How to deal with failures as an artist
Failures. Everybody has them.
Some are real, obvious to everyone and need to be dealt with, others are more personal-perspective based and imagined. Artists are delicate people for most of it and their failure-meters are often skewed. Our self-loathing ranges from being highly ungrounded and lacking substance, going in the direction of “I am so untalented, I will never succeed” or it can be more object-specific based “I hate the way I finished this artwork, I do not know how to correct it” and so on.
In this article I will share with you, how I go about such moments, although I have to preface by saying that it won’t focus on cases where you consider yourself a failure overall. If you feel that way, there might be something else going on in your head that’s making you say such self-deprecating things, so perhaps you need to look beyond your artistic persona/work and try to understand your inner self as a human first. Here, however, I will cover other cases of relative failure, when something goes wrong or you can’t seem to find a way to resolve your artistic issue and how to deal with such.
Creative block
Ah, the dreaded combination of words — The Creative Block. It’s something any creative mind fears. Heck, probably even people with no direct correlation to art do, since such blocks can happen in general life contexts too, but they would probably be addressed as burn out. A creative block can be devastating, it is one of those things that might lead you into the thought path of “Is it even possible to be an artist for me? Am I good enough? What am I even doing here?”. It is scary and it does make you observe your work from a perspective of failure. But the creative block is not forever. You can overcome it with a combination of yourself, your surroundings and of course, the people next to you.
Nothing is perfect
The first reason for a block that springs to my mind is that when you do something, be that creating a painting, working your job or virtually anything else that involves the “Expectation vs. Reality” model, you probably have a certain vision of what the outcome should be. But let’s be honest, a 1:1 outcome is almost never possible.
It is a very common beginner drawing moment, when you have something incredible in your mind, but you just can’t seem to express it with the right power. For some people that can create a massive block. Same goes to more advanced and even professional artists, who, trust me, struggle with the exact same issue. A famous French novelist, Honoré Balzac, wrote a short story on this called “The Unknown Masterpiece”. Have a read, it really goes to show that practically every artist encounters an art block and unless you take measures to get out of it, it can turn very ugly.
The reason we get into a block is because everyone on this planet has a highly complex brain, we are all equal in that, we all have grand ideas, that in its purest forms are incredible. Nonetheless our motoric skills, our knowledge of technique and understanding of circumstances that life throws at us are often highly insufficient in order to be able to recreate those marvelous visions in our minds.
And that — is okay. Remember, a lot of times perseverance and practice make perfect. Well, maybe not perfect, because let’s be honest, most people will never be content to a 100%, but they can at least get to a solid 98% of satisfaction, if they just learn to take a step back when a block comes and let go until they feel regenerated enough to return again and continue their practice. I am telling you this as a person who has struggled with such issues for the past 10 years worth of art making. It can get very tedious sometimes. You just have to keep going, keep practicing, BUT (and this is a big “but”) in a mindful way, which means it includes resting periods.
Go for a walk, read a book, take a nap
My previous article touched upon the importance of rest in order to keep creativity going, so I want to reiterate this thought again. A burn out or block often implies that you are tired. That you focused on one thing and this one thing only for too long and now all of your senses are exhausted and crave for different stimuli.
Remember your rest doesn’t have to be thoughtless and uneventful, although of course you should also accept a YouTube-watching, couch-lying self from time to time. Other activities may include seeing your friends more often, going on walks in a park, taking proper breaks between work sessions, spending more time with your loved ones, maybe even going for a trip if that’s covid appropriate at the time you are reading this and if you can afford a proper holiday time.
I hit a certain burn-out moment recently and I decided to go on a bikepacking tour for 3 days, because I was in between jobs and had a spare week before the start at the new place and studies. It was lovely, I didn’t have a single thought in my brain when I was pushing the pedals.
If you can’t go on holidays right now, the best thing that you can do is separate your work and your life. For example, timing my lunch break in between painting sessions has helped me so much to finish a lot of my works, because when I don’t have a proper break in between I reach a point when I just don’t know how to proceed, I only see mistakes.
Take a step back
This is a method similar to taking breaks but has a more practical application to your work and that resolves a more immediate type of creative block, when say, you can’t seem to figure out why your proportions or perspective is all jacked up.
When you paint or draw, don’t forget to walk a few steps back from your work and observe it as a whole and to detach your attention from little details that may make your eyes tired and unable to see the relation between the objects in your work. When you are close to finishing a work, taking a step back can be a bonus moral booster, because you can admire your work with a viewer’s eyes (applies to any kind of activity in your life, really).
Circumstances matter
Yes, who would’ve thought that we aren’t living in a vacuum where everything is equal. Circumstances can often make you feel like a complete failure, even though there is probably barely or no fault of yours in the situation. Here is an example story from a recent rather unsatisfactory, in my opinion, exhibition at the Brücke Museum in Berlin I participated in and what helped me see the situation in a more upbringing light.
The premise
My university group decided to make a fun outdoors project in collaboration with the École supérieure d’art & de design Marseille-Méditerranée on the grounds of the Brücke Museum, which is related to the expressionist movement Die Brücke and is pretty iconic. You can find more history here.
We were invited to work on the museum’s grounds for a week and then make a presentation/exhibition of our works in the garden area, which is more like a forest, as the building is located right at the border of Grünewald. Mind you, we were preparing to do this project for a year and a half now, because of corona, so I worked on a few pieces that I wanted to present, but at the last moment, I thought it was going to be a fun experiment to try and actually create something whilst in the vicinity of the museum’s garden rather then in my cozy studio, as that was the whole point of this project.
The downside was that you had to work outside, and if it was a summer day or in a less rainy country, perhaps it would be fine, but since it was an October week in Berlin, boy-oh-boy was it a nerve wracking experience.
List of the issues I had
- I couldn’t paint all week long because for 2,5 days I am meant to do my designer job
- Getting there was really far, so the left over half day wasn’t realistic for painting
- That left me with 2 days, on the first day it was really cold on the second there was rain all day, and since I was working outside with no shelter, because the only under the roof places were all already occupied, that meant no productive work
There were other factors that were kind of my faults, but this chapter of the article isn;t about them but about circumstances that are independent of you, so I won’t mention those here.
The solution
On the day of the exhibition I was heartbroken. I invited people to visit, but I couldn’t stand them seeing my work being so crappy. Luckily these people are very supportive and one of them, my partner, knows best how to deal with me when I am in a state of devastation. All I need at this moment is a mirror, which gives me context. And he always acts as such, which I am very grateful for. Eventually you learn to act as such a mirror for yourself if you practice this mentality often enough. Let’s look at my situation of failure through this mirror to try and turn around this feeling for the better.
- You tried to get the most out of the situation
- You were adventurous and decided to go along with harsh and unusual conditions for you, thus challenging yourself in a brave way
- You learned something new
- You still had the exhibition and can put it on your CV after all
See? Easy, right? Okay, okay, I know it can be very tough to turn your own mind’s negative experience into a positive perspective, but I know you can, you just need someone to give you the initial push and afterwards you can learn to do it on your own. I promise you that! And this brings me to my last point for dealing with failure.
Second opinions
When people compliment your work — accept it. Don’t brush it off like it’s nothing. Yes, of course there are blabber mouths out there but I doubt that every person who told you nice things regarding your work are such. Appreciate the people who truly follow your work, who see your progress and who want to encourage your future creations, because as I was told recently by my special person: “we can’t create even this, so of course we just have to sit here in genuine awe”. Everyone is good at something special and there will always be people who will want to encourage and support you with those things because they can’t do it, you just have to believe that their feelings are true, because most of the time they are.
Did you find this article helpful or do you have some pro tips of your own you could share? Please let me know in the comments, I will be very happy to read your thoughts! In the meantime you can follow me on social media to continue watching how my creativity is going (or standing). Thanks for reading and have a great day!
