the dead artist

how perfectionism killed my passion for art

I tell anyone who asks that I’m a terrible artist… and that could be true. But the thing is, I don’t actually know.

I am not an artistic person at all anymore. My sole creative outlet is now writing because writing is so much easier to perfect for me. I can think of a story idea and write it down, then edit, edit, edit it down to perfection. And it’s fun. Editing has always been a fun thing for me.

Also, I just adore writing more. I won my first short story contest at seven years old and that just spiked my passion for this craft. Stories and books have captivated me all my life and, though I love art as well, books in my opinion are just the most magical things ever.

So, today, I’m going to tell you about the dead artist inside me. What happened to the Jaxyn who loved drawing and painting? How do I feel about art and is it possible to start pursuing art again??

Welp . . . let the story begin. . . .

ah, i do love the look of an artist’s workspace

I don’t remember when I first began drawing. I have a bunch of old little baby notebooks and sketchbooks filled with little scribbles and blobs that slightly resemble humans and animals. As a helpless little kid, I often found myself following in my older sister’s footsteps. When she started biking, I wanted to bike. When she started writing, I wanted to write. And the same went for art. She got her little pens and crayons and began making drawings and sketches when we were really little, which made me want to draw as well.

For years, my sister would ask for giant sketchpads, blank books, and art supplies for her birthday instead of the usual toys and trinkets. And so, like any copycat little brother would do, I asked for those things as well. Looking back, this may have been a good thing. I mean, toys don’t last long before kids get bored of them and chase after a different toy. People don’t save their childhood toys and look back on their memories with glee. Art supplies, on the other hand, last a really long time through the projects we make.

Under my bed, I have this giant box/basket sort of thing full of my childhood drawings, sketchbooks, and paintings. And I can pick up any of these pieces whenever I want and wonder what was going through that strange little child brain of mine. I’m glad that I didn’t waste all my birthdays on useless toys and junk (well… I kinda did; I didn’t only ask for art stuff, I wanted toys too). I used to tell my little siblings to stop asking for meaningless junk, as any caring older brother would; I told them to ask for meaningful stuff like art supplies, expensive paints, giant journals . . . but they thought all those things were boring.

That’s the thing about my sister and I (well, mainly my sister since I just copied her). She was focused and devoted to creativity at a young age, which probably led to our extensive creativity to this day. Something I believe should be a priority for younger kids is instilling creativity. All the commercials I see on TV for kid’s toys, movies, and shows are all really dumb and brain-rotting. Making kids creative at a young age will help them develop stronger creativity as they get older. …But I’m getting off-topic.

So, when I was really little I loved art.

Then comes the private school era. Going to school greatly benefited my creativity because of art class, fun activities, etc. Again, I have a ton of glorious paintings from elementary school that were actually pretty decent. Hung up on my wall is a cut-out pencil drawing of a cow skull with an elaborate oil pastel background. I remember creating that piece in third grade vividly because my art teacher was so impressed by it. She hung it up outside the classroom, which caught the eye of the middle and high school art teacher. And the middle and high school art teacher, who I’d known from summer art classes I took with her just before I started going to private school, was immensely astonished and claimed it was better than some of her older students.

Now, the funny thing about that skull drawing is that all the shading and lighting stuff I did… was all random. I just drew whatever here and there until I liked how it looked. When I look at the piece now, I’m still pretty impressed by it and doubt I could draw like that now.

You know what, just for fun, I’m going to show you that skull drawing and a few of my other art pieces from private school. Take a look…

about the bull skull... please ignore the ugly horns and terribly designed background XD

Are these masterpieces? No. Are they even impressive for kids my age (I made these either in kindergarten or third grade)? Probably not. I’m only showing them to you because they demonstrate my former adoration for art pieces and creativity of this sort.

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My time at private school was the peak of my love for art. I adored painting, sketching, and creating pieces of art more than I liked writing at the time.

Oh, also something to address. If you’ve read my post titled playground drama, you know that I was part of a comic book “club” in elementary school, which was made up of me and my three best friends. Drawing comics was a really nice pastime for me in elementary school. I would doodle in the margins of my notes during class. I’d work on full book series during free time or aftercare. In that art box under my bed, I have like six-book comic series from third grade that I still like to read from time to time. Some of the things I drew up and wrote down were just the craziest little ideas. But they’re funny to look back on.

So in private school, I liked painting and doing like serious art projects. I also enjoyed drawing random cute little anime comic books with my friends. Now, I like neither of those things. Why though? What caused that shift from art and writing to simply writing?

I’m at school in the gym where everyone goes before school starts to just walk around and talk to people. I have a textbook out and I’m drawing up a little comic. My friends join me not much later and we talk about our different projects. One of my friends is designing a comic about kids with elemental powers. Another one of my friends discusses a project he and I are working on together.

Then, from behind us, this group of guys in our grade who we all know come speed-walking by us. Suddenly, I hear someone yell, “He’s got Coronavirus!” My friends and I stop and one of us says, “Got what?” Someone responds, “Coronavirus! Tyler’s got it!” The four of us watch in befuddlement as that group of guys pass us, Tyler claiming that he doesn’t have it and that he just caught the cold last week. Eventually, everyone just starts laughing, including Tyler, since it was just a joke. But I was still curious about this weird thing called Coronavirus.

Later that week… I wake up and get ready for school only to find that no one’s awake yet. An hour or so later, my mom tells me school has been canceled or something. I shrug it off…

…And, as you all probably know, I never go back to school. For the next year and a half, I find myself trapped in my home with nothing to do. I finish the school year online and when the next year rolls around, I don’t go back to school. I become a homeschooler instead. No more comics with my friends. No more fun creative projects or art classes.

During the first bit of total isolation, I don’t turn to art… but nature. Before Covid, I never really explored my backwoods much. But now, I had all the time in the world. So, once I was finished with school, I would go outside and play in my backyard, by the creek, or in the woods with my siblings. And we had fun. We spent hours outdoors (keep in mind, this is before I discovered I was allergic to basically every kind of tree, grass, weed, and pollen).

So, as the days rolled by, I found myself devoting more and more time to doing school or playing outside, and less and less time to creating art pieces or making comics. So when I could have spent time improving my art skills, I sort of pushed them away. Thus, even when I was like twelve years old, I still only had the artistic talent of nine-year-old me.

Another thing: at ten years old, my parents allowed me to get on our huge iMac to write stuff on Google Docs through my mom’s account. However, I was tired of my docs getting jumbled with my mom’s and my sister’s. So, secretly, I created my own Gmail account. This way, I could see only my own documents and writing pieces. I don’t really use this account anymore, but I go there sometimes to look at my old docs. But the point is, this introduction to Google Docs and the internet really made me want to pursue writing more, which made me care even less about art.

this is a cute (or creepy; depends on how you look at it) little art piece i made in first grade that i’m using as a spacer hehe

Over the past few years, I’ve greatly disliked creating art projects. And, sure, you could say it’s because I spent more time with outdoor stuff and writing. But I don’t think time was the problem. You see, I attempted to start doing art again in like the past few years. I remade a few of my comic books during a screen fast. I did little pastel sketches from time to time. I watched YouTube videos about art and stuff. But… I’ve never really gotten back into the flow because I always stop short. …And I think I know why.

In my post what’s going on??, I wrote about how, since like 2021 or so, I’ve been progressively becoming more and more turbulent, meaning prone to stress, self-conscious, and perfectionistic. And, I think the death of my inner artist was mainly, if not entirely caused by my increase of perfectionism.

Take for example my previously mentioned endeavor of remaking my old comic books during a screen fast last year. I had fun doing that; I still appreciate the calm and therapeutic aspects of art. However, I never got really far with those remake projects. Why? Because it was so incredibly hard for me to draw up characters or scenes that I didn’t hate.

Back in third grade, when I first drew the specific comic series I was remaking, I had no care if why drawings were the creepiest or most simplistic things ever. All I wanted to do was draw it and create a story. But in eighth grade, I strived for something better. I wanted to improve the faulty storyline and make the drawings look good. But the problem was… nothing I drew was ever good enough. Or maybe it was, but it took hours to perfect.

I cared so much about making every frame perfect that it took days just to get ten or fifteen pages done. And at that rate, it would take me ages to remake those books. So… I ended up giving up. Drawing was just too hard now that I cared about making everything look nice.

That’s the thing about perfectionism: it makes you care so much about creating such a perfect piece that it diminishes the not-so-perfect early stages of the artistic process. And not only with art; it took me months to begin my novel The Clander’s Land because every time I attempted a rough draft, I thought it was crap and trashed it.

Before I became such a big perfectionist, I didn’t care at all about creating a masterpiece; art for me was just expressing my thoughts and feelings onto a paper, canvas, wooden board. I mean, just look at the drawings I’ve attached in this post. Current me would call them hideous. But younger me enjoyed creating them and adored every one.

2023. Co-op science class. A little stalk plant of some sort sits before me. In between sneezes, I observe that it much resembles wheat. I pick up my pencil… and sketch a decent replica, with the good shading of my third grade self. I impress myself with that drawing.

2024. Last month at driving school. I’m sitting there, bored as my teacher rambles on about different street signs. I pick up my pen… and sketch a near-perfect drawing of an eye on a sheet of scratch paper—pupil, eyelid, eyelashes, and all. Again, I impress myself. I drew this eye simply from memory; no room for creativity, thus no room for perfectionism.

Traces of the dead artist inside me. He’s still there, clinging to my childhood paints, pastels, markers, colored pencils, and sketchpads. With a bit of time, patience, and knowledge, I could revive him. I could give myself… an artistically creative side once again. But do I even want that? Will my inner perfectionist let me?

a little something i created in first grade art class

So… there’s a dead artist inside of me. After facing Covid-19, my iMac, and finally my perfectionism, the poor guy met his end. Now, his final resting place is under my bed in a small brown basket of a bin. Honestly, I appreciated the creativity of my former self, and his willingness to create anything out of anything. From this art journey, I’ve learned three important lessons…

1. 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐦 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡 𝐨𝐟 𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐭𝐲 — Perfectionism doesn’t create masterpieces, it buries them. It’s your mind telling you that taking your time and trusting the process won’t be worth it in the end, even though it likely will. Over time, it’ll prevent you from pursuing the creative projects you love and could possibly drive them to the grave. Defeating this stupid parasite in your brain is reminding yourself that nothing you create will ever be 100% perfect, but that’s what makes you and your creativity unique. Perfection doesn’t matter; it’s the messy, imperfect stuff that sparks true creativity.

2. 𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐳𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐬 — I dreamed of being a children’s author and illustrator. Now, I can’t imagine illustrating a whole book. From the death of my inner artist, I realized that the things you love and dream of pursuing won’t just come naturally. You’ve got to make room for them, protect them from distractions, and make them a major part of your life.
   Only you can decide if your dreams come true, so prioritizing them in your life may be the most important thing you’ll ever do.

3. 𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐯𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐬𝐭 — Looking back at the stage when I wanted to get back into art, but I just didn’t put in enough time or effort, I discovered the importance of embracing your most valued self. Who would I want to be more like now? The distracted kid addicted to YouTube and group chat? Or that artist who never shies away from an opportunity to create a masterpiece? Whether it’s your creativity, your passions, or your quirks, these things define you more than you think, which is why it’s so important to embrace them before they wither away.

Right now, I’m holding fast to these lessons. I’m in a place right now where prioritizing my dream of becoming an author is becoming difficult. I need to remind myself daily that perfectionism sucks and that if I don’t prioritize and embrace my love for writing, the next post you read would be titled “the dead writer.” So, if you haven’t already learned these things from past experiences, I sure hope you cling to them now. It could be your last chance to save your dying creativity.

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I had lots of fun collecting my old art pieces for this post. Truly, I miss my elementary self who loved to draw no matter how imperfect his pieces were. But with everything going on right now, I’m not sure if I can revive my dead artist any time soon, which is pretty depressing.

But anyway, I really hope you enjoyed this post. If you did, a like and comment would really show it and help me out. Also, subscribing would ensure that you receive more posts like this every week or so :).

Thank you so much for being here and supporting me. As always, I love you all and wish you and wonderful, wonderful day!

Keep on being creative <3