Tag: get inspired

Inspiration is something that can find you at the most unexpected times, but it’s also something that you need to pursue. Inspiration won’t always come looking around for you. Often enough, admiring the work of others can help inspire your own ideas.

Here are a few things you can do to help increase your chances of getting inspired:

1. Go on an adventure

Getting a change of scenery can give you a new perspective on the world. This can be as simple as going on a local excursion or traveling to an entirely different city. When your surroundings are different, you notice the details more than you notice them in familiar places.

2. Read a book

Reading a book is like taking your mind on an adventure. You can lose yourself in someone else’s words, and find yourself walking away from the writing with a new spin on the world. That new spin, can generate new ideas.

3. Watch a critically acclaimed movie

Critically acclaimed movies can be works of art that make you think. By watching a more artistic film, you can get your own artistic ideas.

4. Go to a concert

Beautiful music, especially when played live, is a wonderful experience. The way your senses interact with the sounds and your surroundings, can trigger your own ideas.

5. Watch a documentary on a successful person

There’s no better motivation to stop sitting and start doing, than when you hear about the struggles and successes of a successful figure. If you find that you’re in a bit of a rut, it can help to hear about how other successful people have hit their own rough patches in life.

6. Write creatively

Writing can help you with brainstorming and the creative process.

7. Go for a walk or on a run

It can help to get away from whatever you’re working on, and start taking care of yourself more. And exercise can do precisely that.

8. Surprise someone

Doing something kind for someone else can help you look at life a little differently. So often we’re focused on ourselves, that when we shift that focus, it can change our outlook, which helps us creatively.

9. Go dancing

Similar to #7, dancing puts you in a different environment which can help you find inspiration. Sometimes having fun and getting outside of your head for a little bit, is all you need.

10. Just practice your craft

If you practice your craft even when you’re not feeling motivated or inspired, you can get a gust of inspiration simply by sitting down and making time for it.

Inspiration can take work, just like being an artist takes work. As an artist, you need to consistently schedule the time to practice your craft. When it comes to inspiration, you need to be dedicated to discovering and exploring different ways that you can jumpstart your creativity.

I usually find that getting myself out of my comfort zone helps energize my mind and makes me ready to tackle new and exciting things. So if you’re having trouble getting inspired, here are a few ideas of things you can do:

1. Walk around your neighborhood and challenge yourself to take ten creatively cropped pictures

This will help you start thinking creatively about common, everyday things and settings by looking at them in a new light.

2. Make a claymation inspired by a dream you had

Working with clay and thinking creatively about illustrating different moments in time, even if they can seem silly and nonsensical like dreams, will help you find the art in moments.

3. Play with your food

Find different and unique ways to rearrange the food on your plate. This can help you find the fun in everyday activities. And who knows, perhaps this could inspire a fun new series.

4. Find ten different items in your room and create characters inspired by them

This is another exercise in finding the art in common, ordinary things. Our lives can’t always be really exciting or inspiring, so it’s up to you to find that inspiration in what might otherwise be drab or dull.

5. Write a poem where the first line comes from the first thing that pops into your head

Brainstorming ideas can sometimes feel like a chore. Turning it into more of a game can help you find inspiration, and get into a brainstorming rhythm.

6. Take a series of photos to make a flipbook

It’s great to look at things you’re used to and might normally overlook in a new way. Making a flipbook can help you focus on making mundane actions interesting.

7. Make a collage entirely from cutting and layering text

This allows you to look at typography in a new way – by focusing more on the shape and color of text than the actual content.

8. Make a painting without using a paintbrush

Again, this gets you thinking outside the box. Without a brush, what kind of shapes and strokes can you make with other objects or tools that are dipped in paint?

9. Find the music in normal sounds and dance to it

Avoid succumbing to the humdrum of routine and the ordinary, by training your ears and mind to find the music around you.

10. Pretend you are someone else – what kind of work would you make? Try it!

Learning to see things from someone else’s perspective is a useful skill to have. If you’re making art from someone else’s point of view, it could help you think more about the messaging behind your work.