One of the biggest things that we get as a creative is the dreaded ‘creative block’. There is nothing worse than staring at that empty page thinking, where do I start. This often leads to us spending hours searching for inspiration on Instagram, Behance and watching YouTube videos. But we need to stop. This isn’t how you find inspiration.
None of that is helping. Why? Because you are looking at all these fantastic works while you are in a place you don’t know how to start, and that starts the self-doubt.
It’s a vicious circle. We all know how this plays out and by the end of the day you feel so terrible about yourself you’re questioning if you should find a different job altogether.
So how do we get over it? Simply by doing.
Get your pen, pencil or whatever medium you are using and put some lines on your page. Of what? Anything
The subject matter doesn’t matter. Look out your window, look in a draw and pick something, literally anything will do, and draw it. Draw it over and over. At least you are producing something, and eventually you will get that spark you need.
We get too conscious of producing a masterpiece in everything we do, and that’s what’s stopping you. It’s not possible to come up with 100% original masterpieces every week, let alone every day. It takes time and you are better off working on your craft than procrastinating.
It’s amazing how just starting something and working through it can start to lead somewhere. You might do 3 or drawings that have no meaning or matter, you might even do 30 or 40. The key here if you are producing some work and more times than not one of those works gives you the inspiration that you need.
One of the biggest problems with inspiration is that it effects your personal work more than your professional work. This is simply because your professional work should come with some form of a brief.
A brief allows you to know the direction to take and you don’t have to come up with the big idea. You just have to work on the concept of that idea. This is easier for us to work with and you might do 3 or 4 sketches on one idea before you hit the nail on the head. The key here is you don’t have to create the idea yourself.
Once you stop trying to find that inspiration the wrong way. Rather than giving us anything more to have self doubt over we need to work on how we overcome it. Try this method and I promise you, you will start producing something that you are proud of.