When Artists Get Creative Burnout

Burnout affects everyone, and the harder you work, the more susceptible you are to it. How do you avoid it, and if you're going through it, how do you push through to the other side?

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Art by Megan van der Berg

Creative burnout affects everyone — and the harder you work, the more susceptible you are to it. How do you avoid it, and if you’re going through it, how do you push through to the other side? This week, Jake Parker, Lee White, and Will Terry discuss the different techniques you can use to manage stress and solve burnout, and how to work stress management into your daily life.

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SHOW LINKS

WORKBOOK

SEAN WES

MASTER COPIES

DAVID DIBBLE

ALLEN BROCKBANK

INTRO

Let’s get started right away!

By the time this podcast will launch, we will be more than halfway through Inktober. Let’s talk about burnout.

There are some certain key attributes that determine burnout -- it is different from stress, it is its own distinct thing.

RECOGNIZING BURNOUT

These are some of the signs of burnout:

  • It tends to start as exhaustion or fatigue that won’t go away.

  • There is procrastination in doing your work and you get more excited about doing other things, like laundry or cleaning.

  • Envy or jealousy may start to creep in when it seems that other people seem to work effortlessly.

  • New projects will not feel like they are worth the effort.

These are some of the differences between stress and burnout:

  • In stress, you put too much effort in. In burnout, it’s hard to put any effort in at all.

  • In stress, you feel strong emotions. In burnout, your feelings will be dulled.

  • In stress, you feel hyperactive in figuring out your problems, in burnout you might feel drained and helpless.

  • In stress, you have less energy, in burnout you have less motivation.

  • Stress takes a physical toll, burnout takes a physical and emotional toll that you can’t seem to shake.

The line can be blurry. Stress is short term, burnout goes deeper. The big thing is that burnout is a feeling of fatigue and non-engagement that is different from stress, whereas stress can be motivating while still being stressful.

When Jake is stressed, he is much more emotional and feels anger, sadness, or sentimentality a lot more intensely. At Jake’s most angry, he is still pretty polite! When Jake has burnout, he is apathetic. He has been there before.

Jake schedules out every 15 minutes of the day. He is super organized. This counteracts how bad he is at remembering things or losing track of time.

One way to test if you are burned out -- when you get the feeling “what’s the use”. You don’t get that with stress, just burnout.

Jake’s 2019 was extremely stressful, which led to burnout. His Mom passed away, he moved to a different state with his family, and he had to put in a lot of extra hours on the Inktober book, which is delayed as of this writing. Jake had to take on all of these extra duties that stressed him out. He went on vacation and wanted to sketch, but didn’t even touch his sketchbook -- he just sat on a chair and stared out of the window. He was burnt out. The obstacle is the way -- you need to plow through the obstacle in order to learn how to deal with it in the future, and overcome it permanently. Jake’s solution was to just be burnt out, and not do anything he didn’t want to do.

CAUSES

What causes burnout?

  • Continuous stress over time. One leads to the other.

  • Getting no feedback or feeling underappreciated for a long period of time.

  • An unchanging pattern.

Lee was burned out in his art school program, because he was stressed out constantly over a long period of time. He also had no techniques and had to learn how to draw and paint while also being really creative. That is why he enjoyed figure drawing at the time, because it didn’t take a lot of creative juice to do.

Lee is coming off of a burnout right now. He has done so many books over a long period of time, and the work began to lose its luster. He stopped feeling like he wanted to do another book. The workload started to feel like a workload. He is taking a long term break from commercial illustration and is doing a sabbatical, and focusing on experimental techniques.

WORKBOOK

There are a lot of people who wish they could quit the job when working in professional arts.

Sabbatical comes from the hebrew word Sabbath, which means to take a rest. It is a day of rest in the Jewish religion, usually on Saturdays. Many religions take a day of rest once per week as well. Some people take a year off of work every 7 years, it’s a really interesting idea.

SEAN WES

For a long time, Sean Wes would take a week off of work once every seven weeks. He would rent a cabin or an airbnb and just play music or read books. Jake does observe a sabbath day unless he has a crunch deadline, but he takes his weekends off if possible, and is also interested in the seven weeks and seven years methods.

Lee is now coming up with a lot more ideas now that he is not in the grind of commercial work. He is more creative and is noticing new things and methods.

When Will thinks about time in his career that he has been burnt out, he feels that as you grow you become less satisfied with the work that you did in the past, and so the same work will not give you the same degree of satisfaction. Will becomes apathetic when art directors or committees ruin the experience of the work through giving bad notes.

Artists are codependent with the viewer of the art -- they need the art to be seen and viewed. Would you make art if you were the last person alive?

The opposite of burnout is enthusiasm. Will loves when he can’t wait to wake up and work on a cool project.

If nothing is changing, even in a creative field, you can get burnt out. Repetition can be distressing. Consider changing your style or techniques.

HOW TO GET OUT OF BURNOUT

First steps: take breaks, take sabbaticals, and focus on how you feel and your thoughts. Extract yourself from making art. Take a step back and look at how much you are working, how many breaks you have taken, how much work you have done. Take a real break, not just one day.

Illustrators probably work, per hour, harder and longer than most other professions.

Exercise and sleep. These two things contribute a great deal to your overall health and life satisfaction. Give yourself time to work exercise into your schedule and it will pay off dividends in the future.

Jake used to be a night-time worker and would procrastinate a lot, half-working and half goofing off instead of sleeping. He realized it would be better to just sleep all the way and then work all the way in the mornings, and that changed his cycle.

Exercising in the mornings can set the stage for your day, and get your mind in the space it needs to be in to be productive. Getting a workout done as the sun rises is really satisfying.

Change your scenery. You don’t need to spend a lot of money to travel -- state parks are cheap, just get out of your space and see something new. Take a bus to the other side of town and explore. You’ll see something new. Go to a cafe that you have never been to before. Start the process of seeing things differently again.

Start to fill your library. Don’t go straight back to work, fill your artistic bank account. This is a great time to start getting inspired again, after you get out of burnout.

How do you avoid getting envious of the artists you research? Jake gets a little discouraged at times but reminds himself that he should focus on what he can make and what he is good at. You don’t have to be amazing at everything, just use what you see and apply it to what only you can make.

MASTER COPIES

Start with some master copies -- it gets the momentum going and lets you destress. You could also get all of the master reference and then do a drawing in the style of that artist.

DAVID DIBBLE

ALLEN BROCKBANK

After your master copies, consider building a little bit of experimentation into your work life. An unchanging pattern leads to burnout -- try a different medium, or mark making system, or subject matter. Start to play and ask questions. If you are too locked into your style, you put yourself at risk for burnout.

This can help you stay excited about your work.

Teaching can help you avoid burnout, you can be at any level and still find someone who needs your advice. Working with others and explaining something gives you the chance to see it anew. It is profoundly rewarding.

Pay attention to the thoughts and feelings that you are having. Burnout might mean that you need to make life changes. Perhaps a different kind of work or career. If you are dreading your work after a long break, it might be time to switch things up.

LINKS

Svslearn.com

Jake Parker: mrjakeparker.com. Instagram: @jakeparker, Youtube: JakeParker44

Will Terry: willterry.com. Instagram: @willterryart, Youtube: WillTerryArt

Lee White: leewhiteillustration.com. Instagram: @leewhiteillo 

Daniel Tu: danieltu.co.

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