Stay Creative!
Are you on the road to artistic mastery? It takes time. It takes doing the work. It takes learning new things. It takes overcoming the disappointment of our results not meeting what we are aiming for. It takes seeing in a new way. It takes slowing down to focus. The road to mastery is filled with roadblocks. So how do we get around them?
Here are a handful of tools and ideas to get you started. A list of resources follows this tip. See what works for you to make your life even more meaningful and productive.
Shake it up! Try making something in a totally different style (e.g. street art, abstract, Dutch Masters), or with different tools (crumpled paper or twigs to apply paint, stencils, stamping), or more/different materials (e.g. sew through the canvas, glue textural things on it, apply textures, like acrylic mediums with grit in them. Add salt to watercolor washes and watch how the pigment moves as the water dries.) Use materials in non-traditional ways (wet washes in acrylic, watercolor applied with a palette knife). Try a different process or approach – instead of starting with the lightest colors, start with the darkest; instead of painting the object, paint around the object (negative painting). Mask things out. Change the scale - Instead of making big art, make tiny art. Mix it up!
Take inspiration from unrelated topics – Be curious! Read a magazine that is someone else’s passion – not yours – and see if it gives you ideas. ‘Wired’ magazine, anyone? ‘T.E.D. Talks’ on YouTube are good for that, too. Or ‘Google’ something like ‘how to spark creativity’.
Write your ideas down any way you can. Pinterest.com is a list, right? Go back and look at those cool ideas you saved!
Creativity is a gift. The road to mastery takes commitment to your creativity. Be determined to make your way along it. Encourage yourself! That voice inside your head can be the voice of the most kind, supportive parent or teacher you can imagine. Find ways to dispel self-doubt and perfectionism. Yes, we all make clunkers, but what did we learn not to do next time? Give yourself a break and do better next time…or the time after that.
Call a creative friend and make art together – or just talk about what you’re working on.
Accept that creativity is cyclical. We take in ideas, synthesize them into our idea, then make art. Repeat. Repeat. So get away for awhile from the making of art. Take a walk or take a nap and let your subconscious do the synthesizing!
Get inspired. Open an art book. Tidy up one horizontal surface. Go play. Soak up some art inside in a gallery or museum. Be out in nature. Take your sketchbook or camera if you dare! There’s magic in the conversations we all have with nature and each other. Look for it!
Some people carve out a daily routine by sketching their breakfast before they eat it. (That would force me to be a very fast sketcher.) For others, routine and habit stifle creativity. Figure out how to go do that thing that makes you happy, that you can’t not do – art!
BREATHE! “Inhale Courage.” (Message woven into a chain link fence in downtown Sacramento). “Exhale Art.” (The idea I just added to my list.)
Sources for more ideas: Keep Going by Austin Kleon. Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell. Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert. Art Before Breakfast & sketchbookskool.com by Danny Gregory. www.coffeewitheric.com by Eric Rhoads.