Do you struggle to come up with original and creative ideas for art and coloring projects? Let’s 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 it…

Yep, this happens a lot.

You found the cutest digital stamp. You can’t wait to color it. You cleared your calendar for the afternoon and now you’re sitting in a quiet room with your Copic Markers and colored pencils…

But you’re just sitting there, staring at the stamp.

You don’t know what to do with it.

Why is it so darned hard to be creative?

It doesn’t 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?

It’s an empty wasteland. Tumbleweeds blowin’ in one ear and out the other.

No ideas.

And even though you’ve made a resolution to stop coloring other people’s projects this year… You want to stop using other people’s recipes, no more following other people’s tutorials…

You wanted to start coloring your own original projects!

But here you are. You’re stuck at the start.

And you’re seriously thinking about getting on Pinterest right now, to find some easy stamp-coloring instructions.

Because you’ve got nothin’!

Do you wish for creativity on command?

Stop. It’s 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 training… then great ideas would gush out of my brain onto the paper.

Uhm, that sounds kinda messy.

But also pretty darned wrong.

Ideas don’t flow out of nowhere.

If you’re staring at a blank stamp and nothing is coming to you…

it’s because you’ve given yourself nothing to work with.

What do you know?

I’ve never taken a real writing class, but I’ve heard this idea more than once:

Write what you know.

The gist is that if you don’t 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.

It’s hard to write about things you don’t understand.

The same is true in art.

You can’t color something well if you don’t know diddly-squat about it.

But wait, Amy. Art comes from the heart! If you always draw and color from your imagination, then you’ll always make something special, unique, and wonderful!

Okay, hippy. But I’m not the one staring at blank line art with no ideas.

It’s 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.

It’s ironic— 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 doesn’t 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.

I’ve never met an artist who doesn’t know lots of weird random stuff.

I can tell you more than a few things about tricuspid valves and temporomandibular joints even though I’m not a doctor. I’ve 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 won’t win us money on Jeopardy, it’s just a side effect of being an artist.

If you want to color mittens, you must know a lot about mittens.

The trivia is what’s missing when you’re sitting there staring at a stamp with no ideas.

You don’t 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? What’s 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 you’ll find on Google.

Ask Yourself: What is it made of?

But Amy, I’m not making mittens! I’m just coloring a mitten stamp…

Yes, but you’re 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, it’s 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 won’t 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 can’t think of anything fresh or new—because 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 “crochet mitten” or “snowmobile mitten” making sure to hit the IMAGE tab after you search. You’ll get a couple hundred samples of mittens to choose from, any of which would look great here.

Notice we haven’t even considered color yet? Or patterns?

Violet Mitten

Ombre Mitten

Variegated Mitten

Fair Isle Mitten

Fur Mitten

Psssttt… see what’s happening here?

I asked you a teeny-tiny question about what mittens are made of. Then in just a few Google searches, we’ve found thousands of mitten ideas!

That’s 100% creativity, baby!

Details you’d never think of

As you research, you’ll start to learn more about your subject.

If you hit on a term or name you don’t know anything about, look it up.

Creativity lurks in the tangents and side streets.

I’d never heard of Selbuvotter Mittens but I stumbled upon several websites showing them. They’re gorgeous!

On a lark, I googled “Norway heart”, 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, I’ve got the makings for a totally original, never-been-colored-before Norwegian interpretation of Mittens and Merriment.

You can’t get this kind of magic from your imagination, folks.

If you don’t know about it, you can’t color it!

Skip the shortcuts

Don’t fall prey to texture guides.

I’ve seen books and even paid courses which teach you 100 random textural treatments.

Hey friends, let’s 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 don’t, do you?

Nope, you’re just staring at the empty mitten stamp, wondering why you can’t 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 didn’t teach you a darned thing about how to develop a project.

Buying a box of cookies doesn’t make you a pastry chef.

When someone else does the thinking for you, it’s the worst kind of help.

The artist’s list

I love all the ideas you come up with!

You’re so creative.

Every month, you give us something new!

This is not an accident. It’s Cultivated Creativity.

Cultivated?

Yes, all artists practice our creativity skills. We research. We brainstorm. We think about art when we’re 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 I’ve met do the same thing.

It’s easier to be creative with an uncolored mitten stamp when you’ve 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 it’s the color palette, subject, or composition. So as I’m researching my reference photos, I might consult this board for added inspiration.

I have several lists on Trello— 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, you’ll never freeze at the sight of an empty mitten image.

You freeze because you’re 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 you’ve got a stash of ideas waiting.

It all starts before you pick up a marker.

Check out Amy’s favorite art supplies, click above.

Research = Creativity

Research makes the ideas you have better and also triggers new ideas.

I can’t 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 don’t spring from nothing.

Creativity is a practice. If you don’t grow and encourage it, it won’t be there when you need it.

2. When you color from your head, you limit yourself to what’s already in your head.

Your imagination isn’t as big or as accurate as you think it is.

Plus, you simply don’t know what you don’t 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 can’t describe something you’ve 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 else’s 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 you’re 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

We’re breaking down photo references to analyze the texture we see. Then we’re discussing the mindset and methods for duplicating these effects on paper.

We’re looking beyond the use of color to capture the feel of real life objects. You’ll never look at textural techniques the same way again.

Let’s 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 lesson…

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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