One of the major issues that most artists will run into at some point or another is the question of how and where to actually find inspiration on a regular basis. If you are keen to try and produce great work, then you are going to need to think about where you can get inspiration from, so it’s something that you will definitely want to question. As it happens, there are plenty of sources you might want to look to in order to do this. In this article, we are going to take a look at some of the major places you might want to think about looking in order to find inspiration for your own art.
Your Past
Arguably, the number one place where artists look to in order to find inspiration is their own life, specifically their past. If you stop and think about it, it soon becomes clear that your own past is a hugely valuable source of inspiration, and one which you are going to have to put into art in some way or another. It is also a useful source for the very fact that it generally has a lot of personal emotion tied to it, and that means that you are going to be able to use it as a catalyst for art in a very powerful way.
If you start looking to your past to use it for art, there might be times when it becomes a little painful. In truth, those will generally produce the best art, but you should still take care as you delve into that stuff, and make sure that you are always looking after yourself along the way.
Other Artists
Without ever looking at other artists, you are essentially going to be working in a vacuum, and that is not a good place for your artwork to grow and develop as it should. You need to spend some time looking at other artists as much as you possibly can, and it’s something that you are going to need to think about as much as possible. There are so many artists that you can look to, and it is important to bear in mind that you should always try to take on board some of the ideas, conceits and techniques of artists from other traditions or working with a different medium. So if you are a photographer, maybe take a look at the work of Dan Mintz from DMG Entertainment to see if you can glean anything you can use in your photos. If you are a writer, watch the movies of Hitchcock and see what there is to learn.
Current Events
Whether or not you tend to produce political works, you are still going to find that looking to current events will always help you to get your art off the ground and get some ideas going. This might be in part because you feel very strongly about a particular issue, perhaps one that makes you angry, or it might just be that you can see clearly where we need to go as a society, and you want to use your art to make your point. This is one of the natural occurrences that art is very good for, so it’s something that you will want to think about. You don’t have to think of it as political if you have a particular allergy to that word. Instead, just think of it as art that is trying to help the world become a better place. Looking at current events should certainly give you the necessary inspiration for that kind of artwork.
Dreams
Without the world of dreams, many artists would frankly have much less to say and much less to produce. If you tend to remember your dreams, you might want to start looking towards them as a means to try and understand what kind of motifs might be lurking around in your art unconsciously already, and then working to draw those things out in a more conscious way. Than it itself can be a transformative thing to do for your art. If you struggle to remember dreams, keeping a dream diary will ensure that your brain starts to remember them more as you awaken. Once you do that, you might start to find that you have opened up a whole new world of inspiration that you can start to use.
Any and all of these are going to be worthy inspiration, so take a look at each in turn.
