How to do something your passionate about without having a burnout. First I think the best way to approach this topic is the definition of a burnout as an artist. Creative burnout can be defined as that heavy feeling of exhaustion and lack of interest in the work that you do. Creative Burnout tends to be particularly heart breaking because artists are very passionate.
As an artist myself I had only had two burnout's that lasted for a long period of time and unfortunately they were also caused by my mental health. I have PTSD and Bipolar disorder so my depressive states sometimes are very crippling to me. During these times I find that I get super frustrated because I use my art as a way of copping with my mental health. So during a burnout last year I had in March right after I turned 21 years old found out I was pregnant and in a abusive relationship. On top of the already pile of emotions I had going on I found out one of my sister had passed away. So art became a crutch for me and my emotions only what I didn't realize is that I had become burned out from making art constantly.
During those next two months I decided on a few things. I could not use my art as my only copping skill because that's how I found myself in this burnout of going through the motions of making art and not enjoying it. The other thing I learned is that I needed to do art projects focused toward me and what I like and wanted to create. It may seem selfish but try to do this exercise and you will maybe discover that you miss making art for yourself not with the soul intention to have to make a YouTube video or having to post it on social media.
For me during this time I did some refocusing on my art goals and the goals of my business. I decided that I needed to do some re-branding to my business model and it allowed me to recenter my focus it gave me more hope that I would come out of this burnout stronger than ever and guess what I did. I built my website during this time as a hub for gathering all my creative social medias to one webpage. I also started my art Instagram in May of 2019. In September of 2019 I made my Twitter account also in the month of September I made my first artwork sell. When most people hear the word burnout they see it as a negative term not as a potential blessing to rediscover a piece of who you are and why you began doing the work your passionate about to begin with.
Being your own boss has the stigma that you make your own hours and you can work from anywhere as long as you have a laptop, a notebook and pen. What Most of these people don't tell you is the amount of actual hours spent working on building the business, answering the endless emails, hoping you get a brand deal or someone interested in buying a product. They don't tell you the amount of hours spent learning how to design a website or the amount of hours spent learning how to use video editing software and photo editing programs. It isn't as easy as it seems because nine times out of ten those people have spent two to four years building a pushing out content to get to the place they are went you first saw a sponsored blog post while scrolling Instagram or Facebook.
I didn't want to use the blog as a way of telling sad not uplifting things but truth is life isn't always sunshine and rainbows. Sometimes truth out ways the passive aggressive mindset of I am 100 percent happy everyday. Another purpose of these blog posts is to show you a glimpse into my mindset in hopes you get to know me and some of the reasons behind my artwork.
I want to show my favorite pieces of artwork that I will be made into a digital video and including the traditional coloring pages to go with them.
This is one of the coloring pages that I did traditionally with my old style of videos. If you want to check out the video that this was originally done.
The other one is a coloring page of a rose with skull bow on it that I did in ball point pen and it made me want to do as a digitally piece.
I am hoping to make both of these video with this next week. I also want to start a new w but I have to wait on an approval from the creator of the line work. I was always raised to when you use someone else work even if it is a coloring page and you color it that if the artists of the line work is known you give the line work credit to that artists. So i try to do except for the ones i use from Pinterest because it could take me months to find the original artist. As I finishing this blog post i want to add in a new section to my blog posts. A sort of time table of what you can expect next from me.
This month: I will be posting my Inktober on the day of each day.
This Week: I will be making the video of the witch coloring combining the first video and adding it to the new video. Also this week (possibly today) I will be making the skull video.
Don't forget if you haven't already follow me on social media:
xoxo, MariesArtEST2017