Finishing a Piece When You Feel Like Giving Up
Hello Moonbeams,
I decided to write this because I feel it is a pretty relatable issue for most of us. It just so happened that when I wrote it, I was working on a piece that was giving me a pretty hard time so I thought I would write about some of the things that have gotten me through tough pieces in the past or helped me see that it was time to move on, or restart. I also included some of the symbolism for this piece home but not home
My great-grandmother's cabin frequently appears in my work. This her journey away from us as she is being sold. The beginning will be frightening and full of strangers before we learn to be apart.
Take a Break
Sometimes taking a break is more productive than plowing away when you are totally stuck. Step away to work on another piece, take a walk, or do some other activity that can clear your mind. Some pieces might require longer breaks than others. Know yourself and your limits so that you do not ignore the piece for so long that you give up on it.
The fish represents someone dear to me. They are restless and searching for their place and purpose.
Change How You Feel
If the piece you are struggling with enters your mind when you are not working on it, try to replace thoughts of frustration with positive energy instead. If you find yourself feeling stressed, instead of thinking about the piece itself, think about the things that inspired it. Focus on the good emotions those things give to you. Why were you passionate about them in the first place? You could even do some explorative writing about your inspiration for the piece and why it matters, or make a list of key words that the concept of the piece brings to mind. Out if this writing and thought processing, you might rekindle the fire that will allow you to get back to work!
Many of the Noirs Animaux, my black animal spirits, are featured in this piece as guides to the fish. The crow and bat together represent sacrifice, death, and rebirth.
Sometimes starting over is okay.
Starting over is not the same as giving up or quitting. Sometimes a piece is merely a first draft. You work on it, sometimes for hours, days, weeks, and discover that you have learned so much more than what the current piece can give you and so, you start over. You reenvision the piece with all that new knowledge and that is OKAY, even amazing! On the occasions that I have started over, I learned so much from my first draft that the new piece was a much more enjoyable process. Be grateful of that first rough draft and embrace the chaos of letting it evolve into something new!
If you do decide to drop the piece entirely...
Remember those breaks we discussed earlier? And how knowing yourself so that you do not ignore a piece for so long that you forget about it or give up? Well sometimes, you do end up giving up on a piece regardless. And that is not always a bad thing either. As creatives, we have so many ideas floating around in our minds and occasionally some of them might be appealing, but not quite something we want to see through. My past self would start big, 40 inch paintings on a whim, constantly, and seldom finish them. It lead to stacks and stacks of unfinished work with only one out of every 5 or so pieces being completed. For me, I had to learn to not only stick to a piece, but to focus a little bit more on why that piece was important to me. In recent times, I have discovered that some concepts are just not all that important to me in the end. I get a lot of ideas, but they do not always end up becoming paintings.
This is a closeup of a skeleton representing the places we all eventually go and the peace we may find in the next phase of life.
So how do you find out if an idea is more likely to be dropped, or finished?
What works for me is to play with those ideas on a smaller scale. Starting huge paintings was a way of ensuring that I was going to be stuck with that idea for a few weeks, so if I did not like it, it could be unpleasant to continue dealing with. A better way to explore ideas could be to work them out in your sketchbook, do thumbnail drawings, or make small drawings and paintings using the concepts you have in mind. If these themes consistently reappear in your work, or strike you, you might realize it is time to make something a little more in depth out of them. And if not, it is okay to let them go. As long as your reason for letting them go is not because you feel the idea is too hard to execute. Trying, even if you feel you have failed, truly is better than not trying at all. You learn so much you can apply to future work by doing this. But, if you find yourself trudging away on a piece that you feel no real passion or connection to, it could be that it is just not the piece for you and in some cases, you might decide it is right to abandon it. The choice to abandon work is very personal and I feel it is important to understand how you work, and ask yourself a lot of in-depth questions before making that decision.
Why did I see this piece through?
Being that this piece was an example of a challenge from the get-go, it was not easy to see through. It began with two sketches I lost interest in because they just did not mean enough to me to want to continue them. Once I combined them, I was beyond excited to start the painting, but I knew it would come with its own challenges and knew I might not really nail the execution. As the “ugly phase” was drawn out further and further, becoming seemingly worse each day, the idea of restarting did cross my mind a few times. But, I never got that gut feeling I get when I know the time to restart has truly come. See, I was still struggling and I could not really see a way of doing things differently than how I was currently doing them. I simply needed to keep pushing a little more, before I realized that it was time to let go. And in that time space, I finally began to break through and see the light. I started not only seeing visuals that appealed to me but also took note of specific areas I could improve. The piece was a big dive into inspirations I have held inside for a while and a lot of pent-up emotion. In the end, I feel this piece stands out among my work as being somewhat different, and the start of something new I am excited to explore further.
Be well~
~Aria
