Something I've been feeling for a while and managed to get it down on paper.

Artists: Illustration. Writing. Music. Sculpting. Photography. Designers. Builders. Any form of creative skill. All artists face their own creative demons.

Artists love to create. They love to visualize an idea and then using their skills, bring that idea to life and share it with everybody. It is their voice. Their passion. No matter what, the gears in their mind continue to turn, producing new ideas and new concepts to design and bring out into the world - a never-ending machine of creativity and imagination. Artists grow and their skills in the field evolve. They learn from other artists and try to apply their skills and tricks into their own. Many even collaborate with other artists and greater imaginative ideas and concepts spring to life.

Artists love critiques. They love to hear what other people think of their art. Its a fuel that drives their motivation to create. It is like rooting for your favorite team to win. With their fans supporting them, the team will try their best to win that game. Give the same to a creative person and they too will make sure they create something that will blow everyone away.

Even though artists love to create and inspire others, it can also be a demanding field when it comes to popularity, supply and demand, and financial situations. With the skills and creative ideas they developed, they try to please their audience and create pieces of art in hopes that they could make a small sale - money from their audience that will help the artist financially and continue to create and inspire others. They constantly create in order to keep their creative and financial river flowing in order to keep their motivation boat from sinking. Sometimes the river stops flowing and the artists has to rely on new ways to make them continue to move forward.

There are times when an artist of any field reaches a point where they start to attack their own ideas and creativity. This can be a pile up of self doubt, self respect, lack of energy and/or even a long case of art block. They try to do a piece of artwork but they don't feel the love or accomplishment they used to feel for other pieces they've created. No matter how they look at what they've created, or what the people say, the artist is the final judge on if the piece they created is an accomplishment or a failure. They try to fix it, look at it in another way, even try to redo the entire thing from scratch, but through their eyes, it ends as a failure. The voice inside their head, their own voice of critique, tells them they they fail as an artist, that they will never make enough money to support their work, that they are frauds and not a true creative person, that they will never match up to any artist higher and they should quit. It questions them on why they should try and continue when they feel like no one likes what they create or that what they create is not good enough. Frustration and self doubt follows until any lack of motivation to continue to create fades. This can go on for days, months or even years. An artist's environment and lack of support and motivating can also effect on their creative drive and could be used against them as a weapon for their internal demons. Artists are their own worst enemy and their own worst critic when it comes to their self worth and what they create.

To defeat that voice in their head, they must find another way to express their ideas - something that shouts out to them. By finding a scene of joy and curiosity in their work that they haven't felt before, they will continue down that adventure and see where it takes them. Deep down they know that they will face that same creative demon again. Every time they face that demon, they grow stronger. They know how to erase such a voice from their mind and continue to create. Sometimes they can't fight it on their own and need help, even though they are too proud to admit that they need help or they keep it to themselves until it starts to surface in their behavior. If you know anyone who is going through their own creative demons and you faced yours before, try helping them surpass their negative thought and show them what they can do to keep creating.

Keep drawing. Keep writing. Keep creating. Create what you love.

artwork © 2017 Alex Cockburn