I have a number of creative obsessions. One of them is Process. I routinely meditate on my creative activities and the processes that I’ve developed or borrowed to achieve my goals. I recognize that understanding what I do and how I do it is important to streamlining my process and making efficient use of the time available to me. After all, art is a life-long pursuit and we’ll only stop improving the day we stop creating.
So, I’d like to pose several questions for you to spend some time thinking about. Don’t worry about sharing the answers. They belong to you and are for you to use.
1. Where did the idea for your last project come from?
2. Do you regularly study the works of others?
3. How much time do you spend planning out your projects?
4. Have you ever borrowed a design from another artist?
5. Do you ever feel like your designs aren’t quite original enough?
One of the roots of innovation is inspiration – the place where all those wonderful ideas we have come from. And inspiration is a powerful thing. The questions above deal directly with our inspirations and how we handle them. Yes, handle them, because our inspirations can overwhelm our goals. They can keep us from taking the risks that make a work of art truly ours. When we let our inspirations take control of our projects, they can steer us toward imitation.
There’s nothing outwardly wrong with imitation. Imitation is often the first step to finding our own voice – our own unique vision. But when we cling to imitation as the source of our creativity and spend our time copying the work of others, we don’t take that next step. And if you’ve ever encountered an artist that copies the works of another (or others), you might be familiar with a certain feeling of disappointment. Imagine what it would feel like to have that disappointment heaped onto your projects.
Keep your answers to the above questions in mind as you develop your next project. What answers are helping your process and what answers are holding back the innovation in your work?
The next part of this post will explore simple techniques you can add to your process to push your creativity and keep a handle on how you apply your inspirations to your work.
KingUnicorn is a guest blogger here at Grimvisions you can see more of his work at http://kingunicorn.blogspot.com/
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Cathy, thanks for your comments. You know just where I'm going with this. And I agree about the struggle to maintain discipline to reach the end. I fall into that category of artist that has more unfinished pieces than finished. I'd love to have them all cleared off the project list before I kick off the planet, but the new ideas don't stop flooding in.
Thank you for your insightful explanation about the creative process. I strongly believe in this too and have a process in the way I create. The most difficult part was being disciplined about it, starting and finishing an idea through to the end. And as you stated the the fear of taking risks is not always easy to over come. The best advice I ever given was to "trust my instincts".
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