If you're discouraged by your art, you need to hear this!
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- Опубликовано: 30 июл 2024
- Do I have what it takes to make good art?
Am I good enough to be an artist?
How can I paint with confidence and freedom?
Watch your self-talk when you paint! Phrases like "good enough," "perfect," and "failure" can be discouraging and self-limiting when there is so much happening during an artist's process. If you're making mistakes, you are learning. If you're painting, you're building skill in technique. And if you're painting to earn someone else's approval, you're going to struggle to find your own voice and feel confident in your style and practice.
If you'd like to develop an empowered artist's mindset that is growth-oriented and focused on creating art that serves your heart, sign up for my artist email series here: signup.angelafehr.com 
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Thank you for your words and encouragement, Angela! It really means a lot and helps to push through difficult times.
Thanks for your words. I started painting watercolor a year ago and you are absolutely right. I started just for the joy of it, but since then I've noticed that inner dissatisfaction and the need for approval, the "I'm not good enough". I needed the reminder that just being a witness of beauty during my art practice is incredibly valuable, and enough.
I'm so glad you are thinking about this! I think that little keyword "enough" is such a deceptive tricky thing to think, because it never defines what 'good enough" actually is.
I love your inspiring encouragement since taking Watercolor Mastery, April, 2019. I am getting back to my painting after a year of having covid three times, my rental home is for sale, and I am now lifting my life back upwards. I've been cleaning and organizing my studio, have had Xmas/Winter cards printed to sell at small, local, shops, and am feeling like I need/have to/want to create once again. I did keep a small sketchbook in my bag for sketching and small painting yet now I feel getting back to my studio art space. With gratitude, Angela! I deserve to create, play, and grow as "my own BEST artist".
Art can be so seasonal and cyclical. It's pretty wonderful how it's always there for us when we are ready to get back into it.
I needed to hear this. Everyone needs to hear this! Multiple times!! Thank you 😍
I inherited my dads art supplies about 5 years ago. I decided to start learning about watercolor painting. I made a few paintings and fell in love with the beauty in Sumi-e, but, like most, i didn't like my own work so after a few months I packed it all up and stuck it in a box. About a year later, we moved, and while unpacking, I came across the paintings I did. As i flipped through them, I was amazed at how beautiful they were and thought, "I made this?" I framed them all up, and they hang in our homeand i still absolutely love them.
I decided that I would create a new rule for when I'm painting. I paint a piece, then store it away for a year then I come back through and look at the piece and without fail, I'm tons more pleased with the piece than when I first painted it. I'm not inundated with any tiny mistake or failure to achieve certain techniques I was practicing. I can just enjoy the painting for what it is at this time. I've sold many pieces that I considered complete fails when they were first finished, but I was pleased enough to post for sale a year later.
I think this is such a good strategy for a few reasons! There is freedom in refusing to judge the work when it's still on the easel. And the idea of giving yourself expansive time recognizes the long-term perspective that is so helpful to have in art.
Thank you for defining being an artist.
Well spoken
The questions the Heart-Led Artist Pathway ask are profound. There is so much to process, as the course nudges/gently pushes me to let go of the mental limitations. It is a life-changing experience.
Life-changing and life-long! But worth it! Thank you.
I try not to look at my work as mistake, bad, a dud, wrong. Every painting is a learning experience. As one of my teachers said: it’s just paper!!
My teacher says the same thing! It’s just paper!
yes, and it's paper we need to fill if we want to grow!
Thanks so much! I love your art and I especially love your attitude and that you spread positivity. Artists need encouragement and you give so much of that too!!!
Mostly I'm sharing what I need to remind myself - these are the things I need to hear to stay encouraged in my own art practice!
So important! Thank you. I need to be reminded daily.❤️
"It's worth the failed paintings..."
Oh, I'm so glad! I think about my own slow journey in this direction and i can't help but want to encourage others to find this same freedom.
Yes!!! Thank you! This resonates with me so deeply! This is what art means for me and I love that you are making the shift in your teaching next year!!
Thank you! I think it's so wonderful to be a part of a community of artists that values this approach.
Moments of beauty...🎉
So interesting to hear you say this. I’ve been following you for a long time-maybe for the whole time I’ve been painting. I took your class in Edmonton before the pandemic, and I signed up to join you in Santa Fe next April. Will be turning this over and over until I see you again!
I'm so glad I'll get to see you again in Santa Fe! That's going to be a fun adventure. And I think that it's so easy to come to a workshop with a bad case of imposter syndrome that it helps to remember that we are all dabbling in the unknowns with the hope of finding something beautiful!
Such great advice…it’s hard to find good teachers/mentors and it’s hard to become accepted into the cool kids club. Thank you
I think that's one thing that we realize when we start talking, is how most of us feel at least in some way like we don't belong in the club! Creating an environment where everyone feels welcome is a process of learning to trust ourselves and others.
*i view my style of art as more of a reflection of where i am at the moment rather than being locked into place for longer than i', comfortable with...and i still view art as my self guided sanity therapy....some aspects of what i do deviate very little and are further refined as my skill set improves...but there are things that i've done in the past that are so reflective of what i was going through and experiencing at that time that i could not replicate today or would be vastly different...especially with the poetry written a few years ago...do i consider myself a professional artist?...not yet at any rate...no good enough to make a living at it... i've gotten very good at several non traditional techniques and i'm assembling a portfolio in order to display my work to others and i'm constantly learning new things...i'm not doing art for others...well for friends maybe...but that's different...if what i'm doing art wise become too predictable or boring, i'll do something else*
I feel like there's a challenge in trying to grow as an artist, because while skill is a part of it, it's in the unexpected where art comes alive - and the artist with it! You are seeing the self-expression that comes out of doing art for your heart's benefit, as self-guided therapy, as you say. I was not so fortunate, i spent many years trying to please others instead of nurturing my own heart and artistic voice. It's freeing to let go of that now!
*i have to enjoy what i'm doing art wise in style either in topic or style for me to even want to go near it because emotionally i'll be invested in the process in some way...while with ai art the attachment is somewhat less if relegated to only a few experimental images it is not the case when i've developed unique prompts and then produced well over a thousand images based on those prompts...i've developed new worlds/realities based on those concepts that never existed before and those stories belong to me until i share them with others...* @@angelfehr