Oh yes, I get these very feelings every once in a while. I say just forget it. Then I see something that makes my heart pitty patter and I can't quit looking at it. I start thinking about how I can render a likeness. They off I go again for awhile. I have certainly learned that I am not actually quitting. Just going into a slumber of sorts until my muse is awakened. Most often it is something in nature that you can't buy or sell. That look, those colors always bring me back.

Yes, I know that feeling! At least once every class or painting trip I take I say: Why do I do this? Why do I set myself up to fail again and again? Once I realised that that point probably HAD to come, I learned to deal with it and just go on painting or drawing. I can even encourage other painters who struggle when they reach this point. But I can also put my paintings next to paintings I did last year or the year before and finally SEE that I have learned something. And that is the reason I continue.

OMG, this just doesn't apply to your type of creative expression Laure! If you only new how many times I've quit my art (sewing). Almost every time I make what we call a "wadder" (something that did not turn out as it should) I've quit! Then like one of your other subscribers mentioned, I see something that draws me right back! It can be an expensive article in the store or magazine that I tell myself..." I can make that a lot cheaper". Then befor I even know it, I'm back to sewing again! (and praying not to make another wadder!)

I guess we creative types just know how keep ourselves motivated (or punish ourselves, whichever way you want to look at it!). My guess is you are the very same way!

Oh yes, I do have these 'bouts' frequently. It's the same with my exercise...I get frustrated when I don't see immediate progress and just throw up my hands or brushes and ask myself what do I think I am doin trying to paint. So I let things lay around and gather a bit of dust and suddenly something catches my eye and I have to visualize how I would render it. Then I pick up and go at it again. The classes that I have taken from you have been very timely in helping me push forward. Thanks!

This was so timely for me. I think that "quitting" for me is that I realize that really I've been attempting to capture that mystery that makes life so beautiful. And not just beautiful, but real, poignant and makes me realize how precious life is. It's almost like a recognition back to whatever I'm "painting.drawing". It's just that they can turn out so awkward and not at all beautiful...........

Well, I hate to say it, but I've quit agian, too. Sometimes I just get to the point where I don't feel like putting every single thing in my day into a painting, and sometimes I don't feel like sharing my art with the world. I still keep a visual journal where I add sketches but they are just for me. Maybe one day I'll go public again.

It's a relief to know I am not the only one in the world to feel this way! Yes I have quit many times, in fact I had quit again though am back. Sometimes I got caught up with the struggle of keeping a source of regular income and used the lack of time as an excuse. At times the art work of other artists inspired me to pick the brush again but mostly for me it was a way of dealing with the disappointments in life. Every time my soul and heart needed healing I came back to it. I find it therapeutic.

Oh, yes--I've often felt like quitting--writing in my case. I feel like I have nothing to say, or at least nothing anyone would be interested in hearing, or I bore myself, or I get frustrated in my efforts to "write beautifully," something I aspire to. This often means I need a break to fill the artistic well and get out of my usual rut. Somehow writing creeps back in, whether it's time spent doing morning pages or a sudden idea for something that demands to be written.

I think sometimes I want to quit because I expect too much of myself and I dont see that in order to progress I need to make many things wrong, may be the key is to permit ourselves to paint, or write or draw bad whitout let the jugde we have inside emit his opinion!
any way is a relief to know Im not the only one who want to quit sometimes!

Thought about quitting, but can't. Pull of paint, color and brush irresistible. Besides, that "magical breakthrough" might be just around the corner :-) Though it's dawning on me that there is no single magical breakthrough... a continual series of little "a ha" moments that eventually work their own magic.

By the way... Hi Laure! LOL

Cathy Inzer's thoughts and your response just hit a chord in me. I've just come back from a wonderful camping trip and was wondering why I do so many field sketches. Anything drawn from one of my photos is more accurate ... so why bother?

Your response about capturing the memory rang true..The field sketches are capturing the memory. There is nothing quite like capturing an odd pose of an ibis or just what late afternoon sun does on an egret, or the robin that drank 38 sips in a row from the little pond of water I just put out .... memories.