Every Artist Faces These Problems and How to Solve Them

Making art is basically a continuous series of problems. The painting isn't working. The concept feels unclear. The technique isn't giving you the results you want. The composition feels off but you can't figure out why. The work looks amateurish and you don't know how to elevate it.

Some artists treat these problems as disasters. Signs that they're not talented enough, that they should quit, that they'll never figure it out. Other artists treat problems as interesting puzzles. Challenges that make the work better when solved. Opportunities to develop skills and understanding.

The difference isn't talent or natural ability. It's problem-solving skill. The artists who keep improving and making stronger work are the ones who've developed systematic ways to identify problems, analyze them, and work through solutions. They don't have fewer problems. They just handle them better.

This is a learnable skill. You can get dramatically better at solving creative problems by understanding what types of problems exist, developing frameworks for analyzing them, and building a toolkit of approaches to try. Let's break down how to actually do this instead of just panicking when something goes wrong.

Reframing Problems as Opportunities

The first shift you need to make is psychological. Stop treating problems as evidence of your inadequacy and start treating them as information about what your work needs. Every problem is telling you something useful if you listen to it instead of just feeling bad about it.

When something isn't working, your first instinct is probably self-criticism. "This is terrible. I'm terrible. Why can't I get this right?" This emotional response is natural but completely useless for solving the actual problem. It keeps you stuck in feeling bad instead of figuring out what's wrong.

Try this instead. When you notice a problem, say out loud or write down: "Interesting. Something here isn't working yet. I wonder what it needs." This tiny language shift changes everything. "Not working yet" implies it's solvable. "What it needs" focuses on solutions instead of blame. "I wonder" creates curiosity instead of criticism.

Problems are your practice's way of pointing you toward the next level of skill or understanding. If everything was easy, you wouldn't be learning anything. The problems you face today are preparing you for the work you'll make tomorrow. This isn't just feel-good philosophy. It's literally how skill development works.

Think about problems you solved six months or a year ago. Things that felt impossible then are probably routine now. That composition challenge you couldn't crack? You figured it out and now you understand composition better. That technical issue that frustrated you for weeks? Working through it taught you something about your materials. The problems you face now will be your future competencies.

This means you should actually welcome problems, or at least stop resisting them so hard. They're not interruptions to your practice. They are your practice. Making art is problem-solving all the way down. The sooner you accept this, the more energy you have for actually solving things instead of wishing they weren't problems.

Start noticing the kinds of problems you face repeatedly. Do you struggle more with technical execution or conceptual clarity? Do you have trouble starting pieces or finishing them? Do you get bored with work halfway through or struggle to edit finished pieces? These patterns tell you where your growth edges are.

Recurring problems aren't signs of failure. They're signs of what your practice is trying to teach you. If you keep running into the same issue, it's because you haven't fully learned what that problem has to teach you yet. Once you master it, new problems will emerge. That's growth, not inadequacy.

Also recognize that some problems don't need to be solved. Sometimes the problem is that you're working on the wrong thing. Sometimes the problem is that you're trying to force an approach that doesn't suit you. Sometimes the solution is to abandon the piece and start over with what you learned. Not every problem deserves hours of struggle.

Learn to distinguish between problems that make you better and problems that just waste time. Problems that push your skills, force you to think differently, or teach you something about your materials are valuable. Problems that come from poor planning, inadequate preparation, or fundamental mismatch between your vision and your current abilities might be better solved by starting over smarter.

The reframe is simple but powerful: problems aren't proof you're not good enough. They're proof you're working at the edge of your abilities, which is exactly where growth happens. Artists who never face problems aren't better artists. They're artists who stopped challenging themselves.

Analytical vs Intuitive Problem Solving

There are two fundamentally different ways to approach creative problems. Analytical problem-solving is conscious, systematic, and rational. Intuitive problem-solving is unconscious, associative, and feeling-based. You need both, but most artists default to one and never develop the other.

Analytical problem-solving means breaking things down logically. When a painting isn't working, you analyze it systematically. Is the issue with composition? Value structure? Color relationships? Focal point? Scale? You work through possibilities methodically until you identify the specific problem. Then you research or experiment with targeted solutions.

This approach works brilliantly for technical problems. If your glazing isn't producing the effect you want, you can systematically test variables. Different mediums, different layer thickness, different drying times, different application tools. You change one variable at a time, observe results, and figure out what works.

Analytical problem-solving also works for identifying conceptual problems. Write down what you're trying to express. Write down what the work actually expresses. If there's a gap, you've identified your problem. Now you can think through what specific changes would close that gap.

The strength of analytical problem-solving is precision. You identify exactly what's wrong instead of just knowing something feels off. You can test solutions systematically instead of just trying random things and hoping. You build understanding that transfers to future work.

The weakness is that analytical thinking can't access everything. Some problems live in the intuitive, feeling-based part of your brain. Analyzing them doesn't help because the solution isn't logical. You need a different approach.

Intuitive problem-solving means trusting your gut and following impulses even when you can't explain why. When something feels wrong but you can't articulate what, you make changes based on feeling. You try something because it feels right, not because you can justify it rationally.

This approach is essential for aesthetic problems. Does this color feel right? You can't logic your way to that answer. You have to feel it. Is this composition working? Analysis helps, but ultimately you know through intuition. Should this line be here or there? Your hand knows before your brain can explain.

Intuitive problem-solving also accesses creative leaps that analysis can't make. You get stuck on a piece, you start working on something else, and suddenly you know what the first piece needs. You weren't thinking about it analytically. Your unconscious mind was processing it and delivered an answer.

The strength of intuitive problem-solving is that it can solve problems that don't have logical solutions. It accesses associative thinking, pattern recognition, and embodied knowledge that your conscious mind can't articulate. It's often faster because you're not working through every possibility systematically.

The weakness is imprecision and unreliability. Your intuition might be based on actual understanding or it might just be habit, ego, or fear disguised as instinct. You can't always trust it, especially early in your practice when your intuitions aren't based on much experience yet.

The best problem-solvers develop both capacities and know when to use each. Start with analysis to identify what kind of problem you're facing. Is this a technical issue with a clear cause and effect? Use analytical thinking. Is this an aesthetic question about what feels right? Trust intuition. Is this a complex problem with both technical and intuitive elements? Alternate between both approaches.

Sometimes you need to analyze your way to a framework, then intuit your way through the specifics. "Analysis tells me the composition needs a stronger focal point. Intuition tells me it should be in the upper left and warm-toned." Sometimes you need to intuit an interesting direction, then analyze how to execute it. "Intuition says this piece wants to be bigger and darker. Analysis tells me what technical adjustments that requires."

Practice the mode you're weaker at. If you're naturally analytical, do exercises that force intuitive decisions. Set a timer for 30 seconds and make a color choice based purely on feeling. If you're naturally intuitive, practice articulating your decisions. "I made this choice because..." even when the real answer is "because it felt right." The articulation builds analytical capacity.

Learn to recognize when you're in the wrong mode for the problem. If you've been analyzing a piece for an hour and getting nowhere, switch to intuitive experimentation. Just try stuff and see what happens. If you've been making intuitive changes but the piece isn't improving, switch to analytical thinking. What specifically isn't working?

The goal isn't to become purely logical or purely intuitive. It's to have both tools available and use them strategically. The best solutions usually come from the interplay between them.

Working Through Technical Challenges

Technical problems are the most straightforward to solve because they have clear causes and testable solutions. If you can't get paint to stick to your surface, if your proportions are always off, if your colors turn muddy, these are technical issues with technical solutions.

First, make sure you're actually facing a technical problem and not a conceptual or aesthetic one. Technical problems are about execution. You know what you want to achieve but can't figure out how. Conceptual problems are about not knowing what you're trying to achieve in the first place. Don't waste time solving technical problems when your real issue is conceptual.

Once you've confirmed it's technical, break the problem down into the smallest possible component. "My paintings look flat" is too broad. "I can't create a sense of depth using value contrast" is specific enough to work with. Get as granular as you can about exactly what isn't working.

Research is your first tool. Someone else has almost certainly faced this exact technical problem and figured out a solution. Search for tutorials, read technique books, watch demonstrations. Don't reinvent wheels. Stand on the shoulders of everyone who solved this problem before you.

But research only goes so far. You need to test solutions yourself because your specific materials, tools, and working process might require adjustments to standard techniques. This is where systematic experimentation comes in.

Design small experiments that isolate variables. If you're trying to figure out glazing, make a series of test pieces where you change only one thing at a time. Different mediums. Different layer thickness. Different drying times. Different pigment loads. Document what you do and what results you get.

This documentation is crucial. You think you'll remember, but you won't. Write down or photograph each test with notes about what you did. When you find something that works, you can replicate it. When something fails, you know not to try that again.

Don't try to solve technical problems while also making important work. Make test pieces. Use cheap materials or scraps. Give yourself permission to fail because you're learning, not performing. The pressure of trying to make something good while also solving a technical problem usually results in neither happening.

Sometimes technical problems are actually skill deficits. You can't draw hands well not because you don't know the technique, but because you haven't practiced enough. The solution isn't research or experimentation. It's repetition. Draw 100 hands. Then 100 more. Skill development isn't glamorous but it's necessary.

Other times technical problems come from inadequate tools or materials. You're struggling not because you're doing something wrong, but because your brushes are terrible or your paint quality is poor. Upgrading tools won't fix skill problems, but good tools do make proper technique easier to execute.

Learn to recognize when you're stuck on a technical problem you don't have the resources to solve right now. Maybe you need formal instruction. Maybe you need better equipment you can't afford yet. Maybe you need more foundational skills before this advanced technique will make sense. It's okay to set some technical challenges aside and work on what's accessible now.

Build a technical resource library. Save tutorials that helped you. Keep a notebook of techniques you've learned. Bookmark reference sources. When you solve a technical problem, document your solution so you can reference it later. Your future self will thank you.

Connect with other artists working in your medium. Technical knowledge is often passed person to person, not written in books. Someone might know a solution to your exact problem just from their own trial and error. Community is a technical resource too.

Stay patient with technical learning. Some techniques click immediately. Others take months or years to master. That's normal. If you're making progress, even slow progress, you're on the right track. If you're truly stuck after sustained effort, that's when you seek outside instruction or mentoring.

Remember that technical mastery is a moving target. As your work becomes more complex, you face new technical challenges. This continues throughout your career. Every artist is working at the edge of their technical abilities. The edge just keeps moving.

Conceptual Problem Resolution

Conceptual problems are harder to solve than technical ones because they're often harder to identify. Your work feels weak or unclear but you can't pinpoint why. The pieces are technically competent but don't have impact. You're making things but you don't know what you're trying to say.

Start by articulating what you're trying to do, even if you can only do it badly. Write a terrible artist statement. Try to explain your work to someone. The attempt to articulate forces clarity about what you're actually trying to achieve versus what you're achieving.

If you can't articulate your concept, that's your problem. You're making work without clear intention. This isn't always bad in early exploratory phases, but eventually you need to know what you're doing and why. Spend time developing conceptual clarity before making more work.

Use writing to think through conceptual problems. What is this work actually about? Why does it matter? What am I trying to express or explore? Who is it for and what do I want them to experience? These questions feel pretentious or overthought, but answering them makes your work stronger.

Look for the gap between intention and execution. "I want to express isolation but my work feels decorative." Now you have a specific problem to solve. What makes something feel isolating versus decorative? What formal choices create that psychological response? How do other artists achieve isolation? You can research and experiment with solutions.

Sometimes the problem is that your concept is too broad or cliched. "I'm exploring identity" is so vague it's meaningless. Get specific. What aspect of identity? Whose identity? What question about identity interests you? The more specific your concept, the stronger your work can be.

Other times the problem is that your concept is disconnected from genuine personal investment. You're making work about something you think you should care about but don't really. The solution here is honesty. What do you actually care about, even if it seems small or weird or unmarketable? Make work about that instead.

Conceptual problems often reveal themselves through boredom. If you're bored making your work, that's important information. Maybe the concept isn't substantial enough to sustain a body of work. Maybe you've already explored it fully and need to move on. Boredom means something needs to change.

Research how other artists handle similar concepts. Not to copy them, but to see the range of approaches possible. If you're working with memory, look at 20 artists who explore memory. Notice how different their solutions are. This expands your sense of what's possible and might trigger ideas for your own work.

Create conceptual experiments. Make small pieces that test different approaches to your concept. If you're exploring vulnerability, make one piece that's literal and one that's abstract. Make one that's minimal and one that's maximally expressive. See which feels truest to what you're trying to do.

Talk through your work with trusted people who ask good questions. Not people who just say it's great, but people who push you to think more clearly. "What are you trying to do here? What does this symbol mean to you? Why did you choose this color?" External questions help you articulate things you know intuitively.

Sometimes conceptual problems reveal that you're making work for the wrong reasons. You're trying to please a gallerist or fit into a market or respond to trends. The solution is often scary: make the work you actually want to make, even if it seems uncommercial or different from what you're known for.

Other times the problem is overthinking. You've analyzed your concept so much that it feels dead. The solution is to stop thinking and start making. Trust that the meaning will emerge through the work instead of trying to figure it all out in advance.

Look at your body of work as a whole rather than individual pieces. Sometimes the conceptual problem is that pieces don't relate to each other clearly. You need a unifying thread or question that ties them together. Sometimes the problem is that they're too similar and you need more range within your concept.

Give concepts time to develop. Your first understanding of what you're doing is often surface-level. After making ten pieces, you might realize what you're actually exploring is different from what you thought. After 30 pieces, you might have yet another understanding. Concepts deepen through making.

Don't be afraid to abandon concepts that aren't working. Not every idea deserves a full series. Sometimes you need to make enough work to realize the concept isn't substantial enough or interesting enough to you. That's not failure. That's learning.

The strongest conceptual work comes from the intersection of personal investment and formal exploration. You care deeply about the content and you're finding interesting ways to express it visually. If either is missing, that's what you need to develop.

When to Persist vs When to Pivot

Knowing when to keep pushing through a problem versus when to abandon the approach is one of the hardest creative skills to develop. Push too long and you waste time on something that will never work. Give up too early and you miss the breakthrough that was just ahead.

There's no perfect formula, but there are indicators that help you decide. First, assess how you're spending your time. Are you actively solving the problem, trying new approaches, learning something with each attempt? Or are you just repeating the same failed approach over and over? The first is productive struggle. The second is stubbornness.

Consider how long you've been working on this problem. Days? Keep going. Weeks? Probably keep going but maybe try a different approach. Months? Seriously question whether this is the right problem to solve right now. Years? You might be working on something beyond your current skill level or resources.

Notice whether you're making progress, even if it's slow. If each attempt is getting closer to what you want, keep going. If your tenth attempt isn't noticeably better than your first, something fundamental isn't working and you need to change approach.

Ask yourself why you're persisting. Is it because you're learning valuable things even though this specific piece might fail? Good reason to continue. Is it because you've already invested so much time that stopping feels like waste? That's sunk cost fallacy. Past time spent doesn't make continuing valuable. Only future learning does.

Consider opportunity cost. What else could you be making or learning with this time? Sometimes the problem isn't that continuing is bad, but that there are better uses of your limited time and energy. Maybe this problem will be easier to solve after you develop other skills.

Get external perspective when you're stuck on this decision. Show someone the work and explain what you're trying to achieve. They can often see whether you're close to a breakthrough or spinning your wheels. Fresh eyes catch things you can't see anymore.

Try the "if this was someone else's work" thought experiment. If another artist showed you this problem, what would you advise? Sometimes you're harder on yourself than necessary or more stubbornly persistent than you'd be with someone else's work.

Set a deadline for decision. "I'll work on this for three more sessions. If I haven't made significant progress by then, I'm moving on." Having a boundary prevents endless grinding. It also often creates urgency that leads to breakthrough.

Sometimes the right move is neither pure persistence nor full abandonment. You can set the piece aside and come back to it later. Take a break, work on other things, build new skills. Often you'll know what it needs when you see it with fresh eyes after time away.

Recognize that persistence is often right for problems at the edge of your abilities. These are hard because they're teaching you something new. Giving up every time something is difficult means you never grow. But persistence is usually wrong for problems that are way beyond your current abilities. Those need skill development first.

Your energy and emotional state matter too. If working on this problem is making you hate your practice, that's information. Even if the problem is solvable, the cost to your wellbeing might not be worth it. Protect your relationship with making work over any individual piece.

Learn your own patterns. Some artists give up too easily when things get hard. They need to practice pushing through discomfort. Other artists are stubborn grinders who work on failing pieces long past the point of usefulness. They need to practice letting go. Know which tendency you have.

Failed pieces aren't wasted time if you learn something. Even if you ultimately abandon the work, the problem-solving attempts taught you things that inform future work. That's valuable even when the specific piece fails.

Trust your intuition but verify it. When you get a strong feeling that you should abandon something or that you're close to solving it, pause and check. Is this feeling based on actual assessment or just frustration or hope? Sometimes you need to override intuition with analysis. Sometimes intuition knows something analysis can't access.

The meta-skill is getting better at this decision over time. Pay attention to when you made the right call to persist or pivot. Learn from times you gave up too early or pushed too long. This calibration improves with experience if you reflect on your decisions.

Learning from Failed Solutions

Failure is only wasted if you don't extract the lesson. Every failed solution contains information about what doesn't work, what might work, and what you need to understand better. Learning to analyze failures instead of just feeling bad about them is what separates artists who improve from artists who stay stuck.

First, actually acknowledge the failure instead of just moving on quickly. Look at what didn't work. Take a photo if it's going to be painted over or discarded. Write notes about what you tried. Future you needs this information.

Get specific about what failed. Don't just label the whole thing a failure. What specifically didn't work? Was the idea wrong but the execution fine? Was the idea right but the execution failed? Was it a problem of materials, skill, timing, or approach? Precision in identifying failure leads to better future attempts.

Distinguish between failed experiments and bad work. Failed experiments are when you try something new and it doesn't pan out. That's valuable learning. Bad work is when you half-ass something you know how to do. One teaches you, the other just wastes time. Be honest about which you're dealing with.

Look for partial successes within failure. Maybe the piece overall doesn't work, but one corner is interesting. Maybe the color is right even though the composition failed. Maybe the technique you tried has potential even though this application of it didn't work. Harvest what's useful.

Ask why the solution failed. Was your diagnosis of the problem wrong? Did you correctly identify the problem but choose the wrong solution? Did you choose the right solution but execute it poorly? Different failure points suggest different corrections for next time.

Sometimes failures happen because you're not ready yet. You tried something beyond your current skill level. The failure teaches you what you need to learn or practice before attempting that approach again. This is valuable information for planning your skill development.

Other times failures happen because the approach was fundamentally wrong. You were trying to solve the problem the hard way when an easier solution exists. Or you were trying to force a solution that doesn't suit your working style. These failures redirect you toward better approaches.

Document patterns in your failures. If you consistently fail at the same type of problem, that points to a specific skill gap or knowledge gap you need to address. If your failures are all over the place, you might need to focus your work more or develop more consistent problem-solving approaches.

Share failures with other artists when appropriate. They might see what went wrong that you can't see. They might know solutions you haven't tried. And normalizing failure reduces the shame that keeps people from taking necessary risks.

Remember that failures are often more educational than successes. Success might mean you did something right, but it might also mean you just got lucky or stayed in your comfort zone. Failure definitely means you learned something about what doesn't work, which narrows the space of possible solutions.

Build a reference of failures. Keep photos or sketches of things that didn't work and notes on why. This prevents you from making the same mistakes repeatedly. It also creates a record that shows you're trying things, experimenting, taking risks. That's evidence of an active practice.

Reframe how you talk about failure, internally and externally. Not "I'm such a failure" but "That approach didn't work." Not "I wasted a whole day" but "I learned three things not to do." Language shapes how you process the experience.

Give yourself explicit permission to fail. Before starting an experiment or trying something new, say out loud: "This might not work and that's fine. The goal is learning, not perfection." This permission reduces the fear that prevents experimentation.

Sometimes the lesson from failure is that you were working on the wrong thing. You tried repeatedly to solve a problem that ultimately doesn't matter to your practice. The failure redirects you toward more important work. That's a gift, even though it doesn't feel like one at the time.

Celebrate interesting failures. Work that tried something ambitious and failed is often more valuable than work that played it safe and succeeded. Ambitious failures show you're pushing your practice. Safe successes show you're repeating yourself.

The artists you admire have massive collections of failures you never see. They're good not because they don't fail, but because they fail productively and learn from it. Your failures are putting you in good company. They're evidence that you're actually working at the edge of your abilities instead of staying comfortable.

Every solution you'll use in the future came from a failure that taught you something. The problem-solving skills you're building now, through all these failures, will serve you for decades. That's not consolation. That's the actual purpose of creative work. You're not trying to never fail. You're trying to fail informatively and frequently enough that you keep getting better.

The goal isn't to eliminate problems or avoid failures. The goal is to become someone who faces problems with curiosity instead of panic, who experiments with solutions systematically, and who learns from every attempt whether it succeeds or fails. That person makes work that keeps getting stronger, not because they're more talented, but because they're better problem-solvers.

You're building that capacity right now, with every problem you face. Even the ones that feel impossible, especially those ones. They're teaching you things you'll need for the work you can't imagine yet. Trust the process. Face the problems. Learn from the failures. Keep making work. That's how this works.