You can upload images to the forum now, EWA. Drag and drop.
@Doodmann Krita (free opensource imaging software) has the easiest pattern making I've used, as its just a hotkey toggle to make the canvas repeat. I think the hotkey is W.
I wish I drew for fun but my brain is broken and everything is WORK so if I don't get anything drawn I've failed to capitalize on time off to get work done and my brain reads that as defeat and flips the little brain switch from "pretty good" to "day ruined"
I'm trying out the whole self-imposed challenge thing. Fortunately, I have someone also doing it with me so we hold each other accountable. It's been really fun so far and I've created a lot of work very very quickly.
I'm currently motivated by wanting to get a better job. I'm also having a lot of fun trying out new techniques. So I have a large scale project, and I can mess around in there doing whatever I want, and it all still adds up to something in the end which is nice.
So if I'm tired of "working" on one thing, I just find something I want to do that sill fits inside my project. Wrapping things up is hard for me though. I'm usually bored of something before I'm done with it. So I have to keep pushing myself on that front.
digitally or by hand? I know @DMAC uses a light table.
Digitally. My linework is hideous. I use the autodesk sketch app on ipad to draw digitally and. I have only just started. I try to make another layer then basically trace over the messy sketch but it always looks ugly even when I use the same brush. Here's a work I haven't tried to clean up yet.
Do you have a stylus or are you using your finger? Though either way, line exercises would be my first recommendation. It looks like you’re making short, hestitant disjointed strokes rather than fast continuous curves.
Here’s an example of what I mean by line exercises:
The short but boring answer for “how do I fix this” is practice, I’m afraid.
Yeah like Tynic is saying, Unless you have some sort of physical barrier (like hand tremors) practicing and concentration should be enough. Line exercises are a good way to play with your tools and discover what they are capable of independent of trying to do a drawing, an important part of the process that is often overlooked.
Try figuring out what your tools do and simplify what you are trying to accomplish for a particular drawing session.
digitally or by hand? I know @DMAC uses a light table.
Digitally. My linework is hideous. I use the autodesk sketch app on ipad to draw digitally and. I have only just started. I try to make another layer then basically trace over the messy sketch but it always looks ugly even when I use the same brush. Here's a work I haven't tried to clean up yet.
How would I fix this?
Maybe things have changed since I last checked, but if you're drawing on a iPad, generally you're going to get poor results unless it's an iPad Pro using the Apple Pencil (which I've seen used to great effect)- I tried using a Wacom Bamboo stylus with an iPad Air 2 and it was pretty much worthless, because the tech just wasn't designed for the sort of precision needed to do nice line drawings.
Now, because that stuff is expensive, you might pick up a crowquill dip pen, india ink, (or brush pen, or a set of Micron pens) and a pad of smooth bristol paper for a few bucks(the bread and butter materials of comic book artists), and do the exercises Tynic mentioned manually for less money, rather than trying to fight your hardware/spending $1000 on the latest doohickey.
(If you do go the dip pen route be aware that dip pen nibs come with some preservative on them that you have to wash off/dissolve with spit, and not taking this step means it won't hold ink or draw correctly. Not knowing this the first time I tried using them, I gave up on them pretty quickly and it was many many many years before I gave them another shot. If they actually mentioned this in the packaging, maybe I'd be a lot better at inking work than I am today.)
Now in terms of technique, from what I see you've got a lot of small, choppy stokes- which makes me wonder if you're working mainly from your wrist and fingers, as one might use to write- rotating the wrist to create a stroke. But if you want nice, smooth, long lines, you probably want to work more from the shoulder- your hand lightly touching the paper, and moving your whole arm to create a line.
digitally or by hand? I know @DMAC uses a light table.
Digitally. My linework is hideous. I use the autodesk sketch app on ipad to draw digitally and. I have only just started. I try to make another layer then basically trace over the messy sketch but it always looks ugly even when I use the same brush. Here's a work I haven't tried to clean up yet.
How would I fix this?
Maybe things have changed since I last checked, but if you're drawing on a iPad, generally you're going to get poor results unless it's an iPad Pro using the Apple Pencil (which I've seen used to great effect)- I tried using a Wacom Bamboo stylus with an iPad Air 2 and it was pretty much worthless, because the tech just wasn't designed for the sort of precision needed to do nice line drawings.
Now, because that stuff is expensive, you might pick up a crowquill dip pen, india ink, (or brush pen, or a set of Micron pens) and a pad of smooth bristol paper for a few bucks(the bread and butter materials of comic book artists), and do the exercises Tynic mentioned manually for less money, rather than trying to fight your hardware/spending $1000 on the latest doohickey.
(If you do go the dip pen route be aware that dip pen nibs come with some preservative on them that you have to wash off/dissolve with spit, and not taking this step means it won't hold ink or draw correctly. Not knowing this the first time I tried using them, I gave up on them pretty quickly and it was many many many years before I gave them another shot. If they actually mentioned this in the packaging, maybe I'd be a lot better at inking work than I am today.)
Now in terms of technique, from what I see you've got a lot of small, choppy stokes- which makes me wonder if you're working mainly from your wrist and fingers, as one might use to write- rotating the wrist to create a stroke. But if you want nice, smooth, long lines, you probably want to work more from the shoulder- your hand lightly touching the paper, and moving your whole arm to create a line.
@LoisLane Given the tremors, you may want to look into vector-based art programs (I know Adobe Illustrator is the standard for the desktop for this, not sure about iPad).
These programs take your pen stroke and turn them into mathematically defined curves defined by points, that can then be pushed and pulled and simplified and smoothed at will. This way of working means there's less of a need to to lean on physical dexterity to create smooth linework, but it does require a good amount of patience tweaking everything into place.
Procreate on the iPad has brush settings that smooth lines for you (the ‘streamline’ option). I also really enjoy it as a program - sketchbook is decent for sketching but I find Procreate to be much better for painting, and it’s a lot more powerful. Last I looked it was only around $12, too.
Clip paint has a hybrid system, its got a bit of a learning curve (all vectors do, I feel) But if you want the ability to move a line around and choose the thickness later, it might be worth playing with: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4UopyLEIYU
I've watched some twitch streamers use it with great efficiency, I plan to play around with it as the work flow of an adobe illustrator style pen tool has never been something I could get down with. Clip paint is in full on the ipad, though its free for 6 months and then it'll want you to pay money.
Clip Studio also has line smoothing which I use unashamedly the rare times I work digitally.
Something about the angle of the tablet relative to the screen means I cannot for the life of me get good lines in the inking phase so I just crank the line smoothing way up to compensate. I've always preferred it to PS for inking, personally.
Perhaps unrelated, but PS now has line smoothing! (took fucking long enough.)
Continuing on this tangent, for anyone using an older copy of PS or who just wants a lot of good rulers/perspective guides tools in addition to line smoothing, Lazy Nezumi is really worth the $35.
I donno, you make smooth line art look generally easy, and I know its a lie. It's cool to see everyone adapting to the Ipad though. The on the go digital sketchbook age is upon us, I wouldn't have believed that apple would have won out the space if you told me that's how it would go 5 years ago.
Yeah, for me it was a combo of already carrying my iPad everywhere for e-mail, reference, reading, etc. and seeing what people were doing in Procreate.
Hey folks I remember asking it about this a long time ago but I guess I am still unable to break through my wall
Do anyone have any technique or practice which I can use to develop my imagination or creativity
I feel like I have developed a fear of creating and my low confidence and self awareness is not helping at all
I find I'm always more creative after I've read a book or watched a particularly engrossing movie or tv show. If I can immerse myself in another world, I can take that feeling and try to apply it to whatever I'm working on, maybe escape into that world a little. The best way to be more creative is to expand your internal reference library of 'interesting stuff.' All ideas are going to be derivative of some other idea, the trick is simply to inject your personal perspective into whatever idea you commit to. Even if the idea is really super stupid (I've been working on a project that's basically me asking myself 'how stupid can you make this' and it turns out the answer is pretty fucking stupid), if you commit to the idea and try to 'finish' it, you'll learn something from it (you can set your bar of quality wherever you want, right now my bar is super low and that's making it more fun for me). Just don't try to then compare your work to your favorite artists/writers, or even OTHER artists/writers, because your perspective of your own work is super warped. Some people may hate it, some may love it, you can't really know.
There's no substitute for practice. 'Help my creativity' is a little hard to fix with one technique. If you're wanting to write better stories, write more stories. If you're wanting to draw fun and interesting scenes or characters, draw more.
I also like bouncing ideas off of my roommates. Sometimes discussing them out loud can help me reach better conclusions more quickly.
I feel like I have developed a fear of creating and my low confidence and self awareness is not helping at all
I think this is the main problem you're having. I've had the same problem myself for many years and feel as if I'm just now getting out of it.
I would suspect you don't actually have a lack of creativity, you just feel like your ideas aren't good enough by comparing them to external factors.
If you can change your mindset from "how do I do something as cool as person X?" to "How can I make something that is just better than my last project" it feels much more manageable.
Also, don't worry about if your ideas are "good" or "bad". Just make something that YOU find fun and engaging. Not everyone will like it, and that's fine. But once you open yourself up to exposing what YOU think is good or fun, like minded people will find it and enjoy it.
You have to learn to listen and trust your inner voice, and your own judgement on what is good or bad. Once I began to make up MY OWN mind on what I thought looked good, I had much more clarity. It gives you a target to work towards, rather than trying to hit some moving ambiguous target of what others may think looks good.
Keep a small notebook bedside, and find a way to carry it around with you as well. Bedside is great for writing down ideas from dreams before they escape you. And having a small notebook in my backpack allows me to scribble down crappy doodles and random thoughts as they come throughout the day. Half of the ideas might not materialize into polished artwork, but you never know. At least you'll end up with a bunch of scrap notes to pull from when no ideas are coming.
Do anyone have any technique or practice which I can use to develop my imagination or creativity
Yes, but-
I feel like I have developed a fear of creating and my low confidence and self awareness is not helping at all
they will not solve this. This is a separate psychological thing that needs addressing on its own.
Beyond some generic productivity advice - set up a schedule, use Don't Break The Chain productivity tracking, read Peak by Anders Ericsson to tailor your practice, read The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, if you can put yourself in a situation where you are obligated to produce work like a class or meetup sketch group, etc. - I doubt we here can say anything that will provide the sort of personal and consistent support you need to address those issues, which is why I would echo the sentiment from your H/A thread that therapy would probably be helpful for this specifically.
Lots of confident people don't produce shit- go to any mediocre art school and you'll see a lot of people not producing because they have a lot of confidence - and a lot of unconfident people manage to make a living from art regardless of confidence (certainly, if confidence were a requirement, I and a lot of other people would not have a career. Maybe it seems that way since gumroad and youtube are full of tutorials by those rare artists with the self-assurance to enthusiastically put their name, face, work and voice onto the harsh meat grinder that is the internet, but that certainly isn't representative of a majority of artists.)
But getting back to the point of creativity exercises-
The point I'd impress upon you first is this:
Creativity is Problem-Solving.
That is it.
It's not being a genius, it's not being born with a portal to a magical world of rainbows inside your brain. Working on developing creativity is not like putting a lightning rod on your head, in the hope it attracts those rare bolts of out-of-the-blue inspiration.
It's working on problem-solving.
Some examples:
-Look around your room. Pick out an object, and quickly draw the contour of that object- no inner details. Now, using that resulting shape, make a character out of it.
-Pick one of your favorite characters from a movie or book or manga or whatever. Now, in as many aspects as you can manage (emotionally, body shape, fashion-wise, etc.), try drawing the exact opposite of that character.
-Pick a character you know. Write down a bunch of verbs/adjectives on index cards (confused, shock, free, sneaking, learn, etc. etc.). Every 5 minutes, pull a card out and draw your character in a pose indicating the idea on the card.
-Hell, basically following any prompt on the Youtube show Drawfee provides a good problem to solve- Draw a movie poster based on nothing but a random tagline. Draw a super villain based on a random phobia. Draw a way to improve soccer for The World Cup. Sure they're silly examples, but each one provides a corral in which you are free to be playful and loose in, an ability that's kinda necessary to creative thought. https://www.youtube.com/user/Drawfee/videos
Some stuff I use all the time professionally when I don't have any inspiration:
-Close your eyes and draw a mess of random lines. Open your eyes and look at those lines for anything that could spark a thought- does that line look like a nose? Or wait, this one looks like a line of action- can I build on that? Work on that mess and make it into a thumbnail sketch. If it's something with potential, make a fresh drawing pushing those ideas. If not, repeat with a new batch of random lines.
-Another artist I worked with did the same thing by just overlaying a bunch of photos over each other in Photoshop with random blend modes, then went about organizing and adapting the resulting mess into a design.
-Look up a random word generator (there are a bunch of these online), and pull some random keywords. Try to incorporate a few into whatever design you're working on.
I could think of more examples, but what they all have in common?
No sitting around waiting for inspiration to strike. I don't have the time for that. I don't have a problem to solve? Or my problem is too broad to be useful (ie: "draw a character", or "draw a vehicle")? I give myself a problem to solve. I narrow down the possibilities a bit.
Don't think about starting, don't think about what's the best idea or is this a good idea, or or or- just start.
Putting anything down, no matter how shitty, and responding to it is more productive than staring at a blank page or staring off into space or straining your brain telling yourself, "COME ON, GOOD IDEAS! WHERE ARE YOU!?!". Or worse, starting to get down on yourself for not having those magic ideas (that nobody has, really).
That never gets anyone anywhere. I need to start, so I do. I start with garbage, I change it, I try ideas, I kick it around, getting more and more specific, working out the logic to tie it all together, keep changing and adapting and twisting and turning until it's good- and I repeat. No time for existential crisis, because I'm dealing with what's in front of me- but first, I have to put something, anything in front of me, in order to have something to deal with it.
To quote Ed Catmull (co founder of Pixar)"
“If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they will screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a brilliant team, they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something better.”
When people talk about a creativity block, it is largely because they're trying to come up with a 'good idea'.
But you don't need a good idea. If you're good at problem solving, if you practice it, you will have the ability to transform a bad idea into a better idea into a good idea into a great idea. The things you love are not made by mystics on mountains receiving visions from on high- they're made by people that solve problems for a living. That's what being 'brilliant', in Mr. Catmull's term, actually is.
You just need to start. Then look at it, and change it to be better. And change it and better it again, and again, and again- and all of a sudden the total doggerel you started with in the morning by evening is something an audience will mistake for genius, inspired work, obviously the product of brilliant mind possessed of unfailing and infinite creativity.
Doesn't matter how you start, it only matters what you end up with.
Nobody sees the sausage being made, other than you. (Something I have to remind myself of when I look at one of those "Art Of" books for movies- it feels like all this creativity just flowed out of the artists in the same amount of time it takes you to read the books- but the reality is it took 4 years of hundreds of people's lives and the amount of stuff that was cut and thrown in the trash would easily fill a book 20 times the size of the one on my shelf.)
I would also mention this: yeah, a lot of what you do following these exercises and techniques? Lot of it is probably going to look like garbage. Lot of it is going to be, "well this looks like shit, but I got one adequate shape out of it, which with 4 more iterations and 2 weeks of time, I can probably make work as a real drawing."
So if you're looking for an ego boost, or struggling with self-confidence? These exercises ain't gonna help with that, if you're applying a "BUT I WANT THEM TO BE GOOOOD" set of standards to them. Also, having those sorts of expectations weighing you down? Is likely to get in the way of the kind of light, loose playfulness you want when approaching these exercises. It'd be like you playing make-believe as a child, and then punching yourself until you puke when the resulting improv story about 'robot bears with super powers' is not immediately up to the standard of Nebula award-winning fiction. It's absurd, awful and unproductive.
You need to accept mistakes, you need to get caught up in the page, in the moment, and not be in your own head about your own issues. (This is why zen meditation/CBT can be helpful, I'd say to any artist, just on a purely pragmatic level). This why I made a point up top to split the creativity issue from the self-confidence issue, because bringing an overbearing level of expectation with you into these exercises has just as much chance of making them another source of pain, rather than being invigorating like they should be, and like what you're looking for.
That doesn't mean they're not worth doing, but it does mean you should not look at this, or any other practice or exercise as some kind of salvation. There is no objective "good enough at art" that washes away self-doubt or anything like that- no matter how much money you've made or how many AAA studios you've worked for or how many awards you've won. Solving mental hang-ups with art solutions is like trying to cut a board in half with a screwdriver- it's the wrong tool for the job.
Bacon got the choice advice. I would like an "ask Bacon" column in my newspaper plz.
Also, i got a plane ticket to Seattle in November. It's the first time I've ever gone westcoast. Not having any family or friends out there seems kinda scary, but also fun. Any one from Seattle area on the boards that has any tips & tricks?
Bacon got the choice advice. I would like an "ask Bacon" column in my newspaper plz.
Any one from Seattle area on the boards that has any tips & tricks?
Now I feel like I really ought to have some sweet inside info to share on Seattle, but I don't. I'm sorry!
All I know is you can get coffee and rain there? And Amazon owns like half the downtown, so if you see people walking around looking like they live their lives in a nightmare corporate purgatory, maybe give them a hug or something?
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Dang. What are the kids using these days??
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@Doodmann Krita (free opensource imaging software) has the easiest pattern making I've used, as its just a hotkey toggle to make the canvas repeat. I think the hotkey is W.
INSTAGRAM
Like, I can sit down and draw for 3 hours and have absolutely nothing to show for it and it's not great for my mood.
I'm finally getting moving on posters again, because getting paid is the best motivator, but I am completely artistically catatonic if left to my own devices these days.
So if I'm tired of "working" on one thing, I just find something I want to do that sill fits inside my project. Wrapping things up is hard for me though. I'm usually bored of something before I'm done with it. So I have to keep pushing myself on that front.
Digitally. My linework is hideous. I use the autodesk sketch app on ipad to draw digitally and. I have only just started. I try to make another layer then basically trace over the messy sketch but it always looks ugly even when I use the same brush. Here's a work I haven't tried to clean up yet.
How would I fix this?
Here’s an example of what I mean by line exercises:
The short but boring answer for “how do I fix this” is practice, I’m afraid.
Try figuring out what your tools do and simplify what you are trying to accomplish for a particular drawing session.
Maybe things have changed since I last checked, but if you're drawing on a iPad, generally you're going to get poor results unless it's an iPad Pro using the Apple Pencil (which I've seen used to great effect)- I tried using a Wacom Bamboo stylus with an iPad Air 2 and it was pretty much worthless, because the tech just wasn't designed for the sort of precision needed to do nice line drawings.
Now, because that stuff is expensive, you might pick up a crowquill dip pen, india ink, (or brush pen, or a set of Micron pens) and a pad of smooth bristol paper for a few bucks(the bread and butter materials of comic book artists), and do the exercises Tynic mentioned manually for less money, rather than trying to fight your hardware/spending $1000 on the latest doohickey.
(If you do go the dip pen route be aware that dip pen nibs come with some preservative on them that you have to wash off/dissolve with spit, and not taking this step means it won't hold ink or draw correctly. Not knowing this the first time I tried using them, I gave up on them pretty quickly and it was many many many years before I gave them another shot. If they actually mentioned this in the packaging, maybe I'd be a lot better at inking work than I am today.)
Now in terms of technique, from what I see you've got a lot of small, choppy stokes- which makes me wonder if you're working mainly from your wrist and fingers, as one might use to write- rotating the wrist to create a stroke. But if you want nice, smooth, long lines, you probably want to work more from the shoulder- your hand lightly touching the paper, and moving your whole arm to create a line.
Since this is kinda hard to explain what I mean in words:
Twitter
Yeah I am using an ipad pro with an apple pencil and unfortunately I have tremors due to medication. I will try those line exercises and using my arm.
These programs take your pen stroke and turn them into mathematically defined curves defined by points, that can then be pushed and pulled and simplified and smoothed at will. This way of working means there's less of a need to to lean on physical dexterity to create smooth linework, but it does require a good amount of patience tweaking everything into place.
Twitter
I've watched some twitch streamers use it with great efficiency, I plan to play around with it as the work flow of an adobe illustrator style pen tool has never been something I could get down with. Clip paint is in full on the ipad, though its free for 6 months and then it'll want you to pay money.
Something about the angle of the tablet relative to the screen means I cannot for the life of me get good lines in the inking phase so I just crank the line smoothing way up to compensate. I've always preferred it to PS for inking, personally.
Continuing on this tangent, for anyone using an older copy of PS or who just wants a lot of good rulers/perspective guides tools in addition to line smoothing, Lazy Nezumi is really worth the $35.
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Do anyone have any technique or practice which I can use to develop my imagination or creativity
I feel like I have developed a fear of creating and my low confidence and self awareness is not helping at all
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
There's no substitute for practice. 'Help my creativity' is a little hard to fix with one technique. If you're wanting to write better stories, write more stories. If you're wanting to draw fun and interesting scenes or characters, draw more.
I also like bouncing ideas off of my roommates. Sometimes discussing them out loud can help me reach better conclusions more quickly.
I think this is the main problem you're having. I've had the same problem myself for many years and feel as if I'm just now getting out of it.
I would suspect you don't actually have a lack of creativity, you just feel like your ideas aren't good enough by comparing them to external factors.
If you can change your mindset from "how do I do something as cool as person X?" to "How can I make something that is just better than my last project" it feels much more manageable.
Also, don't worry about if your ideas are "good" or "bad". Just make something that YOU find fun and engaging. Not everyone will like it, and that's fine. But once you open yourself up to exposing what YOU think is good or fun, like minded people will find it and enjoy it.
You have to learn to listen and trust your inner voice, and your own judgement on what is good or bad. Once I began to make up MY OWN mind on what I thought looked good, I had much more clarity. It gives you a target to work towards, rather than trying to hit some moving ambiguous target of what others may think looks good.
Long story short, you're overthinking it.
Hope that helps in some way!
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they will not solve this. This is a separate psychological thing that needs addressing on its own.
Beyond some generic productivity advice - set up a schedule, use Don't Break The Chain productivity tracking, read Peak by Anders Ericsson to tailor your practice, read The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, if you can put yourself in a situation where you are obligated to produce work like a class or meetup sketch group, etc. - I doubt we here can say anything that will provide the sort of personal and consistent support you need to address those issues, which is why I would echo the sentiment from your H/A thread that therapy would probably be helpful for this specifically.
Lots of confident people don't produce shit- go to any mediocre art school and you'll see a lot of people not producing because they have a lot of confidence - and a lot of unconfident people manage to make a living from art regardless of confidence (certainly, if confidence were a requirement, I and a lot of other people would not have a career. Maybe it seems that way since gumroad and youtube are full of tutorials by those rare artists with the self-assurance to enthusiastically put their name, face, work and voice onto the harsh meat grinder that is the internet, but that certainly isn't representative of a majority of artists.)
But getting back to the point of creativity exercises-
The point I'd impress upon you first is this:
Creativity is Problem-Solving.
That is it.
It's not being a genius, it's not being born with a portal to a magical world of rainbows inside your brain. Working on developing creativity is not like putting a lightning rod on your head, in the hope it attracts those rare bolts of out-of-the-blue inspiration.
It's working on problem-solving.
Some examples:
-Look around your room. Pick out an object, and quickly draw the contour of that object- no inner details. Now, using that resulting shape, make a character out of it.
-Pick one of your favorite characters from a movie or book or manga or whatever. Now, in as many aspects as you can manage (emotionally, body shape, fashion-wise, etc.), try drawing the exact opposite of that character.
-Pick a character you know. Write down a bunch of verbs/adjectives on index cards (confused, shock, free, sneaking, learn, etc. etc.). Every 5 minutes, pull a card out and draw your character in a pose indicating the idea on the card.
-Hell, basically following any prompt on the Youtube show Drawfee provides a good problem to solve- Draw a movie poster based on nothing but a random tagline. Draw a super villain based on a random phobia. Draw a way to improve soccer for The World Cup. Sure they're silly examples, but each one provides a corral in which you are free to be playful and loose in, an ability that's kinda necessary to creative thought.
https://www.youtube.com/user/Drawfee/videos
Some stuff I use all the time professionally when I don't have any inspiration:
-Close your eyes and draw a mess of random lines. Open your eyes and look at those lines for anything that could spark a thought- does that line look like a nose? Or wait, this one looks like a line of action- can I build on that? Work on that mess and make it into a thumbnail sketch. If it's something with potential, make a fresh drawing pushing those ideas. If not, repeat with a new batch of random lines.
-Another artist I worked with did the same thing by just overlaying a bunch of photos over each other in Photoshop with random blend modes, then went about organizing and adapting the resulting mess into a design.
-Look up a random word generator (there are a bunch of these online), and pull some random keywords. Try to incorporate a few into whatever design you're working on.
I could think of more examples, but what they all have in common?
No sitting around waiting for inspiration to strike. I don't have the time for that. I don't have a problem to solve? Or my problem is too broad to be useful (ie: "draw a character", or "draw a vehicle")? I give myself a problem to solve. I narrow down the possibilities a bit.
Don't think about starting, don't think about what's the best idea or is this a good idea, or or or- just start.
Putting anything down, no matter how shitty, and responding to it is more productive than staring at a blank page or staring off into space or straining your brain telling yourself, "COME ON, GOOD IDEAS! WHERE ARE YOU!?!". Or worse, starting to get down on yourself for not having those magic ideas (that nobody has, really).
That never gets anyone anywhere. I need to start, so I do. I start with garbage, I change it, I try ideas, I kick it around, getting more and more specific, working out the logic to tie it all together, keep changing and adapting and twisting and turning until it's good- and I repeat. No time for existential crisis, because I'm dealing with what's in front of me- but first, I have to put something, anything in front of me, in order to have something to deal with it.
To quote Ed Catmull (co founder of Pixar)"
“If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they will screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a brilliant team, they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something better.”
When people talk about a creativity block, it is largely because they're trying to come up with a 'good idea'.
But you don't need a good idea. If you're good at problem solving, if you practice it, you will have the ability to transform a bad idea into a better idea into a good idea into a great idea. The things you love are not made by mystics on mountains receiving visions from on high- they're made by people that solve problems for a living. That's what being 'brilliant', in Mr. Catmull's term, actually is.
You just need to start. Then look at it, and change it to be better. And change it and better it again, and again, and again- and all of a sudden the total doggerel you started with in the morning by evening is something an audience will mistake for genius, inspired work, obviously the product of brilliant mind possessed of unfailing and infinite creativity.
Doesn't matter how you start, it only matters what you end up with.
Nobody sees the sausage being made, other than you. (Something I have to remind myself of when I look at one of those "Art Of" books for movies- it feels like all this creativity just flowed out of the artists in the same amount of time it takes you to read the books- but the reality is it took 4 years of hundreds of people's lives and the amount of stuff that was cut and thrown in the trash would easily fill a book 20 times the size of the one on my shelf.)
I would also mention this: yeah, a lot of what you do following these exercises and techniques? Lot of it is probably going to look like garbage. Lot of it is going to be, "well this looks like shit, but I got one adequate shape out of it, which with 4 more iterations and 2 weeks of time, I can probably make work as a real drawing."
So if you're looking for an ego boost, or struggling with self-confidence? These exercises ain't gonna help with that, if you're applying a "BUT I WANT THEM TO BE GOOOOD" set of standards to them. Also, having those sorts of expectations weighing you down? Is likely to get in the way of the kind of light, loose playfulness you want when approaching these exercises. It'd be like you playing make-believe as a child, and then punching yourself until you puke when the resulting improv story about 'robot bears with super powers' is not immediately up to the standard of Nebula award-winning fiction. It's absurd, awful and unproductive.
You need to accept mistakes, you need to get caught up in the page, in the moment, and not be in your own head about your own issues. (This is why zen meditation/CBT can be helpful, I'd say to any artist, just on a purely pragmatic level). This why I made a point up top to split the creativity issue from the self-confidence issue, because bringing an overbearing level of expectation with you into these exercises has just as much chance of making them another source of pain, rather than being invigorating like they should be, and like what you're looking for.
That doesn't mean they're not worth doing, but it does mean you should not look at this, or any other practice or exercise as some kind of salvation. There is no objective "good enough at art" that washes away self-doubt or anything like that- no matter how much money you've made or how many AAA studios you've worked for or how many awards you've won. Solving mental hang-ups with art solutions is like trying to cut a board in half with a screwdriver- it's the wrong tool for the job.
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Also, i got a plane ticket to Seattle in November. It's the first time I've ever gone westcoast. Not having any family or friends out there seems kinda scary, but also fun. Any one from Seattle area on the boards that has any tips & tricks?
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lexxy is out there but haven't seen her post in some time. It's definitely a forumer hotbed though.
Now I feel like I really ought to have some sweet inside info to share on Seattle, but I don't. I'm sorry!
All I know is you can get coffee and rain there? And Amazon owns like half the downtown, so if you see people walking around looking like they live their lives in a nightmare corporate purgatory, maybe give them a hug or something?
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