Procrastination

Art Block

I've never knew what "art-block" was until I received an offer of doing 20 full pages illustration for a children book. At first, I jumped into it joyfully, and then the enthusiasm started to dry like snowflakes in an oven. Now, I look at all I've made so far, and the only desire I have is to put it back in the folder, forget about the whole thing and do something else, ... anything else ... like vacuum cleaning or washing the dishes, or running in circle very fast in the living room.

It probably has to do with the fact, that not knowing what I was able, or not able to do art wise, I said I'll do it - while at the same time, I should have been more cautious because as wide as an artist port-folio can be, some preferences are set and that's something I realize only when I tried it and felt it wasn't the thing I wanted to do.

Now, art is like water, it has to flow -- and if it's blocked, I feel nervous (to say the least).

Contradiction leads to nervousness, stress leads to procrastination, because I want to draw but I do not want to open this project back, and every time I start to draw something, it pops up like a little reminder - it sounds like this "wow, great you're drawing again, that's cool - what is it ? oh, a fan-art for Cammy, this is nice ... but aren't you supposed to draw 20 full pages illustration for a children book ?" and guess what, this kill the mood.

Time goes by, it's like trying to sleep in a bed with bread crumbs covering the sheets, no matter how tired you are, you have to get up and clean the mess.

Because the next step is the dreadful procrastination.

Procrastination

Procrastination is one of those "dirty" words, that sound a bit like mastication and castration.
And in a way, that's what it is really : going in some sort of a loop, where you want to do something but you don't really want it hard enough (that would be the mastication part).

And stuck in this space of thought, there's no result (that's the castration part).

But compared to other lines of work, where you force yourself to do the work because it's just a job - forcing ourselves to make art sounds a bit like a paradox - since creating art is supposed to be fun ?! or is it !?

Meg Robichaud - Page 1 of 37: That is, when you’re designing, you should be playing and having fun the way a child does, and you should be taking a gamble with your design decisions. If you’re not, you’re doing it wrong.