There have been many times in my life when I looked at my art and thought: “I will never be a good enough artist”! I can’t even remember that I have once, looked at anyone’s art and disliked it as much as I have disliked my own art and I still do sometimes… However, I have learned to critique my own art instead of hating it and decided to help figure out why we’re all disliking the art we create.
Do you dislike your art? Or do you feel like you can do so much better?
Here’s a bit of context for you, I have been drawing my whole life, but consciously putting effort into learning and practicing art since 2017. I started out drawing portraits inspired by the unique expressive appearance of Moroccan women, then a few years later, I fell out of love with the style as it didn’t make me feel what it used to make me feel before.
I continued to paint commissions and learn about art half-heartedly as I had many ups and downs with my studies and my personal life. Then got back to it and started painting and loving the process again in 2022 after a year or so gap of art block.
Objectively, I never felt like I’m a ‘bad artist’ or anything! But after the gap where I was looking at art online, going to museums, and learning about art but not creating anything, I felt that I have seen art that I can never personally create! The paintings out there that were created by masters who dedicated their lives to art will never match the paintings I create where I can barely find time to sit down and hone my ideas to turn them into art. If I was to put it into words for you, for the longest time, I didn’t feel like I was improving or able to make better art more than having feelings of inadequacy. My conclusion was that I disliked my art and I will keep creating just because it feels good to me.
Quantity over quality?
In 2021, I read the book “Atomic Habits” where the author talked about an experiment of a class that was divided into two groups, the first group was required to go out and take a bunch of photographs of random things where the quality of the pictures didn’t matter, all that mattered was the quantity. And the second group was supposed to take great-quality pictures only. So they press the button once the lighting, the setup, the details, and everything is just perfect.
The results of the experiment showed that the group who focused on the quantity had by far better perfect shots than the group who intended on taking only “the perfect shot”.
I have taken this experiment and put it to the test. My solution was to just stop caring about the quality of my work and just keep painting. If I hit a roadblock on a piece, I just moved on to a different one. The important thing is to keep the momentum of creating going. I have many paintings left unfinished in my room such as the one in fig3 and I am not putting any pressure on myself to finish it anytime soon.
Not gonna lie and say I never felt bad about leaving a painting unfinished, but what we don’t know (and which I learned after visiting the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam last fall is that great artists have created constantly for their creative process to see progress. Van Gogh worked for two years constantly sketching anything he saw before he developed a good feel for proportions and atmosphere. So if there’s a lesson to take is that we’re exactly where we need to be, and we shall just keep going.
Disliking the art we create is imposter syndrome, and a result of comparison…
Artists just like every other creator, have that voice in their heads telling them that they aren’t good enough. No matter how good you are, everyone is prone to imposter syndrome!
We dislike our art because our drive is perfectionism. We have to change our perspectives and decide that our love and passion for art are our fuel for practicing and getting better. It takes time. And the moment you compare your art to others, you send all that effort down the drain.
When we see someone’s finished art online and we think “That’s amazing! Why am I even trying?” The thing we don’t see is all of their failed attempts, and they have them. Not one single artist on the planet is perfect. NOT ONE. Failure is part of the process, you will fail at some point and that is OKAY!
What we see online is finished artwork, perfect pieces, a WIP with a filter on it, and for some reason, everyone has gotten so caught up in being perfect in everything they do which isn’t how things are in real life.
Conclusion
If I was, to sum up, this article for you, I would say that we dislike our art because we spend more time looking for inspiration, looking at what others are creating, and developing our taste and less time developing our skill and practicing art. Which creates a gap between what we can do and what we want to do!
And although I think that striving for becoming better at what we do is crucial to the growth of any creative, comparing your process and art to someone else’s and disliking the art you create is self-sabotage. Working on your skills and yourself are good things, but that is the point. Don’t hate yourself or expect your progress to happen overnight.
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