hello there welcome amongst these beautiful sunflowers here near a place
called Myrtleford.
As some of you may remember when I was in Croatia I had a
bit of a dilemma I kind of hid a artistic block I lost my mojo so I
thought in this video I just share some of the things I do to try and get out of that
So it was a very deep dark artistic block like a never experienced before
I hadn't finished my travel and I thought okay maybe traveling to my next
destination will help so I went to Amsterdam
Charlie Sluga - our man in Amsterdam. Amsterdam.
I went to Hong Kong Hong Kong always reminds me of
As you know I traveled all through Croatia.
It's amazing. You've got to come.
That didn't help. What I figured out is the problem isn't out
there it's actually in here and it's like
so I thought what is the real problem?
What what am i feeling? I felt fear, boredom with my work boredom with
art in general and I felt too comfortable therefore I'd lost my
inspiration I didn't know what to paint and I felt like everything I painted was
pointless now these are my tactics or things that
I did to try and get out of this they may or may not work for you I don't know
but I just thought I'd share them.
One of the things I did was I reread some
inspirational books that I have not so much art books with pictures by artists
in them or how-to books or any of that stuff but more kind of philosophical
approaches to art and painting and having an artistic life and when I read
my books I always highlight relevant sections so when I go back to them I
just flick through and read through highlighted sections so this is what I
did and a few things resonated with me this time there's a book called Steal
like an artist by Austin Kleon I highly recommend it if you haven't got it and I
was flicking through this and I came across make the art you want to see and
boom it hit me I'll make the art I want to see because there's plenty of
pressure out there to satisfy what other people
think you should be painting and even though I've been painting for 30 years and I've
always painted for myself I felt like that pressure was starting to come back
so had to remind myself always paint for yourself paint the artwork you wish to see.
Here's another book Hegarty on creativity I love this book there are no
rules what does it take to be creative fearlessness and I felt like that's
maybe one thing I was losing my fearlessness and that comes with
confidence and belief in your own work and yourself which is one of the reasons
that if you're feeling like this I suggest that you don't look at Facebook
you don't look at Instagram because what happens there is you start comparing
yourself to others I don't think they actually do anything for your mental
state when you're in an artistic block I think that it's probably best to remove
yourself from that so that you can look inwards rather than outwards and
there's other books I won't go through them all it's not how good you are it's
how good you want to be that's a good book to the art spirit is brilliant it
kind of saved me when I was at another low point in my artistic life though
books became quite important to me.
Now this might sound like a weird thing to
do to try and get inspiration or to get rid of that artistic block going for a
walk now that sounds ridiculous but but it's not the important thing here is is
that you go for a walk alone it doesn't have to be through a sunflower field
that I did at the start of this video it could actually be anyway but the
important thing is that you're alone with your thoughts and as you walk don't
think of anything in particular just let your mind wander what it does is is
allows your mind to open up and be receptive to ideas and it's incredible
how many times ideas and ideas for paintings or or creativity will will
happen while you are not in the studio when you just out walking and then what
I do is I write them down in a little book I've got this book full of words
and ideas so that I don't forget them and I can come back to this little book
in a year's time and flick through it and say ah okay excellent
and look there's one right there so walking alone.
I was starting to lose the
idea of fun you know that fun you feel when you're a kid and you draw so to try
and get a bit of fun back into the whole creative side of painting I thought I
would follow something that a guy called Christoph Niemann a German artist does
Ji Leei does it and a number of other people do it and they mention it in this
book the secret of the highly creative thinker it's got some exercise in it and
this is one of them inspired a little bit I think by a show that I used to watch
when I was a little kid that inspired me called
Mr. Squiggle puppet a little man with a pencil for a nose and kids would send in
squiggles and and he'd draw on them and make them into something creative there
is it finished upside down it's an elephant this is a
little bit like that I guess here's a couple of examples these are little
ratchet hooks that I use in the gallery to hang my paintings they sit on a
little wires to hook into the painting and it's basically doing what
you call a photo drawing it means going out and taking a photo or or taking an
everyday object and then drawing on it and making something out of it something
different something new and you don't have to show anybody you don't have to
do exhibit it's not for anybody else to see you don't have to be a great drawer
you don't have to be particularly artistic it's just to get the creative
ideas going and it's a lot of fun and that's a good little exercise you can do
every day before you start your proper painting or your proper artwork if you
like go out with your camera walk down the street take some photos look around
your house take some photos on your phone on your tablet using Photoshop
whatever whatever you want to use turn it into something
boredom with your own work and others
I think can come from becoming too comfortable so for me
it's like yeah it's another watercolor, I know how to do watercolors. I have been
doing it for 30 years I feel that I've stopped challenging myself
Change the medium so rather than just doing pure watercolor maybe moving to mixed-media
doing some oil painting drawing some photography expressing myself
artistically in a medium that I don't normally use will inspire me give me a
fresh eye if you like like and a new outlook and challenge me
just on that whole point of challenging myself
taking myself out of the comfort zone because I do think
comfort is the enemy of of great art sometimes
doing something that I'm not
very good at all I don't consider myself to be very good at and learning more
about it and pushing myself so for me I'm no I'm not great at portraits and
figure work and I will study more of that it's in the learning that the
inspiration will come it's it's a new exciting thing for me I've done some but
but I've never been satisfied with my level in regards to portraits and
figures so so maybe that's something that I will do now I'll just do more
work and more work in that area and try and develop skills in that area and
that's that's exciting
that whole thing about what do you paint can be a real
problem you might have artistic block you go along and say I'm ready I think I
force myself to paint today but what do you paint? because there's a million
things to paint so the answer here is restriction limit your choices and that
can be wonderful for making you more creative and really developing if you
like a theme so pick something anything it can be your garden it can be flowers
the sky the color blue it can be a shape square it can be architecture it can be it
can be fish develop ideas around fish A school of fish A still life with
fish A plate of fish the scales of a fish is it going to be drying fish? is it
going to be fresh fish? what kind of fish? will it be people fishing? and it goes on
and on and on and and you can have a whole exhibition based on that.
By setting those parameters you'll find that you'll you'll develop more ideas
because you're not being distracted by a million possible subjects and not doing
anything because there's too many things you hone in on this and create a
beautiful series of works which tell your story.
The other thing I've tried is
rather than looking at other people's paintings or going to galleries for
inspiration. I started to look at other
mediums that I'm interested in or other artistic forms that I'm interested in
this either directly or indirectly one inspires me but two can influence my
paintings I start thinking more creatively.
Now I'm a bit of a how do you
call it? cinephile sounds a bit evil doesn't know
cinefile or someone likes cinema so I would go to watch films and I'd watch
them from the perspective of really concentrating on the colors they use the
composition they use photography is another big area I love photography as
well I follow a lot of photographers on Instagram for example and we can be
inspired by photographers. Potter's architecture theater a play music don't
think that the answer is always in looking in other people's paintings or
looking at art books or looking at galleries there's such a link between
photography painting film all the creative arts really all the visual
creative arts we can't just think I will dismiss that because I'm not into
photography or I'm not into films you cannot not be you're a visual artist all
these things will influence you.
So in summary, the things I've been trying to
help me get out of this artistic rut I've been going for walks I've been
rereading some of my favorite books that have inspired me in the past I have gone
to the movies to watch films and enjoy the cinematography the storytelling the
colors I've taken photographs and I've looked at photography I've tried to find
the fun in creativity again by doing the photo drawing working in other mediums
like oil or mixed-media or drawing photography things like that restricting
my subject choices so that I can hone in on one area and develop that idea
getting out of my comfort zone by looking at portraits and figure work one
of my weaknesses learning more about that practicing that more.
While we're here if you have been in an artistic block before and you solved it
let me know in the comments what you did to get out of that artistic block.
What I normally say is live love and do watercolor
for this video I think it can apply to any medium any art form so instead I will say
Live Love and do Art
If you found any of these useful or you think a
friend will find them useful please like it share it subscribe
and that's a wrap
see you next time