Frustration with art: It's going to happen

In my weekly free classes that I teach to mostly children we sometimes see some extreme levels of frustration emerge from the participants. I don't push the kids to perform or anything like that and there are no grades, tests, or homework. The classes that I teach are meant to be fun and to help the kids to find their inner artist, but every now and then someone gets a bit angry because things just aren't working out the way that they had hoped. I think this is very common and I have experienced this same sensation many times in my life and one of the places that I had it happen the most frequently was when I was attempting, and failing, at trying to replicate the human face.

I think it is one of the most complicated and difficult things in art to accomplish and that is why the masters are really thought of as being true talents when they are able to make a painting or a sketch actually look like someone. Recently, a student who I think it soo hard on herself got frustrated when trying to do one of, in my opinion, most difficult parts of a human face to replicate on paper: The eyes.

We ended up laughing about it later but when the frustration kicked in, she was on the verge of tears because she just couldn't get it "right" in her mind. You can see where she started to stab at the paper a bit and then just went bananas on the paper at the top. I suggested that we change what we were working on and do something a little more light-hearted and we did some cartoon dogs and cats instead. In moments she was laughing and enjoying herself again and the next thing I know the rest of the class wanted to draw cartoons as well. This is something I can really understand because creating realism in art is sometimes the most boring type of art to do.

So because of that we all transitioned over to doing something silly and I think that is important not just in art, but in anything in life. If what you are working on makes you frustrated, and especially if it has you on the verge of tears, maybe it is time to switch gears a bit and try something else?

We do focus on realism in my classes about 1/3 of the time because silly cartoons are a dime a dozen. I never force any of my students to do anything in particular, I just want them to have a well-rounded skill set or at least, a minimum level of ability in a wide range of things. The way that I transitioned this away from just doing cartoons was that we looked at some famous comic book characters and I pointed out to them that faces are a big part of that as well.

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Just take one of the most famous comic book heroes of all time, Superman. His chiseled facial structure is a relatively important part of his aura, wouldn't you say? While this is nowhere near as difficult as creating a realistic replica of a famous living person, it is still a skill that once you get it, you just get it. The people drawing these things over at DC didn't spend hours working on each face, it just became something that they got used to and it became easy to them. Of course this took a lifetime of practice as well as some natural talent and vision, but the idea is the same. They had to work at it to become a master of it.

I still stand by what I said before though and think that art should never become something that someone dreads doing and if you find yourself getting frustrated in anything that you are doing, perhaps it is time to take a break and focus on something that you can do easily and maybe return to the difficult stuff later? The last thing I want to do is burn a student out and chase them away from attempting art and I think this is important to anyone that isn't even studying artistry. This should be a wonderful journey, not a battle. I'm hoping that the little girl that was working so hard on those eyes in the first picture comes back to them later and succeeds. I'm not going to push her to do it, but I have been leaving her subtle hints that she is "nearly to the finish line." We'll see if she responds. I hope so!