How To Defeat Resistance. My Most Extensive Painting Process Documented.

Today, I'd like to show you that creative process rarely comes in a straight line. My latest painting of little girl sitting under Sun Tree (I have not named it yet to be honest) is a great example of it. Path to the final result was curvy, which is not uncommon. What's rare about it is that I documented the progress quite well.

Detail of bottom section.

The final result. By no means this was an easy birth.

As a pro artist, you need to become one resilient mathafaka. You have to rebel against a powerful enemy who possesses intimidating war machinery and numerous allies. You'll be outnumbered and hopeless, but if you persist, you won't ever be alone.

Resistance has countless tricks up her sleeve to prevent you from picking up the brush (pen, music instrument, microphone...you name it) and taking the first creative step up the grind. Resistance will make you procrastinate to the latest possible moment, selling you one fascinating and credible story after another why Now is not the good moment to lift you ass from the sofa and do your work.

This is how this adventure started...

You need to cultivate the rock solid unbreakable habit to put in your hours of creative work. Daily. No matter how shitty you feel, no matter how pleasing the option B (escape strategy) seems, no matter how crappy the result of your efforts on that particular day might turn out. As far as your limbs are still attached to your body, you have to deliver the mission, you gotta execute.

About an hour down the road

There's a secret that a real artist knows that wannabe artists don't, and the secret is: It's not the creative part that's hard. What's hard is sitting down (or standing up) and begin. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.

An angel, baby and Earth. Am I getting mad?

I absolutely urge everyone who has a calling (which is EVERYBODY, what differs is just level of awareness/denial of it) to read Steven Pressfield's “War of Art”. Read it back and forth. Read it upside down. Tattoo that shit deep in the annals of your subconscious. This is a bible of anyone who has a dirty secret dream to leave the sewer of mediocrity and rat race and become a pro. Just read it and thank me later.

Divine Mother! Really?:)

Ok so after spending 2 days on it, I had to finally face the reality: I don't like it

Ditch the weird looking Holy Mother, destroy the Earth, keep the baby!

New idea strikes me: baby in the tree!

Ok this time I'll pull it off. That baby looks good nestled up there!

Continuing the work on the sky

Fancy rose clouds. I still believe in it

At last I gave up the pretty blue halo. Doesn't match the rest of colors. And the Girl under the tree comes to life.

Tree looks like tree now, but I'm still clinging on the baby sunny-boy.

This was just about when it hit me: the baby has to go. It looks weird as f..k. Shit, all that precious time wasted! That's a joke. I know very well that no time working is ever wasted. If I did not follow whatever came to me, I would not come to the final result. Roads of heaven are thorny and curvy but worth every drop of sweat and blood in the end!

R.I.P. Sunny boy

Final phase before I start the final version of tree. And even that I started over 2 times before I landed the right shape that I liked bad enough to say “that's my tree!”

Unfortunately I forgot to take a few snapshots of the very last phase, which is a pity cause adding the leaves and the rays of sun filtered through them at the very end was lots of fun. I got carried away by Muse, when she rewarded my persistence and sucked me into her flow where all the distractions of outside world are forgotten.

I hope you got the lesson from this one. As soon as you face Resistance, you enter a bloody business. You become ruthless mercenary, a rebel. You gotta persist and let the idea of pretty result go and just keep on grinding. You're not here to please anyone. You're not here to seek approval. You're here to do your job, to hone your god given talents and defy anything standing in your way.

Muse always comes to aid those who don't give up.

Keep rocking it fellow warriors! You got all it takes!

Much Love,
Jan

Follow @jankasparec

Only after I put them together I realized that the girl and boy look like they've been looking for each other. Twin flames? Only Divine mama knows!