The sketchbook page of shame

What do you do when it all goes wrong? When you’ve made the time to create but between a tired soul, a spilled pot of paint and the stars not aligning, what you are working on just doesn’t turn out how you wanted it to?

I often write about failure, that making mistakes is part of the creative process, that behind all the work shown are pages that do not work.

But a sense of failing, of getting it ‘wrong’ can tap into all sorts of latent emotions around shame and being belittled for our creative efforts. Much as your rational brain knows that we all need to make mistakes to learn, your creative soul is tender and can be crushed by criticism.

You can equate getting it wrong with not being ‘good enough’. You may have lived life in a building-block way but creativity needs loops and set backs, and curious play to develop. You may not trust your intuition to know whether what you have made is any good. But be careful who you outsource to for help in understanding your own art. Others may not know what you are striving for.

How do you shore up against an implosion of the artist soul.

How do you keep the negative voices out and stay on track with showing up and taking slow steps forwards?

Be careful of your emotions. Do not be too quick to judge your own ‘mistakes’. I find most of my criticism is internal not external. That’s a bigger battle because you can choose who you receive external criticism from, but dealing with yourself can be much harder.

Art isn’t ‘good’ or ‘bad’ and black and white thinking shouldn’t be part of the creative’s repertoire where life can be all the hues and all the tones. So don’t fall into binary thinking. There is no right or wrong.

Sketchbooks are a safe space to try, and fail, and grow.

It is good to walk away and have a cup of tea and reflect on why you don’t like what you made, or a page in your sketchbook. I sometimes tape pages of a sketchbook together to hide the offending page. A week or a month later the emotional resistance can have dissipated and I no longer feel the same way.

Be growth oriented. Accept where you are at. Try to see the frustration as a move towards finding flow. What parts of your art are positive? What do you like in the process? What do you like in the outcome? Did anything accidental or incidental happen that you might want to grow and replicate?

Artists don’t just look to create technically. Many rail against the art education they received in a bid to find self-expression. It’s the strangeness and the new that they seek, and that is what then defines them. The quirks of your work make it fascinating. Look for them.

Find out more about my online art courses that help you through creative block to creative flow at helenhallows.com