The Art of Unfinished Projects

Why we start things we never finish — and why that's perfectly okay

Most of us carry a trail of unfinished projects: notebooks filled halfway, folders of sketches, code repositories that never reached production. For a long time, I thought this meant failure. But lately, I’ve come to see them differently.

Unfinished projects are not mistakes — they’re seeds of ideas, fragments of thought. Sometimes they sit dormant until we have the perspective, skill, or even the tools to breathe new life into them. And today, with the way digital tools and storytelling evolve, we can revisit those fragments and see them afresh.

I’ve been experimenting with this myself — returning to old sketches from different periods of my life, and finishing them in new ways. They’ve become time capsules: each piece rooted in a place, a mood, a stage of searching.

Here are three of them.

1. Thailand: Lizards and Energy Drinks

When I lived in Thailand for a year, I was re-learning what I wanted to do in life. That year was filled with sketching, experimenting, relearning visual art. One of the threads I followed was lizards — ordinary, everyday creatures I saw often.

In my drawings, they took on surreal qualities, appearing in sci-fi or dreamlike settings. One unfinished sketch I finally brought to completion shows a monitor lizard drinking a radioactive energy drink — a nod to the small bottles of Krating Daeng I constantly saw in Thai shops and streets.

It’s maybe playful, absurd, and slightly mutated — much like the experimental energy of that year itself.

2. India: Fire Against Cruelty

Traveling in India, I was struck by the explosion of color and the playfulness of children in the streets. But beneath that joy, I kept thinking about the harshness of the world they inevitably face.

The image that came to me was of a schoolgirl shooting fire from her hand — a superheroic gesture of defiance and protection. Children holding their ground against cruelty, standing radiant in impossible brightness.

It was a sketch back then, I am still not sure if it’s finished yet, but the composition is improving.

3. Germany: The Mermaid in the Aquarium

Later, when I lived in Germany, I often felt a strange kind of alienation. I could communicate, I shared so much with people around me — and yet, I felt oddly different, not fully at ease.

Out of that came an image of a mermaid in a rolling aquarium, sitting at a bar for humans. She tries to hang the same way others do, but the glass between them makes the difference unavoidable. It was a metaphor for belonging and estrangement at once.

Finally completing this work gave me distance — I can see the humor in it, the melancholy, and the creative way my younger self processed those feelings.

Why This Matters

First of all, even sketches can be considered art. They carry energy, intention, and expression — even if they’re not polished or “finished.”

Secondly, unfinished projects can be powerful seeds for future work. Years later, with new perspectives or new tools — like I did recently using GPT-5 — they can grow into something completely fresh.

And finally, doing any kind of art, even if it’s just for yourself, is one of the best ways to experience life. It sharpens attention, deepens memory, and leaves behind traces of who you were in that moment.