Every two year-old child is pleased with their crayon drawing of Mommy and Daddy as two rough circles with scribbled eyes and mouth. If you were completely satisfied with what you produce now and you felt it was the equal of the most acclaimed artists and writers through history, then you'd be deluding yourself. So your self-criticism is a good thing in a way, since it means you have developed some skill in recognising how far you fall short of the ideal you're aiming for.
However, self-criticism is a trap for many. They look at how poor their early efforts are, decide that their inability to achieve what they were aiming for means they're a failure, and decide that the least painful thing to do is to never try again.
A big problem for all writers is knowing when to stop fiddling around with what they've produced, call it good-enough, and declare it finished. Most writers make it a point never to read their work after they've let it go. They've learned that if they do, all they'll see is how they could have done things better.
I think many visual artists are the same. I certainly recall reading about artists who have worked on a piece for years, trying to make it perfect. The problem is that perfection is a mirage that's always on the horizon, no matter how long you keep trudging towards it.
All we can do - in art and in every other aspect of our lives - is the best we can do at that particular point in time. In art as in every other part of our lives, if we keep doing something we're going to get better at it as long as we learn the trick of detaching ourselves a little so what we do is analyse what we've done without being critical of ourselves because our efforts fall far short of what we were aiming for.
The artists who produced the art you admire didn't pop out of their mother capable of creating work of a standard you believe you'll never be able to equal. Genetic chance and their early life may have resulted in their brains being wired in a way that made it easier for them than it is for you to create such things, but what you see is mainly the result of thousands of hours of practice that developed their skills.
One of the things that neuroscience has discovered recently is that our brains develop new neural connections when we make mistakes. In other words, failure makes our brains grow, and getting things wrong is good for us.
If you always start a writing project or put a pencil to paper to draw something with the attitude that the result will be totally crap, you're soon going to stop even trying. We all have a critic in our heads, and the trick is getting him to shut up while you're working and only listen to him once you've completed what you've set out to do. When you do listen to him, ignore his vague "It's totally crap!" comments, and tell him to pick out one specific thing that could have been done better, and focus on improving that the next time.
You have to cultivate the attitude that what you're doing is all part of a learning process. If you set aside some time every day to draw something, you can be sure that what you draw in a year's time will be a lot better than what you produce today. You also have to accept that it still won't be perfect, but it will be a lot closer to good-enough than it would have been if you had listened to the critic in your head and used his nastiness as an excuse to stop drawing altogether.
IIN I Can't Help But Get Disappointed When I Try Being Creative?
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Every two year-old child is pleased with their crayon drawing of Mommy and Daddy as two rough circles with scribbled eyes and mouth. If you were completely satisfied with what you produce now and you felt it was the equal of the most acclaimed artists and writers through history, then you'd be deluding yourself. So your self-criticism is a good thing in a way, since it means you have developed some skill in recognising how far you fall short of the ideal you're aiming for.
However, self-criticism is a trap for many. They look at how poor their early efforts are, decide that their inability to achieve what they were aiming for means they're a failure, and decide that the least painful thing to do is to never try again.
A big problem for all writers is knowing when to stop fiddling around with what they've produced, call it good-enough, and declare it finished. Most writers make it a point never to read their work after they've let it go. They've learned that if they do, all they'll see is how they could have done things better.
I think many visual artists are the same. I certainly recall reading about artists who have worked on a piece for years, trying to make it perfect. The problem is that perfection is a mirage that's always on the horizon, no matter how long you keep trudging towards it.
All we can do - in art and in every other aspect of our lives - is the best we can do at that particular point in time. In art as in every other part of our lives, if we keep doing something we're going to get better at it as long as we learn the trick of detaching ourselves a little so what we do is analyse what we've done without being critical of ourselves because our efforts fall far short of what we were aiming for.
The artists who produced the art you admire didn't pop out of their mother capable of creating work of a standard you believe you'll never be able to equal. Genetic chance and their early life may have resulted in their brains being wired in a way that made it easier for them than it is for you to create such things, but what you see is mainly the result of thousands of hours of practice that developed their skills.
One of the things that neuroscience has discovered recently is that our brains develop new neural connections when we make mistakes. In other words, failure makes our brains grow, and getting things wrong is good for us.
If you always start a writing project or put a pencil to paper to draw something with the attitude that the result will be totally crap, you're soon going to stop even trying. We all have a critic in our heads, and the trick is getting him to shut up while you're working and only listen to him once you've completed what you've set out to do. When you do listen to him, ignore his vague "It's totally crap!" comments, and tell him to pick out one specific thing that could have been done better, and focus on improving that the next time.
You have to cultivate the attitude that what you're doing is all part of a learning process. If you set aside some time every day to draw something, you can be sure that what you draw in a year's time will be a lot better than what you produce today. You also have to accept that it still won't be perfect, but it will be a lot closer to good-enough than it would have been if you had listened to the critic in your head and used his nastiness as an excuse to stop drawing altogether.