would be so easy to just carry on at this moment. To think 'oh well, its only a little problem, it wont make that much difference' and just put it to the back of my mind. But I'm trying to stop my self doing this. Because I'm beginning to realise that its these little mistakes that accumulate and end up causing a bigger problem that spoils the whole book. I want to get better at book binding (and box making, and screen printing and the rest...) and I think the first step is recognising this feeling and putting whatever is wrong with the thing I'm making right. Now.


So. The book is a little bit off square. I cut the cover board and then get annoyed when it doesn't fit. I'm going down the wrong road there... but I can't seem to push myself to sort it out, I find myself at the computer. Procrastinating.

I did find this interesting essay though... structured procrastination

Hmmm.

3 comments:

tulibri said...

Sounds so familiar :) Interesting article and a good strategy - turn your weakness into virtue. I don't really believe in self-accusation anyway ;-I

BTW, regarding colours, there's a book about colour theory by Johannes Itten with lots of excercises. Had a huge impact on my perception of colours (although I did work myself through this in a colour field painting class, a better way for structured procrastinators ;-)

Jessica said...

I am currently procrastinating myself...I do like the idea of structured procrastination I am going to have to try that. As for the leg color, I rather like the pink.

Sarah said...

Thanks Tulibri, I'll check out that book :)