Dealing With Artist Anxiety
I have a confession to make. Something that I don’t tell many people. But today – I’m gonna lay everything on the line and tell one of my darkest, deepest secrets. I actually have huge anxiety when it comes to painting. And this artist anxiety really gets bad – immediately after I’ve had a super successful painting. Now while you might be thinking that’s quite odd, it is – it’s like there’s a voice in my head that starts to tell me these lies like “You know you’re not good enough. Why are you even trying?”
Identifying the Source of Anxiety
This mindset is really stupid – and to be honest I had no idea where it originated until I started digging into my past. You see, I grew up in a very strict home. I wasn’t allowed to listen to pop music, rock music, or anything with drums in it. I wasn’t allowed to watch certain movies like Harry Potter – even in college. I had to dress a certain way to belong and even act a certain way to be accepted. Basically – I was raised to be perfect in every way and to mold to an image that wasn’t me at all.
While those in my life who rigidly held me to this standard meant well – that perfectionist attitude still robs me of the joyful, messy creativity that art is really about, right? Perhaps you too suffer from crippling perfectionism as well – but maybe for different reasons. How do you overcome something that seems so paralyzing to the one thing you enjoy so much?
How to Overcome Art Anxiety
Well, for me, it’s in a strange way simple. If I feel paralyzed by fear – I simply place purposeful limitations on my art. And yeah – I know that sounds really weird – but for some reason, forcing yourself to work with limited supplies, a special technique, or just one color is actually the best way to break through one of these episodes.
Mixing All My Paints – Therapeutic Relief
So today – as I’m sure you already have an inkling – I’m going to be mixing all my watercolor tube paints together and creating, as Safia Nygard (another YouTube artist whom I got this idea from) calls it, a Frankenstein color. Which I will then be using to paint an entire illustration.
Now before I mix all these colors together – as you can probably tell – I first wanted to swatch all my colors on some student grade watercolor paper. I did this because I wanted to determine how many opaque and transparent colors I owned – to get an idea of what type of consistency my Frankenstein color would be. If you are curious as to what transparent and opaque watercolors are – I’ll provide a link to my blog where I discuss these in depth.
The Wonder of Gum Arabic
Oh! And here’s a little tip for you! In order to keep the vibrancy of my Frankenstein color and not dilute it with water – I added some gum arabic solution with a small amount of water and used this to mix up my color. By doing it this way – my color still remains vibrant – but also becomes very glossy. As a side note – if you have some dried up watercolors in your palette and can’t seem to refresh them – add some of this stuff and it should help solidify those colors again as well as make them more vibrant than before. So that’s just a tip for you.
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The Results
Alright – so here we go – mixing all my colors together, and the color might surprise you – it’s kind of a deep army green with a twinge of brown undertone. The color also has a slight shimmer due to my iridescent watercolors. I have to say this color really surprised me and is quite gorgeous – especially for garden backgrounds. But trying to paint an entire illustration in this color was quite tricky. But I found a way, and I have to say I think it came out quite nicely.
