Any advice for being more creative?

Hello fellow artists,

I was wondering if anyone has any advice on creativity. I am someone who has a very analytical and logical personality (ISTJ if you’re into Myers-Briggs) and coming up with creative ideas does not come very naturally to me, but it’s something I really really want in my work. When I do studies or gestures I mostly end up just copying what I see - which I've become quite good at - but when it comes to coming up with original ideas in my sketchbook, whether figure or environment or otherwise, it’s so difficult and I feel like even when I come up with an idea, I end up drawing it in a really stiff and boring way.

Anyone have any thoughts or advice?

Thanks!

P.S. And thanks to Line of Action for making this website such an incredible resource!

Try iterating on a subject. For example, if you want to draw a chair, go through a bunch of thumbnail sketches and choose the best. That'll force you to come up with more interesting shapes.

Hi there Friend,

I'm not sure if this will interest you but it is what comes to my mind to share with you. I hope you can have fun with it! Because drawing is fun, but lets not think of what we are going to draw right now. Lets just get a pencil and a piece of paper and some colors, whether its crayons, markers or colored pencils..lets do something that has no rules.

1. Sit comfortably, close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. And say out loud to yourself, "I am going to freely draw connecting lines all over my paper in a fun relaxed motion" You have now voiced your intention. With paper and pencil in front of you, draw some squiggly lines all over your paper with out lifting your pencil. make it all one continous line over lapping, making loops in all directions. Just go wild with it if you want. Its your moment of doodle! :) lol

2. When your paper is full of lines and curves and loop'ty loops. :) put your pencil down. Close your eyes, take another deep relaxing breath, exhale slowly. Now open your eyes and look at your paper. Are there any shapes that stand out to you? What if you drew some eyes or facial features picaso style into some of the shapes what would emerge? Is there a small cirtique or line you could add or take away and a hidden object would be revealed? Let your mind wonder and see what it sees...No judgement only fun, sillness.Its a moment to let our inner child play with out rules or judgement from our analytical mind.

3. Now take a moment to add color, our inner child loves color!! Color some loops, don't think about what color to use just grab the one that feels good to you at the time, maybe you see a dog or tree in your picture but you feel like using the color pink not brown or green. Then make a pink tree or dog! Thats why its fun, there are no rules! Its easy for us to forget that and then we become tense and we don't draw our best.

This is meant to be an excercise in creativity and self-expression so there is NO wrong or right way to do it.

I hope this was helpful and fun for you and I am glad your here because i think this website is AWESOME!

Thank you "Line of Action" for this forum!

B.H.

You lot seem very systematic in your ways of being creative. grab ur prefered medium and draw anything that comes to mind or you can see or just doodle . draw upsidedown. on the phone . outside,inside . listening to music . on the toilet. whatever u can think of, what ever u feel drawn to or want to explore - do it! have fun

Make it a story!

So before I got into art I was trying to be a writer, and could never really picture the things I was writing about, so I started drawing. Because of that whenever I draw I typically have a stgory along with it. If it's a still life, try to imagine a different place that object could be, a bowl of fruit ona coutner or a pirate ship, at a picnic at the park!

If you have an interest in music or history, draw something pertaining to that or involved in some obsure way, even if you are the only one that would know the influence.

For people it makes it a bit easier to do, try to imagine what feeling you are feeling or something the figure will be thinking, or why they're in the pose you selected, just having a little story to tell yourself can help drive you forard. Dont' be afraid to get silly, that's where a lot of creativety comes from.

Hello there,

I think what you should do is draw the same thing multiple times, then after you've drawn make changes to each version of it to try and make them look like completely different things. This will force you to be more creative when trying to figure out what to change. I hope this helps!!!

Hi! I have struggled before with creativity issues, and I have a couple quick fixes for it.

1: listen to music while you're drawing or observing the model. It can make your drawing come out with more flow or with a different colour scheme than if you didn't have music.

2: try drawing without a sketch. Start from the inside and don't worry if it doesn't come out perfectly, because it won't. And that's the beauty of it.

3: explore the opposites. Instead of painting a green tree, why not try and paint a pink one? It gets more and more interesting as you change the colours.

These were my top 3. If you need more feel free to ask!

I'll go with a different type of answer, since "feeling things out" and "drawing random lines" like is often suggested has never worked for me :)

Instead, try starting by making some choices: what do you want to draw? a person? a landscape? an object? if you can't decide, pick one at random... you can even use a random word generator if you want.

Let's say you want to draw a person.

What do they look like (tall-short, feminine-masculine, skin color...)..? again, if you can't pick just make a list of options and go for one at random.

What are the doing (are they moving or static?, are they playing a sport? doing an activity? just thinking?)?

Where are they (outside, inside, in a forest, in a house, in a pool....)..?

Just keep making questions on the things you don't know yet about your drawing until you have a more clear image. Also, try to come up with a number of differnt answers to this questions before settling for one, the first idea tends to be the most boring one in my experience.

After some time, you may not even need to explicitly go through the process of making up all the questions, your brain will just kind of do it by itself.

• Ciamar edited this post on June 22, 2020 3:48pm.

i wouldn't call myself the most creative person on the planet, but i definitely have quite a collection of ideas in my head so i hope i can help you out! these tips are more for coming up with concepts rather than the actual execution though.

i personally think its very important to surround yourself with a lot of different forms of art. follow other artists on social media, both artists who makes art similar to you (or similar to what you want to create) and artists who make completely different art from yours, that way you might pick stuff up from them and you (hopefully) won't get stuck in an endless cycle of just seeing art similar to yours, so you won't get any new ideas.

video games and movies are also great for inspiration, some of my personal favourites for inspiration are stardew valley, overwatch and the movie annihilation, among many others.

i love telling stories through my art, so i read a lot; poetry, short stories, novels, even things like tumblr posts and tweets help inspire me. same thing with music, i like writing down lyrics that catch my attention to refer back to for inspiration.

basically, i think it's a good thing to not only search for inspiration when you want to draw, but to "force" yourself to subconsciously look for it in everyday life by surrounding yourself with it. by seeing what other people are making. and, when you get ideas, no matter the time, write them down and save them for later! no matter how vague the idea is, even if it's just a song lyric, a colour, or a specific feeling, write it down and refer back to it when you want to draw.

Ahhh oh my goodness I didn't expect to get so many replies haha!

All of this advice is SO helpful and I feel very very inspired :) I'm excited to try out some of these!!

Thank you so so much to everyone who responded, I truly appreciate it! :)