Idk about you but when I finish a painting, for some reason I lose motivation to share it pretty quickly. Maybe it’s a mental block around rejection sensitivity, maybe it’s just because it’s not as exciting when it’s finished because then it’s on to the next one, maybe it’s something else.. whatever the case may be, I do believe it’s important to share those finished works and embrace the pride that comes with it! I took a lot of time completing these portraits of my good boys because they are really special to me and I was putting a lot of pressure on getting the details accurate. Now that they are finished I am very proud of them and I even hung them at a gallery showing right after I called it complete (the showing actually pushed me to finally complete them an stop putting it off) So heres my two best buddies portraits and I can proudly say how happy I am to have put aside my hesitation, doubt and fear to completed them. 😇 I would love to see some pieces that you are most proud of or that you may have had trouble completing but pushed through and finished anyways! Tell us the story behind it, what challenge you and how you overcame it. Let’s see your artwork friends!!

Hi everyone! I’m new here and happy to join the group. I’m friendly, I love art and creative work, and I enjoy meeting new people. Looking forward to connecting and growing together—hope you’ll welcome me with open arms 😊

Here’s one of my most recent “art vomits” 🤮 I was putting a ton of pressure on myself to make my dogs portraits perfect because they’re my sweet good boys and last year I focused a lot on doing memorial pet portraits for people that had lost their best friends recently. My furry friends are still with us and I think I was putting even more pressure on myself because I want to hang them up on my walls while they’re still with us for my family to enjoy and appreciate more while we still have them around. This immense pressure I was putting on those portraits to make them perfect had me locked up and they sat in my studio half finished and glaring at me with judgement 🫠 I’ve been dealing with quite a bit of stress from balancing work, family life, and trying to find time for myself as well. Winters also tend to be hard for me and the anxiety was building as I passed these half finished portraits each day, wanting so desperately to complete them but feeling bound by other responsibilities. So I decided to art vomit, get that stuff unstuck from my body and let it out on the canvas. No expectations. No regrets. Just release and appreciation for allowing myself to make some “ugly” art. I began with the most intense feeling of darkness, a black background then the anger and frustration, red thrown at the canvas and some quick chaotic brush strokes. Then some guilt release with some orange, blue and purples to represent the racing thoughts and scattered mind. Again, no expectations, just release of these emotions though my hand so that I could look at it and say “that’s where I left that, it no longer lives inside of me, it lives there on the canvas and I can move past it now” I felt better. It opened up a channel to create again and shortly after I got back into the final details of my portraits. I hung this piece in my art show this month, put my whole vulnerable self out into the world, wrote a short description of why I created the piece and entitled it “anxiety/fight or flight”

Hello beautiful Souls, My name is Iris and I am a Multidimensional Art Medicinewoman using ART (dance, paint, music) to heal and transced....and I am so so happy to see a masculine doing this amazing work too and would love to connect with "the others" as I am convinced that THIS is the medicine of the future and so so needed! Always happy to exchange knowledge and grow together! so happy to be here. much love

First, apologies for not being active here. My life has been crazy busy and hectic, lots going on and less than optimal motivation to show up here for my community. I had a lot of requests to join to community in my absence and as I was just going through and approving new members, I notice a consistent theme that I think affects all of us as artist and creatives. The motivation to start, the will to complete a project fully once reaching the end, and the confidence to let our whole selves show through in our work. All things that I have been struggling with as well lately so here’s some tips I can share on these topics and I hope everyone can jump into the comments and share what works for them as well! First, the beginning stages of art can be definitely the most challenging, sometimes we have all the ideas and don’t know which one to begin with, other times we feel blank and unmotivated but have that urge to create. When I have too many ideas I tend to take a few minutes to meditate on what I’m feeling internally first. Have the paints and supplies set up and ready to go, put on your favorite music and breathe deeply while feeling into what is asking to be released. A lot of times this brings me just enough clarity to get started and see what emerges from an initial inspiration. If you have a photo to work from or something more realistic or detailed in mind, having that photo out with a few minutes to reflect on what it means to you and why you want to replicate it sometimes helps open to space for a starting place. I always start with sketching out some details with a neutral or opposite color very lightly to get some things on the canvas that will add to the finish later. When I’m feeling more blank and uninspired I lean into that process more heavily and focus on releasing expectations of what I want my art to look like. I really focus on the emotions that are begging to escape my body and the colors associated with them. For example I regard anger as red and orange, yellow can represent electricity or high energy, green for love and connection, blues and purples for hard emotions like sadness and despair or sometimes even clarity and focus. I think of the colors as they relate to chakras and focus on the most powerful emotion I feel first, release expectation and just start making marks on the canvas however my hand needs to move that emotion out.