Well, I thought that I’d talk briefly about one of the causes of artistic uninspiration. This was something I ended up thinking about in early-mid November last year when, after a stressful and miserable morning, I realised that I hadn’t done any original art practice yet.
Given the circumstances, and how low my inspiration and motivation levels for making anything original had been over the past few days, I wasn’t expecting much. I thought that I’d be lucky if I managed to make a generic landscape or a lazy painting without much background detail.
But then I ended up making this cool “retro horror movie”-style semi-digital painting 🙂 Here’s a full-size preview 🙂
This is a preview. The semi-digital painting should “officially” be posted here in early March next year.
So, how did I get inspired to paint this? A lot of it just involved ignoring the “inner critic” and painting whatever seemed to be the most interesting or emotionally-cathartic to paint. Given my mood at the time, the horror genre seemed like the most cathartic genre of art to paint, and it also allowed for some dramatic visual storytelling too. Plus, I could use a “Dutch angle“, like something from an old survival horror videogame. I love painting gloomy weather and vintage fashions too, so adding both helped to make me feel interested in the painting as well.
Of course, there were parts of my mind saying things like: “You made a gothic painting yesterday, do something different!“, “Why don’t you make as much cyberpunk art as you used to?” etc… I could go on for a long time.
In theory, these “inner critic” thoughts are technically a good thing. In theory, thoughts like this push you to experiment more and to improve your art. In theory.
In practice, however, they’re usually more of a nuisance than anything else. Or, more accurately, they’re a nuisance when they make you question your creative instincts. They’re a nuisance when they leave you frozen with indecision, unsure whether to make the fun painting which feels emotionally-satisfying to make or making the chore-like painting which will appease your inner critic.
The trick here is to recognise whether the thoughts come from within or without. If you make the same sort of paintings over and over again, you will naturally get bored and actually feel enthusiastic about trying other things. It will feel natural or instinctive, and you probably won’t really question it too much. On the other hand, if the thoughts feel like a tutting art critic or a disappointed art teacher, then this is usually a good sign that they’re based on external advice or expectations rather than on your own instincts.
In the latter case, getting inspired again can just be a simple matter of ignoring these thoughts and just painting whatever instinctively feels like the most interesting, emotionally-satisfying or intuitive thing to paint. Regardless of whether it is “repetitive” or whatever.
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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂
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