Do you struggle to come up with original and creative ideas for art and coloring projects? Letās explore how artists find and nurture creative resources rather than waiting for creativity to appear out of nowhere.
You bought a new stamp but have no idea what to do with itā¦
Yep, this happens a lot.
You found the cutest digital stamp. You canāt wait to color it. You cleared your calendar for the afternoon and now youāre sitting in a quiet room with your Copic Markers and colored pencilsā¦
But youāre just sitting there, staring at the stamp.
You donāt know what to do with it.
Why is it so darned hard to be creative?
It doesnāt seem like anyone else has this problem. The internet is full of great colorers creating new projects in unexpected and interesting ways.
Seriously, some design team members crank out original and amazing coloring projects every week!
But your mind right now?
Itās an empty wasteland. Tumbleweeds blowinā in one ear and out the other.
No ideas.
And even though youāve made a resolution to stop coloring other peopleās projects this yearā¦ You want to stop using other peopleās recipes, no more following other peopleās tutorialsā¦
You wanted to start coloring your own original projects!
But here you are. Youāre stuck at the start.
And youāre seriously thinking about getting on Pinterest right now, to find some easy stamp-coloring instructions.
Because youāve got nothinā!
Do you wish for creativity on command?
Stop. Itās a myth!
We have a lot of misconceptions and fantasies about artists. We always assume the paint is greener on the other side of the fence.
If I was a real artist, if I had more talent and better trainingā¦ then great ideas would gush out of my brain onto the paper.
Uhm, that sounds kinda messy.
But also pretty darned wrong.
Ideas donāt flow out of nowhere.
If youāre staring at a blank stamp and nothing is coming to youā¦
itās because youāve given yourself nothing to work with.
What do you know?
Iāve never taken a real writing class, but Iāve heard this idea more than once:
Write what you know.
The gist is that if you donāt know anything about outer space or the plante Mars, then your 700 page novel about the Mars Witch Trials will be full of errors and impossibilities.
Itās hard to write about things you donāt understand.
The same is true in art.
You canāt color something well if you donāt know diddly-squat about it.
But wait, Amy. Art comes from the heart! If you always draw and color from your imagination, then youāll always make something special, unique, and wonderful!
Okay, hippy. But Iām not the one staring at blank line art with no ideas.
Itās wrong that the best art comes straight from your imagination.
Hop onto any Copic related Instagram tag-feed and scroll through to see lots of bad, terribly unoriginal art.
Itās ironicā when people color from their imagination, what they make tends to look exactly like what other people make.
Why does it all look alike?
Because real creativity doesnāt come from the inside.
Creativity comes from the outside.
Research improves your art
One of the strange things about being an artist is that our mental file cabinets are full of trivia.
Iāve never met an artist who doesnāt know lots of weird random stuff.
I can tell you more than a few things about tricuspid valves and temporomandibular joints even though Iām not a doctor. Iāve got a friend who knows every dial on every dashboard Detroit ever produced. I know a duck guy, an Edwardian necktie guy, and one of my roommates knew the latin names of all the tree nuts.
It wonāt win us money on Jeopardy, itās just a side effect of being an artist.
If you want to color mittens, you must know a lot about mittens.
The trivia is whatās missing when youāre sitting there staring at a stamp with no ideas.
You donāt know your mittens yet.
Be the mittens, grasshopper. Become the mittens!
Long before you sit down to color, a good artists starts by researching the subject. What does it look like? Where does it come from? How do people use it? Whatās it good for?
And what does your object look like from every possible angle?
This is where the ideas come from.
The mittens in your head are boring compared to the mittens youāll find on Google.
Ask Yourself: What is it made of?
But Amy, Iām not making mittens! Iām just coloring a mitten stampā¦
Yes, but youāre trying to color it better, right? The same research which makes better art also makes better coloring.
The easiest way for colorers to break away from boring or average coloring is to think about texture.
Most coloring classes do not teach texture. When they do, itās presented as a fun novelty technique involving colorless blender or some trendy new product. Buy this brush, buy this gouache, buy this ink sprayer!
In coloring, you blend and you shade. Everything else is just extra stuff.
Meanwhile an artist wonāt start working until they fully explore and understand the texture.
A pair of thermal poly-fleece mittens will catch the light differently than chunky hand-knit woolen mittens. The texture is different, so the coloring should look different too.
Traditional Copic coloring treats every mitten the same.
And this is exactly why you canāt think of anything fresh or newābecause smoothly shaded mittens have been done to death.
Should I color smooth red mittens? Or should I color smooth purple mittens?
Ho hum.
Close your eyes and think about your favorite childhood mittens.
Were they machine knit or hand crocheted? Were they waterproof gortex? Were the cuffs ribbed or fur trimmed? Were they thick and bulky or streamlined and tight? Were they new and pristine or well worn and scuffed?.
Once you have a mitten from your memory, look for images on the internet. Search ācrochet mittenā or āsnowmobile mittenā making sure to hit the IMAGE tab after you search. Youāll get a couple hundred samples of mittens to choose from, any of which would look great here.
Notice we havenāt even considered color yet? Or patterns?
Pssstttā¦ see whatās happening here?
I asked you a teeny-tiny question about what mittens are made of. Then in just a few Google searches, weāve found thousands of mitten ideas!
Thatās 100% creativity, baby!
Details youād never think of
As you research, youāll start to learn more about your subject.
If you hit on a term or name you donāt know anything about, look it up.
Creativity lurks in the tangents and side streets.
Iād never heard of Selbuvotter Mittens but I stumbled upon several websites showing them. Theyāre gorgeous!
On a lark, I googled āNorway heartā, just to see if there was something ethnically related to Selbuvotter and I found Vafler, which are traditional heart shaped waffles. Then I looked for something spherical to replace the snowballs and found Norwegian glass fishing floats.
Suddenly, Iāve got the makings for a totally original, never-been-colored-before Norwegian interpretation of Mittens and Merriment.
You canāt get this kind of magic from your imagination, folks.
If you donāt know about it, you canāt color it!
Skip the shortcuts
Donāt fall prey to texture guides.
Iāve seen books and even paid courses which teach you 100 random textural treatments.
Hey friends, letās learn to color Vintage Parisian Cobblestones or Disco Diva Sequins!
The idea is that with a comprehensive book of full textures, whenever you need a special texture, you can just look up the recipe.
But you donāt, do you?
Nope, youāre just staring at the empty mitten stamp, wondering why you canāt think of any good ideas.
The texture class you took two years ago is the last thing on your mind because even though they showed you how to fill small swatch with Silver Trout Speckles, they didnāt teach you a darned thing about how to develop a project.
Buying a box of cookies doesnāt make you a pastry chef.
When someone else does the thinking for you, itās the worst kind of help.
The artistās list
I love all the ideas you come up with!
Youāre so creative.
Every month, you give us something new!
This is not an accident. Itās Cultivated Creativity.
Cultivated?
Yes, all artists practice our creativity skills. We research. We brainstorm. We think about art when weāre not making art.
What kind of texture do I see in the clouds right now? Which strokes could I use to make clouds? Which markers and pencils would look the most cloud-like?
Artists have eternal internal conversations with themselves, analyzing what they see.
The best colorers Iāve met do the same thing.
Itās easier to be creative with an uncolored mitten stamp when youāve been practicing being creative while stuck in traffic, in the line at the grocery, and as you lay in bed at night.
Guess what else makes creativity a little easier?
Keeping idea lists.
At this moment, I have 36 prospective photographs sitting in a folder on my computer. These are all things I want to draw for future stamps or classes. I still need to research them but each one is the start of a new idea.
I have a secret Pinterest board with more photos. These are all things which have attracted my eye. Maybe itās the color palette, subject, or composition. So as Iām researching my reference photos, I might consult this board for added inspiration.
I have several lists on Trelloā various lessons I want to teach, concepts I need to mention, topics for articles, personal projects. These are great springboards too.
If you cultivate creativity through thought exercises, research, and lists, youāll never freeze at the sight of an empty mitten image.
You freeze because youāre starting a project completely from scratch.
But this is the wrong way to approach a project.
Build a network of creative stepping stones.
You can go anywhere if youāve got a stash of ideas waiting.
It all starts before you pick up a marker.
Check out Amyās favorite art supplies, click above.
Research = Creativity
Research makes the ideas you have better and also triggers new ideas.
I canāt tell you how many times I start a project one way and during the research it swings in a totally different direction.
Artists have a treasure trove of ideas waiting for them,
But research makes the ideas better.
6 things to remember about artistic creativity:
1. Ideas donāt spring from nothing.
Creativity is a practice. If you donāt grow and encourage it, it wonāt be there when you need it.
2. When you color from your head, you limit yourself to whatās already in your head.
Your imagination isnāt as big or as accurate as you think it is.
Plus, you simply donāt know what you donāt know!
3. If you want to color something well, you need to know something about it.
Art is a visual description of an object, scene, or emotion. You canāt describe something youāve never explored!
4. What is it made of?
The simple question of texture opens up a gigantic treasury of research topics and side-paths for creative options.
5. Research rather than rely on someone elseās swatches.
Show us what you learned instead of demonstrating your ability to follow tutorials.
6. Keep a list and collect inspiration for the future.
Inspiration hits at odd moments, especially if youāre always having creative discussions with yourself. Start saving these ideas for later.
Want to know more about using texture to capture realism?
Join me for Pewter & Snow, a lesson on boosting realism through the development of accurate texture
Weāre breaking down photo references to analyze the texture we see. Then weāre discussing the mindset and methods for duplicating these effects on paper.
Weāre looking beyond the use of color to capture the feel of real life objects. Youāll never look at textural techniques the same way again.
Letās color winter texture
Join me for a fun Copic Marker + Colored Pencil lesson in the Vanilla Workshop
Pewter & Snow is an Intermediate skills class exploring realistic texture
Learn to incorporate real artistry into your coloring projects, one concept at a time. Every Workshop details a new method for enhancing realism, depth, and dimension.
Each class stands on its own as independent learning. You don't have to take six of my other classes to understand this lesson.
Workshops are NON-SEQUENTIAL!
All of my Workshop classes are ANYTIME ACCESS. Work at your own pace and repeat the project as many times as you'd like.
Come color with me. It's a ton of fun!
Join me for an online lessonā¦
that will change the way you think about texture!
Plus, it'll be tons of fun!
Select Supplies used in Pewter & Snow:
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