Well, although I’ve already mentioned how watching documentaries about artists and/or reading interviews with artists can be a good way to get inspired again if you’re going through a “making art is a dreary and meaningless chore” type of uninspired phase, but I thought that I’d look at this technique in a bit more detail today.
1) Don’t get jealous!: I mention this every time I mention this technique, but one of the most important things to remember if you want to get inspired using art documentaries or interviews is NOT to feel jealous of the other artist. I cannot stress this enough! If you feel jealous, resentful or inadequate then it will only make you feel even more uninspired and you should probably look for another technique instead.
The goal of watching a documentary or reading an interview is to see other people taking art seriously. It is to see an overview of another artist’s body of work that prompts you to think about your own style, themes, palette, medium etc… in a similar way, imbuing what felt like a “meaningless chore” with a new sense of gravity and significance.
The goal is to look at the work of better artists and, instead of grumbling about them, to think something like “This could be me with a few more years of practice“. This is a great way to – at least temporarily – rebuild your feelings of motivation and to make your art practice feel meaningful again.
The goal is also just to be fascinated by the art. Feeling fascinated by other people’s art will make you wonder whether anyone would feel fascinated by your own art (either today or in the future) and even the idea of this can instantly motivate you again by making your art practice feel important and meaningful again.
But, yes, if you make the mistake of feeling jealous of another artist, then you won’t be able to do any of this. You’ll just end up feeling angry and/or inadequate, which will make you feel even less motivated. If it helps, remember that all artists were inexperienced once, that all artists go through uninspired times and that even the best artists fail occasionally (even if they don’t always show off their failed drawings or paintings).
2) Do your own thing!: Another beginner’s mistake that you want to avoid if you’re using documentaries to get inspired again is trying to imitate another artist too much. Yes, you should take inspiration – but you should do your own thing with it. This is important for so many reasons – the main one being that it is impossible to be a perfect copy of someone else.
You have a different imagination, a different history and a different personality. So, use it! Everything that fascinates you about another artist comes from them expressing their own uniqueness. So, if you ever want to evoke that reaction in others, you need to focus on the things that are uniquely “you”. The artists that you admire did their own thing, and so should you!
For example, the night before I prepared this article, I got inspired by watching a DVR recording of a documentary about Bob Ross. It also made me realise that I am a very different artist to Bob Ross – not only are landscapes something I only make occasionally but I also use a mixture of traditional and digital tools too.
I love things like Tenebrist lighting and glowing neon lights, my artistic background is in drawing (and, yes, I use watercolour pencils to add paint to my art for this reason) rather than oil painting, my main influences are completely different (eg: 1980s heavy metal album and horror novel covers, 1980s-90s comics/cartoons, older sci-fi films like “Blade Runner” and the original versions of horror movies like “Suspiria” and “Flatliners”) and I also have a different history, personality and imagination to Bob Ross too. Even my musical tastes (eg: heavy metal, punk and goth music) are different to the country music that Ross apparently enjoyed. I am a different person to Bob Ross.
So, although making a “Bob Ross” landscape painting was out of the question, I was still able to get inspired by trying to make something that was uniquely “me”. I had a sudden partial memory of an ironically cheerful post-apocalyptic short story I had written in 2008. Even though I couldn’t remember everything about it, the idea felt meaningful and interesting enough to suddenly push me to rapidly make a digitally-edited painting of it. Here’s a “zoomed in” preview:
The full – but smaller- painting should appear here in mid-August next year. And, yes, I ended up including a small landscape in it too.
So the lesson here is that, whilst you should be inspired or motivated by other artists, don’t try to be a copy of them. You are a different and unique person – and this is what makes your art interesting.
3) Do some research first!: Although art documentaries are a way of learning more about art, they tend to be at their most inspiring when you’ve already learnt a bit about art history through things like random internet research and/or reading.
Not only will all of this research help you to learn more about which artists you are actually interested in (which will help you to find documentaries that interest you more), but already knowing a bit about both the works and history of the artist featured in the documentary means that you can focus less on learning details and more on just soaking in the atmosphere and mood of the documentary. This is the part that will help you to feel inspired after you have finished watching.
Art documentaries are at their best for making you feel inspired when they are a reminder of something that you already know. Documentaries only usually have about 20-60 minutes to explain a topic, so they tend to focus more on the most important elements in a compelling way. This “distilled” way of getting information across is great for inspiration because it gives you a quick and intense impression of an artist that you admire that is designed to evoke feelings of awe and inspiration.
And, yes, documentaries leave things out for time and/or editorial reasons. For example, the Bob Ross documentary I watched didn’t mention the main reason why Bob Ross always spoke in such a calm way during his TV show episodes – namely that, after quite a few years of having to be loud and authoritative during his military career, he just didn’t want to raise his voice ever again.
So, if you want to be informed, read some online articles or some books about an artist. If you want to be inspired, then watch a documentary after reading this stuff.
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Anyway, I hope that this was useful 🙂
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