Stuck Artists—Make a Deal With Yourself!
Tips for getting inspired, or re-inspired, to make art.
Last night in my painting class, as we tried out our watercolors cheat sheet techniques in a quick, no-pressure, imaginative landscape painting, a question arose: What do you do when you want to make art, but don’t know where to begin?
Do you ever feel stuck, uninspired—or, if you do have an idea—uncertain if your idea is “worthy” of art? Here are suggestions for how to “make a deal with yourself” to get your creativity flowing.
Thumbnailing
Try starting by “thumbnailing” out some ideas. Thumbnails, or thumbnail sketches, are small, quick, low-risk compositional experiments. In a thumbnail composition, we arrange dark, light, and mid-tone values into distinct shapes that together, form a pleasing image. Once we have established one or two that we like, we ”make a deal with ourselves” to develop and carry that composition through to the final painting.
The Supreme Moment
In a recent (now paywalled) set of posts on Substack,
writes about choosing the right moment to portray in a narrative work of art. Assuming that you have an established story, he suggests following the example of Howard Pyle in choosing a restrained, suspenseful moment—what Pyle calls the Supreme Moment. You can read more in the article at the highlighted link, but you’ll need to be a paid subscriber to James Gurney’s newsletter, .Character, location, genre
Below that same post by James Gurney, Bob Blowsky (who is also a subscriber of Artist’s Cheat Sheet—thanks, Bob!) commented, “Perhaps you might consider for us a related question in the future—how to find ideas for pictures in the first place.”
I responded to Bob’s comment:
Sometimes I answer this question by asking students to come up with three lists: characters, locations, and genres. These are placed on slips of paper in three jars. Pull one from each, and this is your starting point.
A dog on the moon, romance.
A fish saleslady walking down the city street, mystery.
A very sad man at Disneyland, comedy.
These can be great starting points for storytelling, too. I gave Bob one more suggestion about deeply felt emotions and picture-making.
Deeply felt loves and hates
This approach comes from Mary Brigid Barrett, an excellent teacher of writing and illustration for children that I had at RISD in the 1990s. On the first day of class she had us write lists of five deeply felt personal loves, and five deeply felt hates. Then she surprised us by collecting these and pinning them on the wall for all to see. We had to stand, one by one, and explain why one of these items made the list. It was nerve-racking but also cathartic. She explained that if our stories and imagery aren’t about these things, then they aren't worth telling. So go deep.
Under the Milky Way was an illustrated story I developed in Mary Brigid-Barrett’s class, up to the point of having a manuscript, a book dummy (model of what would appear on every page), and some color concept illustrations.
It was based on a memorable visit I took to a very dark beach in Massachusetts one night with friends (the darkest place I ever recall being in). There was a remarkably starry sky, and phosphorescent seaweed. I write about it in an essay called Have You Ever Seen the Rest of the Sky?
The children’s editor from Harcourt Brace loved the illustrated story concept and asked to see me when I had completed the manuscript. Unfortunately we never did reconnect.
I just have to do this!
Sometimes inspiration strikes on its own—you just have to get this picture out! Nostalgia, sensory stimuli (scents especially), toys, shapes, enticing colors, sounds—all these things have started the creative ball rolling for me.
Metaphor as composition
Marshall Vandruff (who is another one of my readers—thank you, Marshall!) and Stan Prokopenko cohost an excellent podcast called Draftsmen. In my favorite clip from the show, Marshall explains how metaphors can breathe new life into a project. Watch the clip below, and then consider how to put this to work in your creative process.
Make a deal with yourself
Friend and reader Adam Wachtel (thank you, Adam!) had asked me to expand on this phrase that I use in class, to describe how an artist might set up an exciting challenge for themselves—one that can help to break a creative stalemate between you and your unused art supplies. Many of the aforementioned prompts could be categorized as “deals” one makes with oneself. Hopefully you’ve found this useful, Adam, and everyone.
You can “make a deal with yourself” over something as simple as what direction your pen marks are allowed to go, or how you will hold the brush, or how much time you’ve allowed for the sketch.
Recently there was a “three materials challenge” posted on social. My friend Frieda (and reader—thank you!) posted for fifty days in a row, using a different, self-assigned, three art materials each day, yielding wonderful results. On other occasions Frieda has sketched all the nations of the world in alphabetical order, or all the trees of the neighborhood. Follow her Instagram here. Read more about her urban sketching creative process in my interview with her here.
That’s all for now. Good luck to you, stuck artists, in getting un-stuck and re-inspired.
I would say there’s another one: give yourself permission to fail. Maybe the deal you make is that whatever you do you’re going to toss it anyway. If you start making marks and don’t like it, then forget it and move on to something different. Who knows where you might end up?
This is a great post! I feel like it's not an oft-spoken-about topic, outside of advice like "try a new medium" or something(which is valid advice for sure but I feel it's sometimes used as a throwaway). Nice one Zoungy!