Logarithmic Growth

Logarithmic Growth - Improvements come quickly in the beginning, but your gains decrease over time.

I have a confession: I'm feeling very dissatisfied with my art.

For the last two years or so, most paintings I finish leave me with a feeling of... meh. I don't hate them. They're okay. But they aren't great and I'm consistently left thinking, "I could do better."

When this first started, I wasn't concerned. I've gone through periods of art block many times before. I would go through a few weeks or maybe a few months feeling frustrated with my work. Then, one day, a bolt out of the blue would hit me and I would know what I was missing. Queue some frantic practicing and then... breakthrough. I'd make my favorite painting to date.

That breakthrough moment is one of the best feelings as an artist, and it is always preceded by a period of frustration. But I've just never had a period of frustration last this long. I was looking back at some of my work from over a year ago, and I remembered that I was feeling frustrated way back then! Can art block really last for over a year? And not only that, but I felt like I just haven't improved much. I've been practicing, so what's going on??

I confided in my partner, Caulen, about how I was feeling and he had some incredible insight: Artist progress isn't linear, it's logarithmic. In other words, the better I get, the slower my progress will be.

In the beginning, a budding artist will make incredible progress. In just a few weeks, they could improve dramatically as they learn the fundamentals. But over time, that progress will start to plateau. Skills that are more advanced take more time to learn, and what differentiates a good artist from a great artist is often remarkably subtle.

Though frustrating, there is a silver lining to all this: consistency. I was discussing my dream of creating a tarot deck with a friend recently, and he was encouraging me to "just go for it!" I responded that I appreciate his enthusiasm, but that I'm just not ready. A tarot deck contains 78 cards—by the time I made the 78th illustration, I'd hate the first 50! I might not even have remotely the same art style after that many paintings!

But someday, my art style will stabilize and I can use that logarithmic plateau to my advantage in order to tackle large projects: a tarot deck, a solo show, a graphic novel, etc. For now, I will just keep practicing! Progress may be slow, but it is steady.

I hope this insight will help some of you, too. Maybe the plateau you are experiencing is just a sign that you aren't a beginner anymore. Maybe you aren't failing—maybe you're just expecting exponential growth from a logarithmic process.