Sharing Your Art Online – with the Whole World

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Sharing Your Art Online with the Whole World

The Hard Work of Making

Are you considering uploading your art on a blog or posting your creative pursuits on social media? Have you ever shared your art online – with the whole world? (It’s not as frightening as you think.)

As a seller of art, I’m seasoned with the catch-and-release cycle of Making. You make the art, you share the art, you let the art go live with someone else.

The Work of Making

Artists earn clarity about being creative by making a lot of art. Showing people the work you’ve done can be a crucial step in preparations to make more work.

Making art is rich with thinking time. The process of making – all by itself – is layered and complex. In the Hard Work of making, Active Creativity strengthens us in ways we might not realize;

• A familiarity with art-making tools (pigments, papers, brushes, inks, etc.)
• Spending time alone (with ourselves)
• Managing time in an unstructured environment (no boss, no deadlines)
• Increasing our capacity for grit (sticking with a project even when it’s challenging)
• Embracing the notion of being a beginner (getting cozy with repeated failures till we figure it out)
• Celebrating the finish (the Ta-Dah Moment of making your imaginings into something showable)

Art Hoarding

After all that hard work in the making of your art, you might feel an urge to keep, or cling to what you just made. 

Be acquainted with the difference between the artist’s making brain and the artist’s attachment brain.

Making art is the important work we do as artists. It grows fertile in creative expression, inspired ideas, self-discipline, experimentation, and focus.

Hoarding the art we make has a suspicious connection to pride, ego and attaboys.  Feeding those sentiments can seduce an artist into complacency in the studio. You don’t try as hard if you’re sitting idle, staring at your best painting.

Trust Yourself

Clinging to your work also says something about lack of trust – in yourself. 

If you believe you’ll never paint anything as well as your favorite painting, hoarding your best piece of art may be a real-life manifestation of that nay-sayer’s voice in your head.  

Title it, scan it for documentation in your files (you can stare at it on your screen, even if someone buys it), and share it with the world. Post it somewhere. Or post it in a lot of somewheres.

Re-route the map in your head. Drive your art-brain away from hoarding, share your work, and set a course to get yourself back to Making.  

Trust that you’ll have more creative successes in the studio because you’re earning them with brush miles.

Thanks for stopping by and I’ll see you in the next post –

Belinda

P.S. If you’re a reader, and inspiration has been hiding, consider The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin. It’s in my reading queue after several artist friends raved about it.

Art Quote

To create is to bring something into existence that wasn’t there before. ~Rick Rubin

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