Sometimes its ok to walk away for a bit.
Just make sure to come back at some point.
Being an artist isn’t as easy as many people make it out to be. While on the surface it looks like all we do is just make pretty pictures for a living, there is more to it than that. As strange as this may sound to a bunch of you out there, it actually takes a lot of work and a ton of time. Even though it’s super fun and incredibly rewarding, the weight of all of it can be too much to handle at a point. When you pick up a pencil or stylus and it feels like a burden and a struggle, then you need to make a change. It’s a little thing us artists like to call…a break.
*gasp*
Taking a break from the thing I love and am passionate about? What blasphemy!
I know, it sounds crazy and absurd doesn’t it? But all joking aside, it really a necessity that many artist can easily neglect. Even if they are well aware that a break is needed, it can be difficult to distance yourself from you work. I fall into that group all the time. Which is why I bring this topic up here. This blog I started was supposed to be a weekly thing that I kept up with for the foreseeable future. However, after about a month of it I began to struggle with what to write about and it starting feeling like a hassle to force something out. Now a huge part of that could be that I’ve never been a writer at heart and always preferred to showcase emotion and feeling through visuals. I’m an artist, it’s what we do. Anyway, I reflected for a moment on what I wanted to accomplish here with this. I reminded myself that the purpose of this was to be a way for me to express my thoughts on various art/artist related topics and not worry about being struck by the almighty hammer of the internet overlords.
*cough cough* Facebook and Twitter *cough cough*
Once I remembered that, I realized that I was literally burning myself out. I exhausted all my ideas I had in mind, and I was trying to force out new ones out of thin air just to hold to a schedule I made for myself. While it’s great to set a goal and adhere to a scheduled path to reach it, sometimes it just doesn’t work out the way you wanted. I can’t speak for all artists, but that’s certainly the case for me when it comes to my work. I can’t force it. I need to brainstorm an idea and way to make it a reality before I can start it. I can’t just tell myself, ‘I will paint an elaborate portrait every weekend’. That’s just not how it works for me and it never has. It feels like a very rigid and corporate approach to this line of work. If it starts feeling like that for me, then all the fun and enjoyment is sucked out. I need there to be a bit of openness and spontaneity to my artwork so that it feels organic and not manufactured. When I try to manufacture something and it feels forced, the result always looks like shit. Then when that happens the demoralizing feeling creeps up and I begin the downward spiral of demotivation.
That’s just not how it works for me and it never has
So why take a break? I’m willing to bet there are many artists that don’t take a ton of breaks. That might be fine for them, but I can almost guarantee that those artists are already well established in the industry. Once again, I can’t speak for all the artists in the world, but I feel like I can say with at least a bit of confidence that taking a break from your work isn’t as hard when you know you have the audience and the income to get you through that gap in productivity. Breaks are hard for me to sit through since I’m still at the lower stages of my career. Whether a break is just a few hours or even a couple days, for me it always feels like an eternity. That’s because I’m not at the level I want to be and every moment I’m not working to progress forward feels like wasting time. I also know that sitting down and forcing work out when it just isn’t working is more of a waste of time and counterproductive.
When you feel like you’re burning the candle at both ends and you’re running out of wax, the best option is to step back and take some time to rebuild the figurative candle and maybe even reinforce it. Burn out is real for any profession. I felt some major burn out with this blog and some of my work. So I took some time to gather myself back up and resume with some fresh and exciting ideas. So take a break before your candle burns out completely.
The Art of David Stankowicz 