 Hey everybody, it's TJV. I wanted to create more videos on this kind of a concept where I talk about some things that are related to art and model horses, but could apply to, you know, general life things as well. So for today's video I wanted to talk about finishing projects. When you're starting out it's really easy to get discouraged. We grow up in a world, in a society where quitting is for losers, that you should never quit and you should always keep going and if you quit then you're a failure and etc etc. Now, I don't believe that. I don't believe that you're a failure if you quit, but I also believe in the context of art you should never quit. And what I mean by that is if you have a really inspiring idea and you started this really awesome inspiring project, you should never give up on it. You should never throw it away. So in my personal journey I've started a lot of projects. I have a lot of pieces in a work in progress state where they've never been finished or they're half done and I understand that and I think it's okay to start something and kind of lose insight on it or inspiration or you find something else that's more interesting and you kind of push it to the side. But I have never once in my entire model horse journey thrown anything away. Sometimes it's better to start fresh, but I also feel like most of the time you can learn more by persevering and finishing that project than you would starting over or scrapping it completely. As an artist and running a social media account, it's imperative that you have finished pieces on your page. It's imperative that you're growing constantly as an artist, creating more things, finishing art pieces. So I find it really beneficial in general as a whole being an artist to always finish your stuff and even if it isn't your favorite thing in the world or doesn't turn out the way you wanted it to, finish it, post it and sell it. That way you have learned something. You have a finished piece in your portfolio whether you want it there or not. You have a piece someone else could find much joy in and own for themselves and then you make a little bit of money on it. So I've always been really intense about that that I will not throw away pieces and there was one particular piece that I almost did scrap and his name was Oscar actually because I was chatting on a live stream once saying, I think I'm going to chuck this horse out. I don't like the paint job. I'm either going to strip him and redo him. And the people on the live stream were joking that I should have named him Oscar like the Sesame Street character who lived in the trash can. So I called him Oscar and I did end up finishing him and what I learned from finishing him was way more than what I would have learned if I would have started from scratch. And I do remember Mel Miller actually telling me this at 1.2 commenting on one of my posts that I should always finish my pieces and never scrap them and just persevere and push through and it'll be worth it on the other side. And sometimes it doesn't feel like it'll be worth it on the other side but I can assure you that that actually is quite true. I believe that that builds your portfolio as well. If you're constantly starting things and getting them to that 70% stage and then quitting and giving up on them and either putting them on the shelf or throwing them out entirely and stripping and restarting you're never going to learn. You're never going to develop the skills to create a piece and then decide, okay now I have this finished piece what can I improve for next time? What can I do better next time? And I think that that is a really important cycle so I don't believe that you should ever quit on a project. And I mean you can put a pin in it and you can leave it there for three years but always come back to it and maybe pick it up with your new learned skills later on and say well now I can tackle this and now I can create this. And so I finished countless pieces that you know I finished and been like I don't love this particular piece myself but I know someone else will love it so I list those ones for sale. Whereas there's other pieces that I will create and finish and be so enamored by that I could never possibly have the heart to sell them such as Yorgue or Basilis or Denali. Those pieces will never be sold in my collection. They are my personal heart pieces that turned out in a way that works for me aesthetically. And even if I place those pieces on the show table and the judge dislikes them and doesn't place them at all they will still be my favorite pieces and that's really important. And I also think that that's important that you should keep the pieces that mean something to you and you should love those wholeheartedly even if no one else does. Because it's your art and you created it and it means something to you and it shouldn't matter what other people think of it. It really shouldn't. It should only matter how you feel about it and if you love it at the time. And I have made sure to keep period pieces. Now I look at Finnegan and I love that custom. I love him to death. He's so awesome for what he was at the time but he's definitely not comparable to my newer works. But I will never sell him because he was the time one of my very first customs. There's a lot of pieces that I didn't personally get along with that I sold but I always always finished them. And I think if you're in that kind of headspace of my art is crap and I can't finish this because it's not going to turn out as good as someone else's or it's not going to be good enough or it won't sell for enough you are thinking about art in the wrong light. Art is a personal journey and it is a growing process and each piece you create is going to be an evolution of your art journey. You're not going to like every single thing that you make. You're going to love some of them more than others but you have to accept that and you have to treat that as a growing step and someone out there will love your art. It's imperative that you finish what you started and I can assure you you will find more joy and more fulfillment in doing that than scrapping pieces and starting over. Now I'm not saying that if you had a resin horse or a drastic custom even that you didn't love the color that you chose for it, stripping it and starting over. But don't quit on a piece of art because you don't feel like it's going to be good enough. There's also like the knowing stages of art and I don't know them off the top of my head exactly. Exciting start and then it'll go through this ugly phase where you'll be like I don't even know how this is even going to amount to anything ever. And then you go through a phase where there's a lot of uncertainty and it's near the end of the process of creating a piece. I'm not sure this is really what I was going for. I don't love how this is turning out and then you'll finish it and have kind of an epiphany at the end of wow I did that. I made that and it turned out pretty good. So you have to get through that like really tough phase and there is a middle phase that takes a long time like the really tedious steps in the process that makes it feel like you really want to give up but you have to push through that and that is the only way that you will get good and that is the only way that you will be able to create more and become better. Art really does matter unfortunately about the outcome. It doesn't matter how many work in progress pieces you have or how many bodies you have or how many resins you have it really only matters how many pieces you finish and say I finished this and whether you're finishing it to be primed or you're finishing it to be painted fully painted it needs to be finished it needs to be a fully prepped ready for paint piece or it needs to be a fully finished paint piece and I feel really strongly in this this has worked for me I have a lot of work in progress pieces that I may not finish but the ones that I choose to commit to I will always finish they may sit for a while but I will always go back to them they've sat for a while sometimes it's better for them because refine my new learn skills and redo what was not necessarily working in the first sketch if you want to paint paint but like paint the whole model paint the body paint the feet paint the eyes finish the horse seal it choose to keep it choose to sell it move on go to the next and you just keep doing that and eventually you will get there and that's where I'm at you know I make a bunch of pieces I'm always learning something and that's the thing about art as well is that you will never be done learning you will never be at like perfection optimum finished I've made it I know everything I can just like pump out art and it's perfect every time you will always be growing and you will never be at your max capacity until the day you die you will always have room to improve and you will always have room to learn so you'll never actually be fully perfected art and that can kind of make you crazy but that can also be very exciting to know that you know you're starting here and you have the entire spectrum to grow on to I would say that it's really beneficial to photograph your progress and your finished pieces as well because that sets a precedent for where you are going to grow to so when you're kind of feeling like you're doing better you can go back to your old pieces and think wow I made that within that year and I'm making this now and that's amazing keep on keeping on and make sure that you finish what you start and I promise you it'll be worth it even though it sucks and it's a struggle sometimes thank you so much for watching I hope that this can help inspire some of you to keep creating your beautiful beautiful art