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Fear

Takeaway

  • Making art means despite all the hurdles, you find meaning within the work itself.
    • The main hurdle for me doesn't seem to be in artmaking itself.
      • But I should not rule out the effect of the art related fear that feeds back to my anxiety.
      • Maybe use art as a vehicle of solving the bigger problems with anxiety.
    • The larger issue is my general anxiety, which rewires me to seek small and immediately-gratifiable things in place of things that require commitment.
      • I may need to explore the relationship between anxiety and distraction, commitment.
  • Write a small set of rules, or a manifesto of sort, that can remind you about the root of the fears in artmaking.

Log

2021-08-15 13:52 Art and Fear

  • This was a wonderful book that taught you about the various fears you would get by being an artists as well as what it meant to be an artist.
  • The first part of the book was very interesting and useful for me, but part 2 was mostly irrelevant, so I have omitted it from summarizing them.
    • About career and academia within the art field.
    • I may get back to it if I ever get involved in that, but not for now.
  • Main points that resonated with me:

2021-08-16 01:29 Chapter 1

  • The first chapter establishes some assumptions the authors are making in order to describe what the fears are and what it means.
    • Artmaking involves skills that can be learned
      • A typical cliche advice that people give to struggling artists, but the important distinction is that they emphasize that accepting yourself and following your own voice is something that can be learned, and thus means being an artist is something that you can teach yourself to do.
    • Art is made by ordinary people
      • Describes the common pitfalls all artists fall into: believing that the good ones are special. Also a cliche advice, but the reasoning is interesting.
        • That it is necessary to be an ordinary person to make art, because it is what drives the artist.
    • Making art and viewing art are different
      • What matters to you is what you get out of the process, what matters to others is the end result. This point is further explained in Chapter 4.
    • The notion of art being a self-expression can be a double edge sword
      • This is something a lot of artists believe, and the danger of doing so is that it's easy to think that you are flawed because your art is flawed (or you think it is).
      • It's arguable, I generally agree with this, but it feels weaker than the other points.
  • What can I get out of this?
    • One actionable I can think of is a small manifesto about how I would approach artmaking, that I can come back to whenever I am struggling and need a refresher on what my fears are.

2021-08-23 23:59 Chapter 2

  • Quitting means not starting again, but art is all about starting again
    • This pretty much sums up everything about chapter 2.
  • The reasons artists quit doesn't really seem to apply to me yet, but it may be something that I have to think about later on.
    • Convincing themselves that their next effort will fail
    • Lose destination.
    • I'm probably closer to the former than the latter, because I haven't really found a destination at all yet, and I'm still very much struggling to learn how the materials react to what I do to them.
  • Make friends with others who make art, and share your work frequently
    • This is prime advice.
    • I feel like I never had people to share my work, and on any rare occasions I've shared, it felt great and gave me a lot of drive.
  • Some strategies that I can immediately try to implement for myself:
    1. Remind yourself that it's natural that sometimes the result of executing your vision can be disappointing.
    2. What you have the most control over is how the material reacts to your input.
      • Practicing more and just doing a lot of work will give you more control over the material.
    3. Other than that, it's all about how you react to the uncertainties.
      • Train yourself to be resilient to surprises and mistakes.
      • Use this as your advantage: stash these mistakes and discrepancies between your vision and execution and make sure you address that on your next project.
        • Your next project will have more of those for the next one as well.
        • Not having those would probably mean another type of artistic death.

Chapter 3

  • It is impossible to pretend to be an artist
    • You either do art or you don't.
    • Getting good reactions from your work is a completely separate thing from being an artist. You did the work, you are an artist. Simple as that.
    • I wonder if I ever thought like this.
      • I do sometimes think I'm pretending, but it's because I'm not really physically doing any work at all, and just fantasizing about doing it.
        • I guess it's a valid thing to say in this case.
        • Probably not healthy to keep that thought lingering around though.
        • Let's try to use this as a reminder that we are hesitating for some reason, and find a way to put down that first brushstroke.
          • Once the strokes flow out, this feeling tends to go away from me, which is at least a good sign that I'm not falling into this unhealthy ideation.
  • Use the imperfections to your advantage moving forward
    • Art should be fueled by imperfection, and used as something that will guide you through your subsequent works.
    • Making note of the things I need to improve and time-boxing my project to a certain deadline could artificially create a cycle where I am incrementally improving myself.
      • This can be true for both familiarity of material, and how I react to my own work.
      • Aim for 75%, which is my mantra for everything could also be applied here.
        • How do we quantify the work we are doing?
          • I can't quantify how good my work is; at least without a prior definition of my goals.
            • The goal really has to be quantifiable as well so no good.
          • If I can come up with a quantifiable goal before I start any project, that would be great.
            • But this may become yet another blocker for doing actual work and prefering incremental growth.
            • Can I come up with a rule-of-thumb-ish general goal that I can use for any project?
          • Trying to come up with this has blocked me from doing any art for the past few weeks. Oh the irony.
            • Let's wing it for now but come back to this later.
  • Annihilation
    • Equating myself to the art I make was something I did in the past, but that was with a big pinch of grandiose sense of self importance. I think I'm past that point and just think of it as a fun thing and just one corner of me as a person.
      • Definitely an important one, but not something that defines me existentially.
    • Sometimes I think my imagination has dried out? or not much vivid any more.
      • When I read a novel or something, it was easy for me to picture what's happening in my head, in a very vivid way. Now it's very hazy if it even happens.
      • I'm slightly bummed out by that fact, but I'm not sure where I stand with this yet.
    • The desire to make stuff is definitely strong. But it's not something that stands in front of me these days, I feel.
      • Whenever I do make stuff, it fills me with joy, but when I don't it doesn't bother me on a surface level (or at least I think it's hiding behind my head and just lurking in the dark, and I'm confused with what I'm frustrated with all the time).
      • I think just doing it a lot is the natural remedy to this. We'll have to see if it works.
  • Maybe making art requires something special that I don't have
    • I definitely did think this way, but on the opposite end of the spectrum.
    • I thought I had that special something, but I just haven't honed it enough yet.
      • This is a double edged sword because the momeny you start doubting it, you are oscillating between the two extreme ends of the spectrum.
    • Now I'm more relaxed with this kind of ideation, but I still do think I naturally have a better-than-average affinity to art than your average Joe.
    • It's comforting to think that even if some kind of magic exists, it is on a personal level and something that is not that important in actually making art.
  • Expectations
    • Big expectations on my ability to make art. definitely.
    • Disillusionment always come after the spike of productivity that I sometimes have with art, which quickly dies down.
    • It is about asking what your _work_ needs, not what _you_ need
      • This is a great way of thinking about this issue.
      • Ties together with equating your art with your existence. When your work doesn't come out as you would expect, it's the work that needs to be improved, not you.

Chapter 4

  • Fears About Others
    • As a hobbyist, I don't think I have this problem too much.
    • My art is very personal to me, to a point other people's opinion don't matter that much? Maybe because my life doesn't depend on it.
  • Understanding
    • I don't think the art that I do has any depth yet to be misunderstood by other people. It's just little things that I find fun to draw.
    • Very fortunate that this is the case.
    • I may get into more depth with my art at some point, but I will have to come back to this later.
  • Acceptance
    • Same thing goes with acceptance. Maybe I'm not throwing myself out there yet to have meaningful (or negative) feedback from other people to feel this.

Chapter 5