How To Be Happy As An Artist

Joy division Leading artists tell Tom May how their art makes them happy, and offer their tips for emulating them

- Tom May

Despite popular wisdom, you don’t have to suffer for your art. Indeed, for many artists it’s their greatest source of happiness.

Take freelance fantasy artist and author Jesper Ejsing. “I’ll often ‘wake up’ from having been painting for hours, look at the clock wondering where the day went, and realise it’s time to go home,” he says. “That feeling is fantastic, because it tells you that you were immersed in something beautiful, a state of mind that’s not possible to grasp or register until you leave it.”

Of course, creating art is not always a delight. It has its challenges, to say the least, and artists find different stages of the process at turns fun, challenging and maddening. Jesper himself is generally happiest at the start: “It feels like coming out of a tunnel and all the possibilities lie before you,” he says. “The further you get into a painting, the more the options narrow down.”

HALFWAY TO HAPPINESS

Katelan Thomas, an illustrator and 3D artist, reveals she’s usually happiest during the halfway point. “The beginning process can go either smooth or rocky, but once I’m about halfway through, I love making the diagnostics of how the piece should come together,” she explains.

Conversely, freelance artist Bre Gotham is always happiest at the end, “when all of the sketch and colour and light has come together and formed this image in my mind. It’s a little achievement each time I complete a drawing.”