painting people's house
“ … I probably need to explain once again why I don't stay long on company-owned works. It's as simple as this -- if I don't own it, I'm not going to spend my life on it.
“Or, if you like: you can only paint someone else's house for so long before you start thinking that it might be nice to own your own house one day.
“I'm okay with painting other people's houses for short periods, because I'm good at it and it pays well and on nice days it's fun. But I never ever confuse painting a house for owning that house. And if I spent every waking hour painting other people's houses, I wouldn't be able to build houses of my own.
“The more creators who only took on housepainting as a part-time gig, the healthier this medium would be.” – warren ellis
Which made me think about the work we do in the agency.
Client comes to us and tells us to paint their house.
Make it look pretty!
Make it red!
Make it blue!
Make it look bigger and bigger!
Make it look new and improved!
And sometimes, we do forget that we don’t own the house and we try to renovate everything or make a room for ourselves. (I’m guilty of that sometimes.)
It's also funny how sometimes client lets you get away with the most creative way of painting the house, but then requests, “Can you paint that doorknob pink?” -- and it just kills you because it wasn’t part of your plan. It wasn’t part of the color scheme you had in mind.
There are creatives who see the work as “just another paint job”. Paint it and get it over with.
There are creatives who believe that they are about to paint the next Sistine Chapel.
There are creatives who get the job done and do it great. They take a step back to look at the house and say, “Good job.” They take their break and wait for the next job to come in.
“ … I probably need to explain once again why I don't stay long on company-owned works. It's as simple as this -- if I don't own it, I'm not going to spend my life on it.
“Or, if you like: you can only paint someone else's house for so long before you start thinking that it might be nice to own your own house one day.
“I'm okay with painting other people's houses for short periods, because I'm good at it and it pays well and on nice days it's fun. But I never ever confuse painting a house for owning that house. And if I spent every waking hour painting other people's houses, I wouldn't be able to build houses of my own.
“The more creators who only took on housepainting as a part-time gig, the healthier this medium would be.” – warren ellis
Which made me think about the work we do in the agency.
Client comes to us and tells us to paint their house.
Make it look pretty!
Make it red!
Make it blue!
Make it look bigger and bigger!
Make it look new and improved!
And sometimes, we do forget that we don’t own the house and we try to renovate everything or make a room for ourselves. (I’m guilty of that sometimes.)
It's also funny how sometimes client lets you get away with the most creative way of painting the house, but then requests, “Can you paint that doorknob pink?” -- and it just kills you because it wasn’t part of your plan. It wasn’t part of the color scheme you had in mind.
There are creatives who see the work as “just another paint job”. Paint it and get it over with.
There are creatives who believe that they are about to paint the next Sistine Chapel.
There are creatives who get the job done and do it great. They take a step back to look at the house and say, “Good job.” They take their break and wait for the next job to come in.
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