Whether you call yourself an artist or not, if you are creating something whether that be something for a wall, sewing or writing – the act of making something exists and we are on a creative journey from putting what is in our heads into something tangible.
Sometimes we can get stuck along the way, we give up, we decide we are not good enough, not talented enough and we can beat ourselves up just because it’s not working out how we thought!
BUT please don’t!!! Because its really really NOT TRUE! I have seen coming up again and again for me in my daily creative life. I have also seen it in:
- – People coming back into art later in life after a break
- – People just starting out in art
- – Professional fulltime Artists
- – Kids in art class (where did we learn this from at such a young age?)
So today i thought i would share with you some of my thoughts on the creative journey.
The success of your creative work is not the picture at the end you hang on the wall, nor is whether that artwork is sold to a new home so why do we make it about that?
When you go through the process of creating something you gain the experience of knowing what you like and don’t like, what works and what doesn’t …that result is DIFFERENT for each person that takes the journey! That is your success, that is your guideline to feeling good about what you have done. You can’t buy that knowledge, that experience! There is no shop for that, make YOU the important thing in this experience not the thing you have created. We can get caught up in which materials you have used, the way you used the brush or the paper or canvas in front of you they way the composition came together… but that will be different for everyone.. you see it in a class scenario you get 15 people in a room all taught the same lesson with the same materials and everyone will do something different that is unique their own. The experience of your class, your artwork, your creation is something that is just for you.. so don’t judge your creation based on what is infront of you objectively… think about what you gained out of the experience of creating this thing!
[bctt tweet=”.. what you like and don’t like, what works and what doesn’t …that result is DIFFERENT for each person that takes the journey #artist” username=”creativehardt”]
Easier said than done. Sometimes you do judge, we all do…
Especially when you are first starting out, you may not be able to go from a blank canvas to the form the picture that is in your head just yet… that is just a creative process just takes practice, refinement and practice again. Happy accidents and variables happen in the creative process that is part of being creative and sometimes makes for a better piece. Sometimes the pictures in our heads are not clear enough, our artistic experience is not the where it needs to be to execute that idea or our materials don’t work the way we thought they would. That not a failure that’s just another part of the journey because it means there is something along the way you are yet to learn!
I would like to take away right here and right now, the expectation that you need all this “magical talent” to make artwork and that if you don’t produce a fantastic thing that you are happy with in the one sitting then it was all a failure!! What about the experience of this thing you have done, what did you learn from this part of your creative journey? Maybe its something as simple as you don’t like using the colour red! … Ok so guess what you won’t do next time?
Classes are a way that we can be guided in this journey by someone who has walked that path before. Yet I still see so much anxiety by people when attending an artclass, we don’t want to be a failure, we want to be as good as the person sitting next to us. We sometimes think we could never be as good as the person sitting at the front of the room. Being an “artist” just means that you have walked that path a few more times and have learned to dance along the way and in order to get better guess what, you just need more practice!!!
So wherever you are in your creative practice.. there is ALWAYS another painting to paint or another drawing to draw – don’t let the last one you did define you!
There is only the journey it doesn’t end with one piece, one sale, one exhibition – one creation. I wont’ lie the journey may never end…but that is actually a good thing because creating should be enjoyable – and what if it did end what would you do then??
So, LOVE to create & learn to LOVE the journey!
