Motivation Tips For Artists In A Slump

Have You Lost Your Creative Motivation

How exciting is it when you are in the middle of a project, and your artwork is coming out exactly as you envisioned it? Your art inspiration is at its highest. Nothing can get in the way of completing your latest creation.

What happens shortly after you have completed your latest masterpiece?

Are you as eager to start a new project as you were to finish your latest painting or drawing?

Motivation comes and goes for many artists, but you can take control of your inspiration.

Self-motivation is key to your growth, whether you are trying to enhance your creative side or are interested in learning how to sell art.

Here are some motivational tips that will inspire you to create art daily.  

Create Good Habits

Everything you do in life on autopilot (performing the same actions every day without thinking about it) is a habit.

A habit is an acquired behavior pattern regularly followed until it has become almost involuntary. (Source: Dictionary.com)

There are good habits and bad or unhealthy habits that people learn throughout their life.

Here are some examples of bad habits people wish they could break:

• Smoking
• Drinking too much alcohol
• Biting fingernails
• Swearing

Here are some examples of good habits:

• Eating healthy foods
• Being organized
• Brushing teeth three times a day
• Be responsible with money

These are examples of some everyday habits people learn over their lifetime.

People adopt habits because of three components, whether they are aware of it or not.

Three components of habits: (Source Forbes)

• The cue or trigger
• The action
• The reward

It takes an average of 66 days for a habit to become automatic, like brushing your teeth in the morning.

If you want to enhance your artistic skills or start selling your artwork, you must form habits that will have you creating art daily, whether you want to or not.

The artists who wait to be inspired to create art waste valuable time and prolong them to achieve their goals.

Here are some ways you can adopt good habits to keep you motivated and have you create art even during the tough times.

Set Small Goals

Successful people set goals for their personal life and their work. 

Setting goals is one reason why they are successful. They set goals for what they want to achieve and develop action steps to achieve their goals.

Setting goals is one of the best ways to keep yourself on track with what is essential for you.

If you have never written goals before, start with small ones you can achieve, like, I will paint for 20 minutes every day or finish one painting this week.

Write down your goal every morning when you wake up, review your goal, and develop a plan for that day to help you achieve your weekly goal.

Reward yourself if you reach your goal by the end of the week.

If you fall short, try again next week. Think about what happened during the week that prevented you from achieving your weekly goal.

• Was your goal unrealistic?
• Did you allow yourself enough time to complete your goal?
• Did you put your plan on the back burner and say you would get to them at a later time?
• Were you quickly distracted?

Continue to write weekly goals for two months and work hard to achieve your goals.

By the end of two months, you will be writing weekly goals on autopilot.

After two months, you will want to start writing larger goals like one-month or six-month goals. The weekly goals you write should complement your larger goals.

The goals you document will help you stay on track and motivate you to create art.

Finish Your Projects

Do you find yourself starting new projects before you finish the projects you have already started?

Starting a new project is always exciting while working on the tedious details of a painting can feel overwhelming and exhausting. 

Continuing to start a new project before finishing a project you have already started will become a bad habit you will have to break if you are interested in selling your paintings.

Set small goals to finish every project you start if you struggle with finishing paintings or drawings.

At first, it will be a challenge, but you will feel excited once the painting is finished.

The next painting you start might also be challenging, but force yourself to complete the project no matter how challenging it is.

In time you will find yourself motivated to complete every project you start.

Discipline

So far, we have talked about setting small goals and finishing projects before starting a new one.

The actions you are taking to achieve those strategies are building your self-discipline skills.

Self-discipline is the training of oneself, usually for improvement (Source: Dictionary.com), and can be learned. The more you force yourself to paint or draw, even when you do not feel up to it, will make you stronger and more productive with your time.

Start with your small goals and strive to get every task you set out to complete accomplished.

Schedule Time To Create Art

Scheduling time to create art will help you with your discipline skills.

Write down on your calendar what time you will start painting and what time you will stop.

As we have mentioned earlier, starting a new project is always exhilarating. The enthusiasm wears off when the tedious work begins. This is a typical emotional rollercoaster ride many artists face. 

Having time blocked off for painting when you hit a challenging part is essential. During the time scheduled, you will spend time working on the problematic aspects of the painting, and while doing so, you will learn different art skills that will make those struggles less of a challenge. 

At first, deciding the amount of time you can commit might seem difficult. Take a look at your weekly priorities and see when the best time to paint will be. Write it down on the calendar if you can fit in an hour or two on the weekend. If it is better for you to work half an hour every night during the week to have the weekends off, write it down on your calendar. 

In just a few weeks, you will start going to work without realizing it.

Working on your art projects will soon become part of your weekly routine. 

Acknowledge your Accomplishments

Seeing progress is the best way to motivate yourself to push harder to get more done.

At the end of every week, take some time to review your goals and accomplishments and see how far you’ve come.

Create an online portfolio if you don’t already have one.

Revisiting work you completed six months or a year ago and seeing your progress over that time is motivating, inspiring, and exhilarating. 

Keeping all of your art in a portfolio at home is another excellent way to revisit your artwork. 

Challenge Yourself

Do you find yourself painting the same subject?

If you find yourself in a rut, it might be because you are working within your “safety zone.”

Creating art in your “safety zone” means working on projects that do not challenge you. You have worked hard to learn the artistic skills you have mastered, but sometimes you will need to challenge yourself to continue to grow as an artist. 

Challenging yourself to work on other creative ideas can be a powerful tool to help keep the spark glowing. 

Schedule time during the week to take an art challenge. Even if you can only schedule thirty minutes a week to invest in an art challenge, what you get out of the thirty minutes will be tenfold. 

Earn Money From Your Creations

Selling your work will motivate you to create more art. There is no better feeling for an artist than when an art collector purchases your artwork. 

Knowing that a person wants to display what you created in their home will fuel your creative fire.

Once you start selling your art, you will be motivated to create more art.

Even when there are days when you feel less than creative, you will force yourself to go into the studio because you know that you can not sell what you don’t have.  

Whether selling your art on a website builder or at local craft shows, you will always have something to work towards. 

To learn how to sell paintings online, visit How To Sell Paintings Online Complete Guide. 

Create An Inspiring Workspace

Having a clean, well-organized workplace will motivate you to start painting every day. Nothing is more discouraging than going into a studio where you must spend an hour cleaning and organizing before you can start creating. 

Invest in art storage containers to keep everything neat and organized in your workspace. 

Schedule ten minutes to clean your work area after you have finished for the day. It will be much easier for you to be creative the next day if you can start working on your project immediately.

Read Motivational Quotes

Motivational quotes are inspirational and can keep you on track.

There are many motivational quotes out there. Write down your favorite quotes and place them everywhere in your studio so you can get your focus back when your mind starts to drift.

Here are some posts to gather some inspirational art quotes:

• 50 Motivating That Will Ignite Your Inspiration
• 80 Inspirational Art Quotes
• 40 Inspirational Art Quotes From Famous Artists

What Motivates You To Make Art

Everyone is unique and has different daily priorities. What motivates one artist might not inspire another. The list above is everyday strategy entrepreneurs use to keep them going even when they would rather be on vacation. 

What are some ways you stay motivated? Please share them with us in the comment section.

Final Thoughts On Motivation Artist Tips

Staying motivated can be challenging at times. Things in life happen that derail people from their everyday life. Permit yourself to take a day off if needed to clear your mind. But the next day, you will want to take out your goals and start working on the strategies you have created to achieve your goals.

Success and motivation start with setting goals and planning. The more you prepare, the easier your job will be. Create healthy habits and continue to work on your goals.

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