What I Remind Myself when I'm Uninspired to Make Art
Step 1. Stop wallowing in self-loathing and fear.
“What if that last drawing is the last drawing I’ll ever make?” you ask yourself. “What if I’m a washed up hack at the old age of my mid 20s?!”
When you feel bad about not making art it’s because of the giant clock in the back of your brain very rudely yelling “You’re running out of time!!!!”
You assume this clock is screaming about death but there’s also this niggling thought that you have to win at art by 30 or something.
By winning you don’t mean gain recognition, success or fame. You mean you need to feel satisfied with your art by a certain age.
This thought is lying. You will never be satisfied with your art.
Step 2. Stop using social media.
You’re not fooling anyone by going on Instagram to “get inspiration”.
Who doesn’t love a dead-eyed, expressionless, three quarters view pretty face but there’s not much inspo there. Same goes for all the frogs and mushrooms.
After watching 3 straight hours of art reels it’s guaranteed you won’t be inspired. Instead you’ll feel:
Like a useless piece of oxygen-stealing scum.
Overwhelmed by all the art mediums and techniques you’ve never tried.
Murderously jealous of artists with similar styles and subject matter that do a much better job than you.
Completely and utterly uninspired.
Ditch Instagram, TikTok, Facebook (ew, really?), and Tumblr pls. If you must, you can keep Pinterest to use strictly for references but you should probably get rid of that too.
Also, if everyone is consuming the same art content, your art can’t help but start looking like what you’re consuming. This leads to a very homogenous style.
There’s an inverse correlation between time spent on social media and time spent making art. Funny how that works.
3. Take a walk through the graveyard of half-finished work and half-baked ideas.
The projects you abandon will weigh you down unless they are searched out and killed—even if you forgot the really bad sketch you were going to erase and fix even existed in the first place. Walk through (leaf through the magazine holder) the graveyard of abandoned works looking for survivors to either:
Finish off (throw away)
Resuscitate (Finish working on)
Scroll through your notes app for hastily written ideas. That leads to finding fun notes like, “GET HELP FOR YOUR FUCKING ADHD” (6/18/23)
and, “Orc-like creature being birthed out of shredded cunt” (3/19/22).
May have to paint the latter at some point tbh.
4. JoURnAl.
Ok, you don’t actually have to write anything. Just open a shitty, lined notebook and use a pen or pencil to draw a line. Maybe a circle.
Make two dots. Connect with a line. Congratulations! You just drew something even though you’re currently completely uninspired.
Apparently you’re supposed to warm up with sketching like that before drawing anyway??
This is helpful for two possible reasons. Firstly, you’re likely to keep drawing once the first marks have been made, but even if that doesn’t happen you can feel accomplishment for even getting this far (trust me, just tell yourself that. It might work).
5. Accept your worm/god complex.
6. Ignore all art advice ever.
Forget about “draw every single day!”
Forget “Study anatomy!”
Do whatever the fuck you want. Paint the thumbs on the wrong side of the hands. Paint extra thumbs. Cut all the thumbs off.
If the advice you’re inundated with is swirling around in your brain and keeping you from actually making art, flush it. Draw an anatomically incorrect toilet flushing away The War of Art and that one YouTube video saying if you don’t spend an hour a day sketching you’re a failure™
7. Making stuff will be painful and it will also be worth it.
Anyone who’s had the unfortunate experience of being around you when working on a new piece of art will observe you go through the five stages of grief several times:
Denial: I’m excited to bring this great idea to life!
Anger: If anyone so much as glances in my direction or even hints at my work I will order a hit on them. And their family.
Bargaining: I can still fix this. It can still be the world-altering painting of the millennium.
Depression: I want to die. I will never create again.
Acceptance: It ain’t much but it’s honest work.
Repeat.
Sometimes you’re not actually uninspired. You’re just avoiding the pain of creating. But creating will always beat the pain of not creating.
