Today's Question: How do you get past creative ruts, artist's block, and bad ideas?
Hmmm where to begin. Having an artist's block as a fulltime illustrator can be insanely scary... also coming up with only bad ideas and having to send them to a client is just embarrassing. These two things lead to major creative ruts. (Lots of sighing, hair ripping, and stressing, blah.)
The best way to get rid of bad ideas is just to get them out of the way. Send your first 'bad' ideas to the client even if they aren't 'there' yet (who says they're bad anyways, maybe they just need to be elaborated on). The next time around your new 'better' ideas will seem even greater. (Especially to you.) It's impossible to always have fantabulous ideas, quit pressuring yourself.
I fortunately don't suffer from block's very often. I often work on commissioned projects with very specific instructions... I'm really good at following directions. ;) But sometimes when I sit myself down to create a new work for my shop, or a new scarf/textile design... my mind is just blank. With these projects I just wait until inspiration hits me. Then I'll either start drawing right away or write down the idea for a rainy day. This is why my process of updating my shop or working on new projects is so slow and I'm actually rather frustrated by this. I wish to be quicker and more prolific... but I've kind of come to terms with the fact that this is just the way I work best.
Sitting in front of a blank piece of white paper with the intention of creating a masterpiece is just not going to happen. It may be the most intimidating thing in the whole world... especially if it's a gorgeous thick expensive piece of paper. That's why I always to choose to draw on rather cheap sketch paper. Makes starting a new work just a little bit easier.
Ruts can be cured several ways. Through motivation, a break, a jog (who am I kidding, I hate jogging), dancing in your under-roos (I love dancing), a visit to Pinterest, a bit of blogging or eating an ice cream cone. Maybe even a long vacation if you really need a break. Pretty much anything that has nothing to do with the current project your working on, or the pressure you're putting on yourself to bang out masterpiece after masterpiece.
1 comment:
Very interesting post. Pinterest is always great for inspiration especially looking at subjects that are not directly connected to your work and also buying new or flicking through old fashion/interior magazines. I think sitting in a cafe where you can watch people walk by is a good environment to get new inspiration.
http://illustratedlines.blogspot.co.uk/
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