When Art Isn’t Fun Anymore… and What to do to Fix It

For a long time, drawing hasn’t been fun for me. While I can draw, and if I work really hard at it, I can do it well, I’ve been lacking the motivation and desire to do it for some time now. For some reason, drawing and painting are the only areas where I feel this tremendous hopelessness. Challenges in writing don’t stop me from writing. Challenges in games don’t stop me from trying again and again until I get it right. Challenges in life are things I shake my fist at and try something new. I love to learn new skills and teach myself new things. Art in particular has been nothing more than a tedious affair for years, something I do only because I know I can, and thus, do it in cases when I have to, rather when I want to, such as for book covers. It isn’t laziness, nor is it because I don’t like challenges. It’s become work, and nothing more.

A lot of things can cause this to happen. I tend to start projects only with the intent to finish them by the end of the day. If I think an art project will take me several days, I’m fed up already, as I’ve already got five different types of things I’m juggling at all times. Writing is work, but it’s still fun for me to tell a story and do so with good grammar, and books can take up to a year and a half for me to complete. Editing is fun for me, too, always has been. With drawing and painting, it’s a gigantic chore, even when I’m drawing something I like, and I think this is because I strain myself way too hard when I’m not feeling in the mood because I need to get “work” done. Cover artwork is “work” that supports the novel beyond it. As you can imagine, getting bored with drawing my covers can cause problems as an author. If the cover looks terrible, a lot of people are going to judge it.

Obviously, this is something that bothers me, because as a child, I once adored drawing, and had fun, no matter what I drew. I would draw entire comics and color them, filling entire sketchbooks with panels and artwork. I also used to have a more fun “cartoony” style than I do now. More often than not I think to myself that I want to go back to a cartoony style, but then I think how much I prefer my art to look “realistic,” and thus, I never know how to draw my pictures, and they turn into some odd combination of both, and sloppy. I’ve stopped thinking about what’s fun in art and more about what I’ve convinced myself is “acceptable.” I’ve hit sort of a wall in terms of how art feels to me. I “like” to draw, but I don’t want to draw. It feels, shamefully, like a waste of time and energy now.

So, I’ve begun to feel like I should “start over,” re-inspire myself, maybe find a particular model I’d like to draw a portrait of, or start practicing my figure drawing. There are lots of great things out there I could draw, and the idea of doing it again is exciting, even though it bores me now. To get back in the habit of it would be difficult, though. Growing up, I drew every single day and got better over time. Now I draw maybe once every couple of months, or less. The mood doesn’t strike me as much as it once did. It helped when I was still in school, since I would draw in class and would get my necessary daily sketching done. I have to admit that I was a better artist back when I had a passion for it. Even when having a better idea of how to interpret anatomy and shading now, my art had life back when I was in high school. It had a soul. You could tell I cared about every little thing I drew. It saddens me to look at them now, remembering where I was and how much I enjoyed it when drawing it.

Now that I’ve addressed the issue, I’m leaving a bit of advice and vow to myself.

I think going back to the basics of art will make it fun again. As experienced as I am, I never stop learning, and learning should be fun. The problem now, though, is finding time to draw in between working on novels and chainmaille. I really should be making time for it, but my novels are my priority. If there is something to “work” on, it needs to be the current draft of one of my books. I care a lot about my stories and want to perfect them to the point of near-exhaustion. I want to feel that way about art again.

I’ve mentioned to my husband that I wanted to draw portraits of people again. Here’s hoping my model jumps out at me soon and inspires me to get back to it! I want to draw because I want to again.