Category: Advice for Artists

Stuck in “The Gap”

DragonCon jury time is upon us and it’s around this time of year where I have that yearly freak out about whether I have enough new stuff, why I’m not producing more, the paralyzing fear of rejection and inevitable downfall into self-loathing, etc.  I want all the masterpieces I’ve been attempting to be done now!  I want all of the studies I’ve been doing to pay off now!

I know the most logical, sensible advice is “Just wait. Everything comes in time after due diligence.”

But I’ve honestly just been impatient and anxious this past month. I don’t want to wait for that magical moment where it all just clicks together and makes sense!  I want it all, and I want it now!

My portfolio reviewers keep telling me that my stuff is “Good…but…”.  There is always the ‘but’.  My current development as an artist is that I am just one small hop between being good and being great.  My portfolio reviewers also echo the same impression of my work.  There’s just the slightest gap between my story-telling abilities and just the slightest bit of funkiness to my anatomy.

In fact, I feel I am in the very definition of “The Gap”, as Ira Glass calls it.
I know this quote is geared towards writers, but it’s applicable to artists just as well.

I wholeheartedly recognize this and I’ve been asking myself some tough questions of late:

Q:  Am I producing enough work to improve in a timely manner?

A:  No.  I need to be producing way more, at least one fully fleshed out painting a month is my goal and I haven’t met that.

Q:  Am I studying enough?

A:  No.  I want to warm up every day with studies, but I’ve only managed to do studies every other day or so.  I hate that feeling that I have nothing to show people that’s polished, other than my notebook scribbles. Makes me feel unproductive!

Q:  Moreover, am I studying the right things instead of drawing the same thing wrong over and over?  

A: For once, I feel like this is the only thing I have managed to get right, lately!  It took me a long time to find teachers whose methods made sense to me, particularly where anatomy is concerned.

I found Bridgman’s methods to be more scientific while Hampton and Proko‘s emphasis on emotion and mannequenization make more sense to the way I learn things.  Chris Oatley’s Painting Drama course has also opened my eyes about narrative considerations in composition far more than any Art History course I’ve taken has.  Finding a teacher who speaks your learning language is so important!  What works for one person may not work for another.

I tend to agree with what Jon Schindehette described in his Intention of Mastery post.  If you’re practicing something wrong over and over again, you’re only going to learn the wrong way to do things.  Going beyond this, if I can have a specific goal in mind before I pick up the pencil, rather than just mechanically drawing more, I will learn more and be more inspired!

I feel like I will only be out of this ‘gap’ when I reach the point that Jon mentions.

At some point, the pencil will stop being a mechanical device that I use to make marks on paper, and will start to become the extension of myself that expresses itself on paper through marks.

I am realizing that my expectation of a ‘magic moment’ of understanding is also a false and debilitating one. There isn’t going to be one click, but many small clicks over time.  I also have to realize that knowledge is impermanent.  My mind is not a computer and can only retain things if I am actively studying them and refreshing my knowledge.  Anatomy, lighting, narrative, value, etc. etc. There’s just too much information for my mind to retain everything without losing others!

But I’ve clung to that notion that there will be that Big Moment of realization and suddenly my paintings are better and that’s just not how this works.

I may not have too many answers by the end of this entry, but I am hopeful that at least I’m asking myself the right questions!  How about you guys?  Are you stuck in ‘The Gap’ with me?  What are the questions (and answers) you’re struggling with?

Artists and Schedules – Maintaining Creative Flow Without Going Insane

As is usual with any time that I’m forced to sit on my duff with hours of free time, I start thinking of a thousand ways to strategize what I’m going to work on next, how I’m going to improve towards my career goals, the meaning of life, etc.  Gallbladder removal has been a massively introspective and motivating time for me.  The whole year has been, really, as constant road blocks have forced me to slow down and think of my physical and mental health more carefully.

I’ve finally had to admit to myself that my schedule hasn’t been the healthiest.  I have often ended my work days feeling anxious and unfulfilled.  I never seem to get enough done!  I would often find myself working late and fretting, which in turn, worried my partner on multiple levels.  That constant feeling of ‘not getting enough done’ made me unhappy, just as the constant nagging feeling of ‘you should be producing more’ made the times I should have been relaxing with loved ones a nerve-wracking experience. I always wanted to ‘escape’ and slink back to the studio to work because if I could just get one more thing done, I could finish and be at peace and enjoy myself during downtime, guilt free!

Enjoying myself outside of work and even simply doing art for fun became a distant memory.

I never could put my finger on why this always seemed to happen to me until I sat down and wrote an hourly work schedule representing my work habits as they were.  I split my time between leather crafting in the mornings, illustration client commissions after lunch, and finally, the rest of whatever’s leftover of my day, should I finish client work, was spent trying to cram in those precious portfolio pieces and studies that are so important to the long term development of my career.  Broken down, I was only getting a couple hours dedicated to each thing and that’s barely enough to enter any kind of ‘flow’!  I define flow as that creative trance you enter which usually takes me more than two hours to achieve since I have a very particular work space I have to set up, which usually takes some of that precious time to arrange.  I don’t work well in spurts, it seems.  Discovering this about myself has proven so very useful!
The solution?  Schedule myself and train my brain to be satisfied with what gets done in a day.  It helped to start thinking of my leather crafts as a part-time job, which it has become, much to my surprise.  Leather crafts make up a good chunk of my income when art sales are low.  The schedule is looking something like this now:
Monday to Tuesday – Work ONLY on leathercrafts!  That way I can take time with my craft projects and look forward to those days coming later in the week when I can return to my true love, illustration!  I’ve noticed delegating these days for only crafts has actually made me more inspired to do this kind of work because I don’t mentally associate craft-time as ‘the time I take away from doing art and rushing to fill every order before arttime’.  I actually have had time to create new patterns and have some exciting new product lines to release in the near future thanks to the simple switch of days!
Wednesday – I update my website first thing with the rest of the day dedicated to art at the coffee shop.  I noticed my website was constantly falling behind because I had no set time I’d update it, so I’d just forget!  Including website updating on my weekly schedule has helped me to keep it updated, which is important for any Art Directors who might have their eye on me or others who need to see that my site is updated and I am active.  If my website is already up to date, I spend that time posting to other neglected galleries online because goodness knows there’s enough of them!  Behance, FurAffinity, Epilogue.  The list goes on!  As much as I wish I had a personal webmonkey to handle all of my website updates, I’m still only a one-woman show, at the moment!  Forsooth! I’ve even managed to fit in time I actually leave the studio in this schedule!  A little fresh air goes a long way when you start seeing faces in the proverbial yellow wallpaper of your studio walls. 
Thursday to Friday – Glorious 2D art-only days!  I’ve decided to start my art-only days with warm-up exercises, either life drawings or daily prompts (ie. Spitpaint).  Then the rest of the day can be spent in creative flow, rather than split up trying to do a billion different things, which just hasn’t proven conducive to my sense of satisfaction and frankly my productivity as an artist!  Trying to do everything has given me a year in which I’ve not produced much at all, for as much as I scramble and am ‘busy’ all of the time to the point of nervousness when I am not working.  I also know if I don’t make time to do studies, I’ll just skip right to trying to solve the ‘masterpieces’, and that’s a fast ticket to frustration since I’m not stopping to learn what I need to learn to attain the level of Mastery I need for the kind of work I want to be doing.
Saturday and Sunday – I try not to work these days unless I am behind or have a rush deadline.  It is incredibly important to me that I do not work every day of the week!  Everyone needs the downtime and these are days I’d rather be spending time with loved ones.

And there you have it!  My prototype of a schedule.  I’ve tried it for a week already and I must say I’m already feeling ten times less stressed out!  There’s no telling how this schedule will be upturned by conventions, rush orders, and other such things, but I can say from experience thus far that discovering what my tolerance for a creative flow has been a life-changing experience.
So my advice to you and any other freelance creative professionals is to learn what your ‘flow’ threshold is, especially if you’re like me and have to work your art time around other activities.  The excellent book Creative Time and Space: Making Room for Making Art really helped me as far as figuring out how to get the most out of my day.  Artists from all walks of life, married, with kids, full-time, part-time, etc. give their best advice for how not to go insane keeping your ‘creative flow’ strong.

How do you maintain ‘flow’ throughout your day?  Share your tips in comments!

A bit of shameless self-promo before I go. If you do end up getting the book, you can use my Amazon referral link to buy it and give me a nice little earning from your purchase! I’d appreciate it very much and the book is well worth adding to one’s library if you are a creative professional.

Artists and The Illusion of Failure

Well, guys, I messed up.

I had so many big plans for this year and I haven’t achieved any of them.  I had an action plan that began by entering Painting Drama, a course on narrative composition, with a dedication to push my artwork to the next level.  I had an actual written strategy guide to paint exactly four portfolio pieces to present at IlluXcon this year, which is coming up next week.

I’ve only managed to do ONE in all this time.

Life has been chaotic beginning with a very traumatic death in our family.  Just when we were starting to breathe again, we also had to deal with unexpected health concerns and our apartment flooding, which resulted in having to pick up and move yet again after having moved less than six months ago.

But of course, my artbrain can’t see the cause of my ‘failure’, it only sees the effect.

It tells me “If you had slept less and painted more, you would have succeeded!”

“Why can’t you focus and be more productive? There is nothing physically wrong with you!”

That little voice inside that most artists have telling them that they’re crap for not being productive doesn’t acknowledge the fact that we are not machines programmed to plot points on a paper no matter the circumstances.  We drive ourselves to succeed, even when we are not up to the task, even when our work would suffer from our lack of focus, when sometimes we just need to take time to heal instead.  When we don’t hit a certain benchmark of success, there is a dangerous point where we feel like giving up because the steps to succeed are just too small and too ineffectual.

And that is where the illusion of failure wraps us up in a cushion of despondency.  I messed up, so why should I keep trying if it will never pay off or show results?

Thankfully, I can say after going back and forth with these feelings, I can whole-heartedly tell myself STOP THAT.  Sometimes, life is just out of our control and there is nothing we can do except acknowledge this fact and move on to the next thing.

Art has never been about the end result.  For me, it is about the inspiration.  It is about the joy I get when I take a story out of my brain and express it in such a way that another person outside of my own brain can feel the drama and the passion of it and be inspired.

(Honestly, if I ever painted the ‘perfect’ image, I think I would lose some interest because where is the fun in never learning something new? OR I’d have to get a perfect image every time from that point onward and striving for that second achievement of perfection would just drive me on more!  Or I’d just go a little insane by the end…)

Art is about doing what I’m passionate about every day because that is how I want to live my life.  Spending 90% of my time here on earth at a job that bores me to tears is not how I choose to live or what fulfills me as a person.  When I do a non-art related job to pay my bills, it is also a way to support me while I create.  It is never ‘that thing I do because I failed at art’.  Considering it a failure is only a matter of perspective.

And so it is that failure is an illusion.  I have failed only when I stop doing what I’m doing or stop acknowledging my own passion as an artist.  Sure, I may have messed up and didn’t paint all the things I wanted to paint in the past, but that does mean I cannot create more in the future.

Being too old, too broke, too slow, these are only self-imposed restrictions that do not exist until we let them control us.  As long as a brush/stylus/pencil and sketchbook/canvas/etc. are in front of me and the ideas are stuck in my brain, there is the potential for art to happen.  I can succeed.

I strongly consider this 4th year of operation as Angelic Shades Studio to be my Year One.  I’m starting over with a new focus, a new dedication to the narrative works I’ve always wanted to create, and a new drive to really get my name out there.  I will not be afraid that I am not good enough anymore.  If something is not good enough, I will simply ask myself and other artists and AD’s “How can I improve?”  I will be fearless in accepting critique and showing my work to others.

I will not stop.  Stopping is not an option.

There is no spoon…nor is there such a thing as failure.

Where Do Ideas Come From?

A conversation with a fellow artist got me pondering that age-old question again. Where DO our ideas come from?  There are so many books, lectures, and blog posts on the matter, but I wanted to throw in my two cents.
I’m sure many of you have gotten that question from someone “Where do the ideas for your paintings/writing/etc. come from?”  It’s always asked or implied with this far off look, as if we have this magical ability to pluck the ideas from the gauzy glitter spangled ether as if they are tangible things waiting for our nimble, magically imbued fingers.
Any successful creative professional will tell you that coming up with ideas takes just as much practice, if not more, than actually honing your skills and techniques.  Learning how to draw is only a small part of a larger equation.  In the words of one of my favorite characters, “…a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone if it is to keep its edge.”

Just as an artist needs a healthy visual vocabulary of paintings, references, and experiences to keep their imagery unique and original.  Art isn’t just about drawing well, but making those little cross-connections between one emotion and another to produce something that is uniquely you and that others will also identify with.


Want to make great paintings? Study great paintings.  Learn what art impresses you.  Learn about who other people consider ‘masters’.  Familiarize yourself with what your tastes are.  How can you ever expect to make the connections that lead to discovering your own visual identity if you aren’t learning about the things you like and drawing the things that you like?

Chipping away at that nugget that is my visual identity as an artist is a slow process that only happens over a long period of time, practice, and study.  Yes, study. Even when not in school, one MUST study.  It’s when you’re an artist out on your own without an art teacher looming over your head making you study things you think you don’t really need to know that you realize it’s all on you, bub.  If you’re not learning, it’s your own fault and nobody else’s.   It’s not the fault of that artist who always gets better ideas than yours, either.  They worked hard to make those glimmering mental connections. They put in the hours of practice and expanding their  knowledge base and you have got to do the same.

For me, I have this idealized image of myself in my head that I’m slowly putting together from tidbits of likes and tastes that I am constantly accruing in a mental archive.  I want to be an artist with the beautiful sensuality of Mucha, the emotional depth of David Mack, the immersive qualities of Waterhouse, with the fairy tale sensibilities of Trina Schart Hyman.  This collection of themes that are to make up my perfect artist identity have nothing to do with style, but the ideas which I hope will drive the kind of work I would like to put out into the world.

Read the whole map on DeviantART to learn what the numbers mean.


But then I also want to be me and I’ll never be me until I distill all of my tastes into something else, altogether.  That’s going to take time and painting.  Then painting some more.  If I’m not evolving, if I think I’ve found perfection, I’m fooling myself. This goes for people I think have the best ideas in the world, as well. The moment they stop learning and growing, there’s something that’s going to stagnate in them, too.

I’ve also had another artist friend tell me they don’t believe in looking at other art for inspiration for a project because it corrupts what they’re doing.  I believe this to be one of the biggest fallacies I’ve ever heard.  If you’re never drawing on the energy of all the wondrous history of art that’s spread behind us, how can you ever do anything new in full awareness of what has already been done?  The connections won’t come to you in a void.  You’ll never learn anything new if you don’t expand your view forwards AND backwards.

This is why fashion designers, production designers, animators, etc. have things called ‘mood boards’ (collections of all the things they want their products to be like).  I think as artists we hate to think of our end result as a ‘product’ that is in any way ‘designed’.  It should be an emotional, deep ‘thing’ we experience without any help, or it loses value.  Yet another fallacy perpetuated by the  antiquated traditional ‘gallery’ institution of thought.
So if you find yourself thinking you’ll never have any good ideas, crack open a book, a movie, or, better yet, get yourself out of the house!  The biggest ingredient in good ideas is to go out and experience life.  That’s something that solitary artists easily forget to do.

DON’T FORGET that when you reach your saturation point for awesome ideas by other people to shut off the internet and use it to inspire yourself to CREATE instead!  It’s easy to get caught up in how great everyone else is in comparison to you. IT’S A TRAP!

Stop.  Breathe.  CREATE!