Do you know when to stop?

#1

This question has irked me for a long time.
How do you know that’s it? you have to stop and call it DONE?

My personal experience tells me that I should never stop it. I gained a lot of leverage in taking my design work into other levels by not being able to stop it. With art work, I have less patience, and honestly I enjoy letting it dry undone.

Your thoughts :slight_smile:

#2

In my experience, its when you run out of time. Or interest. Or money.

#3

That makes it Work In Progress, interrupted. Right?

#4

a good artist knows when to stop.

and it depends on you experience and perception in you piece as well.

some artist are overwhelmed that they extend their time.

condsider your envisaged idea, if imagination or inspirations strikes in the middle of your work, i would suggest to go and draw all your ideas, but that should not oveeride your concept unless otherwise you alter it.

#5

That’s me!!! But no matter how long I extend the time spent, in essence the quality doesn’t increase dramatically. Obviously because I only have so much insight into approaching somethnig. The product is way more refined in the end ofcourse, but in essence no better.

#6

I remember a quote by some artist saying that a work is finished when you’ve learned all you wanted/needed to learn from it… I think that sums it up pretty well.

#7

That’s interesting. I think it’s referring to the saturation point where any other addition would be redundant as to what the original intent or goal was.

I tend to challenge this, at least in the design world. At some point, where I feel it’s saturated to my satisfaction I need to find a breakthrough. May be in painting it is different.

Breakthroughs usually give the highest value of satisfaction without necessarily feeling the work is saturated, rather perfected to the extents of one’s abilities.

#8

My biggest problem is that I over-render. I don’t know when to stop, and I’ve been working on it. It’s far harder to know when to stop than to do highly detailed work. Doing highly detailed stuff gets mindless when you reach a certain point, while knowing when to stop tests your artistic judgement much more.

#9

Yes, that’s exactly what bothers me. The beginning is always more enjoyable and open process. A lot of experimentation happens, and it is very forgiving stage. As it gets more detailed, techniques and putting things in the right place becomes dominant. At some point there is no return, that’s when it gets “mindless”. The finish line seems to never exist but in our desire to put an end to it. That’s why art is not sience, I guess!

A friend of mine, who is a full time artist/painter, I see him works on more than 6 pieces at a time. He says, the moment I sign my work, I’m done. Guess what, he signs them right before shipping them to the gallery that opens the next day. I guess it’s never finished after all.

#10

my problem is knowing where to start artists block overload

#11

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