Tuesday, July 10, 2018

Artistic slumps




For me, the only way to work myself out of an artistic block is just to keep working, not worrying if what I'm making is awful, doesn't work, and/or is total garbage.

The key is to keep on creating, experimenting, asking myself "what if?" Easy for me to say. Harder to do without getting bummed out, thinking I'm a terrible artist.

Here's a series of four pictures I made this morning, going from the original to three other versions.

What's my point? We all go through this. We all get down on ourselves, seeing what everybody ELSE is producing, seemingly effortlessly, so what's wrong with ME?

And even though you see me posting decent pictures all the time, and you think it's easy for me, and OMG, look at the VARIETY of what I create, it's kind of a facade. I have a lot of images to draw from. And I DO create almost daily. But trust me when I say I'm in a huge slump right now.

My computer is full, my DROBO is full, my external drives are rapidly filling up, and I cannot add more drives because I've run out of USB ports. THE COMPUTER IS SLOWING DOWN AND I'M TIRED OF JUST SITTING HERE STARING AT A MONITOR!

See what I mean? You may be facing all these same challenges PLUS you may have a job to go to, kids/grandkids to take care of, or health issues. So you may be even more depressed than I.

My only suggestion is to just keep working. Do not quit. Eventually you'll emerge out the other side, creating interesting, wonderful, and unique art.

That slump is going to come around again though. But next time maybe you (and I) will be better equipped to deal with it.

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