From the article: 5 Ways to Destroy Your Artistic Creativity
What in your life or environment do you think interferes with your creativity or creative energy? What stops you painting, or prevents you from producing the type of paintings you think you ought to be doing? Or from painting at all? Share Your Thoughts
Being Intimidated by the White Paper
- I know it sounds silly, but its true. I am intimidated by the blank piece of white paper. I try everything, but just can't seem to draw. I'm to scared. I try and try but only line paper seems to work. I don't know what to do. Everything I try is always a complete fail. And even line paper makes it hard to draw sometimes. I have no idea what to do. Maybe I should give up. But I don't know. Maybe I need to take a break, but I haven't drawn in months. I should force myself to draw. Or create an inspiration page.
- —Guest cloudy skys
Fear Of drawing Again
- I am a left handed artist. In the past years I have had four surgeries on my left hand and two on my right.I guess I'm more worried about failure and trying to do a good job. I find my hands shaking a little more and I really want to regain the ability again. I feel a deep need now to become the artist that I once was. I just need to break that fear.
- —ChetScott
Fear of both success and failure
- There are days when I am terrified to pick up a brush, I dislike failure, moreover I think I am more fearful of success. With success comes a certain amount of a need to top prior work. I am currently working with a mentor, just her presence is comforting, even if her critiques and suggestions differ from what my mind thinks.
- —wuhu
Working a full time job.
- Working full time in a retail store not only leaves you too tired to create, it crushes your very creative soul. The End.
- —Guest Alfred Dill
Change of Course
- Many things already mentioned make me doubt why I am doing this with my time and does it have any value beyond the good feeling I get while creating. I think the commercial aspect can frustrate the ideal of it. I like planning shows in curating but always the ego worries of the other artists sap my good energy. In turn I emotionally drain others like my teacher. I think artists whether student or teacher identify emotionally thought their work and seek intense peak connections with people similar to the intense focus involved in creating. With all this energy one needs to feel it has a significance and if the only significance lies in what the ego gets, disappointment, doubt and doom await. I don't know how to avoid the highs and lows. But lately through meditation I have been working on releasing attachment, this may apply to everything. To ideas you learn about how to paint, feelings you have about people's reactions, the desire for recognition. In fact after recognition I soon feel worse.
- —Guest LC
Saving the country, not myself
- In highschool, art class was my time to free myself from problems at home, work, or school. One hour a day of focus and intensity. Ever since I joined the marine corps about a year and a half ago I haven't felt the motivation or the patience, bUt have definitely not lost my desire to draw. I feel like the inspiration has left me blank.
- —Guest Anistashia
Spreading Myself Too Thinly
- When I first began selling my art I got overly enthusiastic and took on too many commissions. I missed a lot of my deadlines and was disappointed in myself. I felt guilty and embarrassed and this put me off for a long time. I learned two things: 1) Do the work that inspires you, not just commissions. 2) Don't bite off more than you can chew - if possible try to stick to one painting, or a handful of paintings, at a time. I try to finish my paintings in one sitting now, or over a series of days.
- —Guest Kay
Criticism
- Criticism, especially destructive type, and even at times simple constructive criticism, can slightly deflate your ego and may want you to just throw up your hands in annoyance. I have been there and know it.
- —Guest Odile Pereira
Crits
- When I go to college for a crit day (assessment through the project) my teacher picks out everything bad and puts so many different faults in my head I just end up losing what I doing ...in the end I just don't want to work no more. I feel I cannot create work good enough. After a while I finally get the strength up to work again but I think the term creative criticism can also be way over used and can sometimes just give reason to be plain rude about an artists work.
- —Guest Little Tip Toes
Creativity Downers
- Being pulled to multiple ideas/projects. Overwhelmed as to which one to work on or maybe I should just go get a job.
- —Guest ruben gutierrez
Chores
- About the distraction of chores, when I was working for hours every day I rather enjoyed the defiance of refusing to do chores -- in order to make art. Then I got a job running an art commission (I had been teaching at an elementary school). The art commission job was the most lethal to my work, as it required many more hours, but also, after years of curating and hanging the work of other artists I began to care less and less about art in general. I always knew that it was a "commodity" that few people cared about but years of being exposed to this actually made me indifferent. I was better off when I could hunker down and avoid thinking about the world at all. When I taught art to children I felt as if I was doing something good for them, and by extension, the world, and I could live in this little bubble and make art because it was important to me.
- —Cloudedhills
Sick in the Gutter
- It’s so hard to say that after school, I just ran out of things to say. Even though I feel like I have so much to say. Most of the work I did was given away to friends and my last series is still sitting in the back of my closet. Never sold a single painting but that wasn’t the purpose of their creation. Got really disappointed when my message didn’t reach the audience, the art world is a very elite place and I found the same people looking and criticizing my work every place I showed. Still love to paint as I’ve tried it a couple of times but I just can’t find motivation to do it. I have a 5 year old and a 13 year old and I don’t complain about lack of time, rather the purpose of action. I don’t plan to spend money and time to create something which has a future is in the back of my closet. Such a sickening feeling.
- —Guest prone to disappear
Energy
- I certainly have the desire to paint and have been on a couple of painting holidays so have enough reference to see me through but I also have so many canvases stacked around my studio I wonder what the benefit will be of producing yet another. When my children were little I felt constantly frustrated about lack of time to work. I wish I could have let it go at that time but I was fresh out of art school. The art school was all conceptual which made me feel my work was banal anyway. Now I have all the time in the world to paint but I am feeling old and tired. I love TV which is a killer. I wish I didn't care about selling, prizes or exhibiting so much. It puts on too much pressure. I like the person who wrote that they just give their works to people who appreciate them. That gets rid of the ego aspect of being an artist which may be the answer to artists block after all!
- —Guest Susan Joy
Like Minds
- I seem to use the 'but first' tactic. All excuses to delay putting that first mark on canvas. But once I do, I just get into 'The Zone'. Then I don't want to stop! It's a comfort to see so many of us artists have similar issues.
- —Guest procrastination!
Self-stifling
- Most of the time I go about my business and do the things I have to do until painting becomes the distraction -- then I'm off!
- —Guest christophermunz
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