Some Thoughts On My Recent Experience With Art Block

For the last two weeks I’ve felt a lot of resistance to making art. I started this daily writing practice again to combat that same feeling, but now I am experiencing resistance in going to my sketchbook or standing at my easel. I’m not practicing, so I feel like I’m falling behind. 

And the guilt I feel as the result of putting off making art is getting all tangled up with the good feelings I have when I finally manage to pick up my pencils, pens, and/or paints and get something right.

Often now when I get the urge to draw or paint, my first thought is, “Who cares? Nobody gives a shit if you paint or don’t paint; draw or don’t draw; write or don’t write. So, who cares?”. And a lot of the time, that asshole voice wins. I feel discouraged, and the sketchbook stays closed, the easel light stays off.

Now, two weeks later, I’m starting to get angry. Who cares? Who gives a shit? 

Well, the answer is: I do.

I started asking myself last night why I diminish my own interests in art, and why I keep letting that asshole in my head discourage and bully me.

The other bullshit excuse for resistance I give myself is, “You can’t do that. It’s going to look like garbage, and then there goes that canvas/that page in your sketchbook.”

Well, so what? That’s what sketchbooks are for. And if I don’t paint and draw, I won’t get any better at painting and drawing.

I have to be allowed to fail. For every painting I make that I love, I need to allow myself ten to twenty that I don’t.

That doesn’t mean I’m going out of my way to make crummy art. It’s only to say that I am still a novice. Mistakes are my bread and butter. I know mistakes are how I’ll learn what not to do. I know what I am capable of, but now and then I’m bound to fall short of the mark, and that has to be ok.

I recently heard, “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” Also: “Done is better than perfect.” 

I don’t want to adopt mediocrity as a credo, but I do want to feel safe and happy making art. And I want to have the confidence to make art only for me.