Today I wanted to come on here and share a little bit about the struggles I have been having as a new artist especially now that I am sharing it all with you. On social media we are more likely to only post the good art we do but, then what do you do when you have days where your work is a mess, and you hate everything you draw or paint? That is why I haven’t posted all week. The reason I am struggling so much is because I am trying to paint and draw new things, I always do flowers and gnome and I’m really good at them but that is not what I am passionate about. I love landscapes and portraits but just like I used to be really bad at flowers and gnome I have to practice doing landscapes and portraits.
But these are harder and I’m not picking it up as fast as I did the flowers and gnome so I’m getting frustrated and discouraged. Which leaves me with nothing to post, or record, and a garbage can filled with torn up pages. Please try to resist tearing up your art or painting over it. There are so many times I am laying in bed at night rethinking my art and wishing I never destroyed it, wishing I could be able to fix it. That is something I am really fighting the urge to with this new painting.
It is so out of my comfort zone like everything I struggle with is in one painting, why did I do this to myself? I don’t know but I saw this picture and I couldn’t get it out of my head
I just think its is so beautiful and my eyes don’t know where to look because there is so much to see. This is my second attempt at this and if you would have talked to me the other morning when I did this, I would have told you I hated it, and I’m no good at this, why am I trying. But thankfully I just left it where it was and went about my day. About 4 hours later, I was sitting there, and I caught a glimpse of it and though wow that actually pretty good I even felt proud. All day my family had been looking at this painting an asking what is it? Because if you didn’t see the original picture, you would know what it was. One of my daughters even asked if it was a woman on the toilet I had to laugh because it does look like a woman on the toilet.
But when I look at it now, I see the original picture I see the fabric, I see her shoulder, her hands, the tilt of her head and she is beautiful. As artist it can be so hard to share our work process because our art takes on so many forms before it is finished. For me this my biggest struggle pushing through the ugly stage.
Right now, all I did was block in the colors there are no shadows, no highlights, no real definition so to the untrain eyed this is crap but to an artist this is progress. The best advice I can give you and myself is to step aways put it down and come back to it with at clear head. Also never be afraid to share the bad days and bad art. If you don’t want to show the actual art show yourself looking frustrated or just show your art supplies and tell us what you’re struggling with. If you’re going to share your art life on social media don’t make it all rainbows and unicorns add in some thunderstorms and dragons.
If you also struggle with confidence or getting through the ugly stage leave me a comment and please give any advice you may have.