What drives you as an artist? I strongly believe that there is a hidden unleashed artist in all of us. We often feel limited or stuck trying to find ourselves. Have you ever had that image stuck in your head that you cannot seem to escape? It follows you everywhere, at work, doing chores, listening to music, and in your dreams. You try to draw it but find yourself making mistakes and wasting mounds of paper. You can’t figure out why you cannot draw a stick figure to save your life when you have drawn portraits, and landscapes flawlessly in the past. Well Today in this blog I am going to give you a glimpse into how you can begin to make the changes to unleash your potential.
The biggest problem is finding what medium you feel most comfortable with it has to be an extension of you. For me it just happened to be the pencil. The next thing you have to figure out is your style. Each of us has a unique fingerprint, and in art we each have what I like to call an “Art Fingerprint.” An Art fingerprint is an original style that no one on the planet can replicate, almost like your signature. Sure they may try, but all copies will be just that another copy. You have to let go and find your own style to do that you have to take yourself back to that one point in time when you were really excite to finish a piece of art. It could have been when you were a child, in school, or a week ago, but that moment when you caught yourself off guard paused, and smiled at your picture. It’s that excitement you have to get back, and pull into everything you do.
When did art become work, and competitions, and who can sell the most? It’s a pressure that we all face especially in this age of modern sharing on sites like Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and so on. Likes, comments, and shares to the highest bidder. When we don’t see the results we like we fall backwards in fear that our work is maybe not as good as the artist with over 10,000 hits. I will be the first to admit I fell into the category of envy of other artists who hit these numbers because I don’t have the income to pay for ads, or other forms of web advertising. I am going to tell you some wise and great advice that someone very smart once told me… (my wife.) They are just numbers, and do not represent the great artist you are. Remember that as you are fighting an invisible battle online to become viral, because the greatest artists that ever existed were alive WAY before the internet was born. So do not let competition hold you back. Pressure to succeed in today’s market had me torn, and had me creating art I thought people would like. I changed who I was in the artwork, and it wasn’t me at all. It became only business, and it made me very unhappy. I was un-motivated with no passion to continue drawing the same tired drawings that had no imprint of me in them at all. It was funny how me trying to fit in with the art community and be seen with them was what got me lost in the shuffle. I was just another artist with no originality, and I had lost who I was in the process. I needed to change or I was finished.
So what got me motivated again, the catalyst that broke the mold. It was something as simple as a sketchbook, and freedom. Eliminate the pressure, and just draw. You have to just let loose and let it all come out. No techniques, no references and no hesitation. Just draw the first image that comes to your head. T doesn’t have to be the best image in the world, just enjoy it. You don’t even have to finish it. Then for the next week I challenge you to do it again, and again. You will start learning how you perceive your imagination. You might even shock yourself a bit, and may be able to find that you had more to show than you thought. The trick is to continue pushing what is hidden within. By just drawing out your thoughts, and experiences you begin to let go of all the pressures the world places on your shoulders.
The next thing you will want to do is refine it. Take the images you drew for the week, and just revisit them all. Ask yourself how you felt when you were drawing them. Find out what motivated you to draw them, this may go deeper in your core than you thought, and bring more than just art out, but I guarantee that you will feel much better when you do. It may help to write your own journal or blog about each of the seven drawings. Nothing elaborates, but it will help you find out what motivates you to draw, and why you started in the first place. In doing this and remembering your reason for art, you will also come to remember the passion that brought you to art. I want you to carry that passion onto your own new original piece of artwork.
Skin through your artwork in your sketch book and choose your most favorite image. Not the most detailed, but the one that catches your eye. It may be more than one. I want you to incorporate this image into your next large piece. You can even take multiple images new and old from this sketchbook, and compose them into one great image or piece. Take your time on this one, and really enjoy it. Make it yours and give it your style, your art fingerprint if you will. Place yourself in the scene and picture yourself there. The sights, smells, movements, take it all in and enjoy it. Use references only to refine your image, such as the flowers you drew, or people. Don’t simply copy the image left to right, or up and down like a printer. Move across the paper with randomness, or start from a different spot than you are used to just to get you away from all that technique that locked you down. The point of this is to find out who you are as an artist. In school we learn to look at a picture and make a copy of it, I want you to take that picture right out of your head, and draw it to the paper or canvas.
What it all comes down to is the fear and the challenge. The fear that no one will appreciate your imagination, or understand how you think. To be honest it doesn't matter if they do or don’t. The only person you have to impress is yourself. It’s your art, and your mark on the world. To put it another way do you want to be remembered as the artist who copied other art, or the artist that broke free and decided to do something never before seen. Me I would rather never sell a piece of art and be original and happy doing it, than an artist that just drew pictures that someone else already did. I want you to challenge yourself and bring out the best artist you can be.
(Then again I would really love to be an original artist and sell artwork too, feel free to check out my website on the links below to find out how you can purchase the originals. :D Cheap plug.)
Thank you, and I hope to see more new great artwork
Derrick Rathgeber-Bruno
