Do you have trouble completing your creative work? What seems to get in the way? I’m very curious (and I’m working on a book on this subject). If you have some ideas to share about what slows down the completing process for you or what sometimes (or maybe even often) stops it entirely, I’d love it if you would share your thoughts with me at ericmaisel@hotmail.com. And let me know if I can share your thoughts with others. That would be lovely … and helpful!
What Stops You From Completing Your Creative Work?
by admin-eric | Aug 5, 2022 | Fine Arts America | 6 comments
The biggest problem is that what I like, others don’t. Deciding on this takes a lot of time. What do they buy (I’ve never been bought before) and what can I give away (this is the best thing I’m doing now). I have to destroy it because it’s so bad.
How long can I finance the materials? I need paint and paper to develop, if I run out, I can’t work.
I was very creative last year for various reasons. One of them is the motivation , to create art for sharing in social
Medias. But now I’m not that enthusiastic about it. I’m taking my own time to enjoy the process. That also made me to be less active. So, at present I’m creative but without any purpose. It’s a strange phase. Living in utopia.
Day by day family life and house dynamic for a woman artist like myself (with organization issues) can slows down or simply stops completely my creative art work processes… because I get lost of what to do! I need mental and physical space (and time) to create and I don’t like interruptions or distractions in the way. Sometimes I even avoid to start an art work because hurts to stop when I am in the middle of something that I need to put my heart , spirit and total focus on. Sometimes I feel like running away!
Anxiety about real problems (professional, financial, health) also can paralyze my creative processes; overthinking my art (plans on my mind with no execution) slows me down; exhaustion or tiredness can be in the way too.
I am conscious I need more self discipline to persist, to adapt to life circumstances, and to prioritize my art instead house chores, for instance.
Hi Eric, good topic sometimes as I am working on something either poem, short story of music in the middle I will get another idea, topic, title and stop to at least jot it down but it slows down the process on the current project.
I do not paint my landscapes from a picture or a actual place. I start from the horizon and work forward to the foreground. So about half way through the painting I go through this phase where I hang it on the wall and I when I do walk through the room, I glance at it and see hopefully what it needs.
This love hate relationship can go on for weeks. Then I will eventually just start painting on it again, maybe fixing or add something, then I’ll see what it needs.
Then the hard part is to know when to stop. I will return time and time again doing this add and sometime subtract. I have even thrown away over painted paintings before (less now days) but now I know that when I am putting things into the painting that no one would notice I stop. Then it’s done and now so much of me is in the painting it’s hard to give it up.
Either one of two things:
The first is the “tangled web”–Either it’s not going right, but I can’t figure out what to do to make it right, or I have competing ideas on where I should go next with it, so I sleep on it, and sleep, and sleep. Right now I’ve got several panels of pour paintings that aren’t quite nice enough to be artworks of themselves, but would make great backgrounds for something else. (The problem, of course, being that, as pour paintings, I have to be sure of what I’m painting over them, because with my luck, the area I don’t like will be the one that dries to quick for me to wipe off.)
The other is the “shiny object syndrome.” I don’t often have this problem with a single painting, but I’ve had the idea to start series several times, only to get distracted one or two works into it by another idea.