Taking Time for Growth as an Artist

When Creativity Feels Stuck

I’ve been feeling stuck creatively lately. It’s been a struggle to come up with new ideas for paintings that I actually like, and the last handful of pieces I’ve finished have been… just okay.

That realization sent me into a bit of a negative spiral. I started feeling like I had lost that bit of magic I felt when I first started painting again.

Then I realized something.

I’ve been putting so much unnecessary pressure on myself and my artwork. A lot of it feels like leftover pressure from being on social media, that feeling that I need to have something to post or the page will never grow.

If you don’t already know, I left social media last month. It’s not an easy thing to do. I still have the habit of checking my email on my phone and then swiping over to where my Instagram app used to be… and then remembering, oh yeah, I don’t have to check that anymore.

What have I missed since leaving? Nothing that I know of, hahaha.

The Pressure to “Create Every Day”

As I continued down this path of trying to force myself to make artwork every single day, because that’s what everyone says you need to do to grow, I felt resistance building.

I found myself wanting to get back into 3D art. But then I felt guilty. It felt like I was abandoning painting.

The funny thing is, when I was doing 3D art regularly, my drawings and paintings actually improved because I was constantly playing with volume and light in a different way.

But as any self-critical artist does, I told myself: no, you are just trying to distract yourself. These are growing pains and you need to push through.

The problem was, no matter how much I pushed through, I wasn’t satisfied with my work and I didn’t see any growth.

When Art Starts to Feel Like a Job

What I slowly started to realize is that creating artwork was beginning to feel like a job.

But the thing is… I already have a job.

Why was I putting that same pressure onto the one outlet that’s supposed to bring me joy? I was sucking the joy out of it.

So what do you do when that happens?

Letting Myself Explore Again

I decided to allow myself to explore, but I stayed within acrylic painting and shifted my focus to different subject matter.

Instead of forcing another landscape, I chose something new.

Taking a Skillshare Class to Inspire Creativity

I jumped on Skillshare and took an acrylic portrait painting class: Learn to Paint Portraits in Acrylic by Paul Richmond.

I like the portrait I created, but I noticed something about myself. I focus too much on trying to paint every single shadow. And when I do that, it actually starts to look less like the person.

I need to work on painting only the necessary values.

But this class got me out of my slump. I found myself painting for hours again, not because I had to, but because I wanted to.

And that felt like a big shift.

Growth Doesn’t Always Look Linear

Have I started my next landscape yet? No.

But I’m focused on having fun and painting whatever I want. And I’m also getting back into 3D art.

I never had to abandon it. I truly enjoy it,  and isn’t that really what matters?

I sometimes fall into this mindset where if I want to explore a different medium, it means I’m not working hard enough to improve in one area. I have this fear of ending up in a cycle of constant learning and never experiencing real growth. I don’t want to give up on something when it gets hard. I don’t want constant detours.

But maybe they aren’t detours.

Trusting the Process

I truly believe we’re often being led toward the things that will help us grow, even if it doesn’t look productive from the outside.

I’ve been struggling with depth in my landscapes. Portrait painting teaches values, and in landscape painting, values create depth.

I’ve been struggling with flat foregrounds. Lately, I’ve felt this urge to paint objects and painting objects teaches volume.

Maybe the creative areas that feel like distractions are actually our brains trying to solve problems. Maybe we’re being guided toward the pieces we need in order to put everything together.

Right now, I’m choosing to trust that.