WAITING FOR PERMISSION JUST SLOWS YOU DOWN.

I’ve been thinking recently about what I can write about on here to turn it into a proper ‘blog’ rather than me just sharing stuff here from my instagram/twitter feed.

So, what I’m going to do is share my experiences/tips to help anyone who reads this blog and also as a little reminder to myself about what I need to focus on to stay on target.

I think this subject applies to a lot of artists, especially creatives starting out in the industry,asking for permission to create. By this I don’t mean physically going out there and asking whether it’s the right thing to do, it’s something we ask ourselves everyday without even realising it. For instance for me, I feel pressured to post great sketches or finished pieces on my social media daily, it sounds simple enough, but it isn’t.

Putting that pressure on myself just creates stress because I then feel like I HAVE to create and forcing creativity is never a good thing. I follow a lot of great artists on networks such as instagram and twitter and constantly feel pressured into building a following as big as their’s, forgetting that it isn’t an instant success and that they put a lot of hard work and effort into building that fan base.

A few tips I’ve learnt along the way…

• Inspiration is great - in moderation. Scrolling through other artist’s social networks or portfolios is great, yes we learn from actually creating something yourself, but we also learn from how someone else creates too. However too much inspiration is no good for anyone, it might give you ideas, sometimes I get tonnes of ideas from looking at other artist’s work, but they’re usually ideas that just send me off track to achieving my goals. The main downfall of scrolling through these sites for too long is that you’ll feel like you’re no where near as good as anyone else, and it’s a great way to make you feel like you want to give up. Your main inspiration should be yourself, I guarantee you, if you look at how far you’ve come since you started you’ll have a lot to be proud of!

• Draw for yourself. As I said before, the main pressure I feel is to show great work consistently to my follows, in turn feeling like I HAVE to create something to please others and end up trying to force it out, which isn’t good! The best solution I found for this is to firstly, stop trying to impress, your loyal followers will follow you, end of. It’s not how many followers you have, it’s who is following you. I also took some advice from Brett Bean (Check him out if you haven’t already, he’s brilliant), I started a sketchbook which I draw in pretty much everyday, and I never share what’s inside with my followers, the only ones who see it are me and my girlfriend. Without that pressure of having to show someone at the end, I’ve created some of the most creative sketches I’ve ever done.

• The best time to challenge yourself is when no one else is looking. The main issue I’m trying to get at with this post is the a lot of creatives feel like they shouldn’t be creating certain types of art. For instance a graphic designer might want to great a comic, but feel like they can’t because they can’t draw or a comic artist might want to create a logo but they feel like they can’t because they draw better than they vector, but in the end, honestly, who cares? If you want to create something, then do it, yeah sometimes it might end badly but that’s how you learn. If you sit there wasting so much time working out what you can and can’t achieve then you’ll be missing out on those precious mistakes you could be making to help you improve in the first place.

Stop worrying about everyone else, because they’re probably more concerned about themselves and their own life than they are with yours. Just go out there and make art for yourself!