Keeping your Creative Flame burning

Monday, 06 April 2009 00:00

With everyday life bearing down on you it's difficult to keep your creative flame burning. Work, kids and general reality all conspire to eat up every last second of your time and cloud your thought processes, reducing your creative brain to mush. Here are a few thoughts to help you cling on to your creativity.

 

It can seem impossible to find time to let your brain wander in the way that often leads to the best ideas. When you do get time to create you can find yourself with "white paper syndrome" leaving you in a state of panic as to what to do with your precious few minutes. In this article I’ve gathered together a few ideas to kick-start creativity.
 
One drawing an hour
Set a timer on your mobile and whatever else you are doing create a 1 minute drawing on the hour every hour. At the launderette? - draw your socks... at the pub? draw your pint... You get the picture. This really helps to force you to get creating. Even if the drawings aren't great it’s the creative process that counts.

Photograph the small detail
Try and have a small digital camera with you at all times and be on the lookout for shapes, textures, silhouettes and details to photograph. Looking for these elements will make you more aware of the world around you and you will find beauty and inspiration in the most unusual places. The patch of amazingly textured rust on a car parked outside school when you drop the kids off. The spiders web on the bus stop shining and sparkling with frost. The flaking paint on a boarded up building you walk past every day on your way to work. Beauty and inspiration are everywhere. You just need to look.  

Unplug & awaken your senses
Try and get away from the distractions of work/general life and awaken all your senses. This may mean walking away from the computer and doing something else. If you are stuck in an office, try and escape for a lunchtime foray into the park. Go for a walk and enjoy nature. Look at textures, notice smells [good and bad] listen to sounds. Pick up an instrument and play some music. Read a book, Awakening your senses can be really inspirational and lead to your creative thought processes flowing again.

Turn off the TV and go out and do something less boring instead.
Its so easy to slump in front of something mindless at the end of a hard day when the kids have gone to bed, but you often find if you don’t put it on, maybe listen to music instead you are in a much better place to get the creative part of your brain working. It’s no secret that the TV is an absolute killer to creativity. Ignore its siren call. Put some music on and paint.

Learn a new creative skill
Learning a new skill which hopefully complements your existing skills will often re-energise your creativity. For example, as a Printmaker who specialises in Screen-printing, learning skills in Etching or Lithography would bring some new creative input to my process and possibly give my work a new dimension. Must get those courses booked.

Enrol on a course
Leading on from the point above - it’s a great idea to book yourself onto an organised course to learn a new skill. The fact that you have paid for the course will encourage you to keep going. I also find thatthe fact that you have "ringfenced" say 2 hours on a Tuesday night persuades you to go and do something and it’s not as easy to just get sidetracked by other things. Enrolling on a Life Drawing course or a learning a skill related to your work can be really inspirational.

Keep your sketchbook with you at all times
Maybe get yourself a smaller one that fits in your handbag - and keep writing things down. The funny conversation you heard in the dentists waiting room. The idea for a drawing that popped into your head as you dropped the kids off at school. Make sure you record it all. There will be a point in the future when things are calmer and you have more time. Then you can go over what you have recorded and there will be some sparks of inspiration to wok from. It will help prevent "White Paper Syndrome"

Get up early
This isn’t for everyone and the thought of getting up even earlier may be just too much... but I find I can have a nice half hour of peaceful time to think with a coffee before everyone else in the house is up. Well worth the effort of dragging myself awake. It works for me.

Just keep creating
Its easy to stop being creative. Other stuff gets in the way and before you know it 5 years have gone by and you haven’t produced any work [believe me, I know]. The most important thing is to just keep going. Even if you only produce work very slowly it’s important to still keep making stuff and seeing yourself as an artist, printmaker or whatever you do rather than someone who "used to do a bit of painting". If you ever find yourself using that phrase to describe yourself at a party it’s definitely time to implement the tactics I have outlined above.