Happy Accidents

A quick web search as I started writing this blog post led me to the discovery that “happy little accidents” was a favourite phrase of Bob Ross. It’s funny, but I have never seen an episode of “The Joy of Painting”, though I can instantly recall images of if. Pop culture is a powerful beast.

From 538.com, here’s a statistical analysis of the 381 paintings he painted during episodes of “The Joy of Painting”.

But back to the point of the blog post…happy accidents. I probably learned the phrase in art class years ago. It’s something I utterly believe in - that unplanned actions, mistakes, and failures can be turned into something better than what you originally intended. The thing is, it’s hard to plan for a happy accident - and in the moment it occurs, it’s easy to only see the accident part.

When I’m designing digitally, I have a handful of tricks to try and force happy accidents, which is important. It’s trivially easy to create pixel-perfect work in Illustrator and Photoshop. That makes it, for me, easy to fall into a trap of working too cleanly, too tied to a grid and always looking for internal alignments. It’s all to easy to make work that looks “well crafted” but that isn’t yet thought through. Applying craft too early can trick you into thinking you’re done.

It’s a different problem for me when I work in print or collage. It’s much, much easier for me to make mistakes in a physical medium because my craft isn’t as strong. I’m a better Photoshop artist than I am a printer. When I’m printing or collaging I’m simultaneously building my craft and working creatively - which can work against each other. So I’ve got to find a way to create a happy accident here and there, when my instinct is to try and print “perfectly”.

This blue shape is my favourite happy accident so far. Granted it’s nothing special in-and-of-itself, but it works for me. The shape, which is part of the letter “N” from a previous print, might be a whale. Turn it on its side and with a quick pen stroke it’s a profile, part of a speech bubble or just a shape pointing at another shape. Whichever of those you like best (or none of them), it’s a shape I wouldn't have printed on its own. It doesn't have enough “meaning” for me to decide to print it on its own. It’s an accidental shape and it’s graphically strong. Figuring out how to use it in a composition is going to force me to work with the off-center diagonal and the inconsistent blue ink. And the angles are all nearly right-angles, but none of them actually are. In Illustrator I’d probably fix that. Here I’m forced to roll with it.

Here’s to happy accidents, mis-alignments, off-center shapes, bizarre croppings and choices you’d never intentionally make - and making them work.