Tension between discovery and intentional creation

Especially when inexperienced with a medium, it can be difficult to pick which creative ideas to pursue.

If you just let the medium guide you, you don’t fight your tools, and may discover unexpected ideas. But you may be aimless and directionless.

If you pick intentionally, you may have picked badly and try to use your tools for something they’re not particularly good at. Plus, if you are new to the medium, it seems more likely that you’ll be excited by trivial things. But critically, intentionality seems like a prerequisite for “true art.” Is this an illusion?

Maybe it’s helpful to change this balance over time as skill increases?

However, it seems like late-stage craftspeople may need discovery to inject fresh ideas. Maybe the line should be a sine wave.