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Famous painter Henri Matisse said, “Creativity takes courage.” But can being an artist be fun, too? What if you don’t know what you’re doing? The answer is “YES,” especially when you don’t know what you’re doing.
Being an artist starts and ends with playing with your creativity. If you want to be a serious artist (doing gallery shows and making a living), there is much work and learning in the middle. But you have to start by being a playing artist who has no idea what they are doing and is okay with that fact.
The “Knowing” comes later after the “Doing.” You know from what you learn, and you learn from playing with your creativity. There have been many of those “Serious” artists we were talking about who get stuck in their heads and the business of it all. The answer is almost always about going back to the playing of their craft. Can being an artist be fun? It not only can be, it really needs to be. How To Learn To Be An Artist When You Think You Aren’t Creative
Are you craving a creative outlet and wondering where to start? Have you been creating for years and chewed all the flavor out of what you’ve been making? Either way, we have some ideas to ease you down the road to art being fun again.
Can Being An Artist Be Fun Even When You Don’t Know What You’re Doing?
Yes, There Is Freedom In Having No Expectations.
There is absolute freedom to being a newbie. There is a power when you don’t know what you don’t know. It’s hard to have expectations when you don’t know what you are doing to start with anyway. Most experienced artists say they do all sorts of exercises to get themselves back to the mindset of not knowing or a beginner’s mind.
The beginner’s mind is open. It can’t be critical about a lot because it doesn’t have an opinion about…anything yet. This can be true of artists, writers, songwriters…any kind of creative. In the beginning, you can just play and see what happens. The creatives who are the happiest are the ones who can bring themselves back to that space on a whim. How To Learn To Be An Artist When You Think You Aren’t Creative
Yes, they understand design in the art mediums like painting, sculpting, drawing, and multi-media. They understand rhythm and cadence in music. They understand the storyline, voice, and concise sentences. But they know the magic place is when they go back to that beginner’s mind with little expectation and lots of freedom just to play and create.
Try This.
These dice are a great place to exercise that fun and creative place, whether you are a newbie or an artist who has lost your beginner’s mind for just playing. This little gadget holds nine dice. Three are for the type of art to do (media), three are for the color, and three are for the mood.
You can use them a few different ways depending on your time, and there are many combination outcomes. This is fun to use alone or in a group. It’s always fun to see the different interpretations of the same instructions that pop up on the dice.
Click here to check out Two Tumbleweeds Dice Drawing and Painting Game.
Can Being An Artist Be Fun Even When You Don’t Know How To Do Stuff?
Yes, You Can Quiet Your Inner Critic When You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know.
It doesn’t matter an artist’s skill level; it’s not other people’s opinion of your work that is the hardest to navigate. It is your inner critic. Genuine constructive critique and advice can improve your work and make its creation more enjoyable. But the inner critic (you talking to you) will never be pleased with itself. No matter what you change or how you improve, you will still find fault with what you are doing. How To Learn To Be An Artist When You Think You Aren’t Creative
Can being an artist be fun? Yes, when the inner critic is too green to have opinions about every little thing you do. Being an artist is so fun when you are new and don’t know what you are doing because you don’t have as much critical info to draw from. If you can stretch your creative legs and stay in a place of “just playing,” you will find that you can give yourself space to get better at what you are doing.
Try This.
Here is a good way to practice seeing with an artist’s eye while still having something guide you. The interesting thing about these guides is that you start to see outlines and possibilities of shapes and forms that you wouldn’t see before. This is fun and playful, but it is great learning to “See as an artist sees” tool.
Click here to check out this really fun Ink Tracing Coloring Book.
Can Being An Artist Be Fun Even When You Aren’t As Good At It As Someone Else?
Yes, If You Can Work At Your Level, Not Their’s.
We warn clients to be mindful of judging their lives against those who have been doing life longer. This can also be true in your work when you start judging your output or credibility against someone who has been in your profession much longer. This can also be true for anyone learning to be creative.
If you are just starting, don’t judge your art against someone who has been making art much longer than you. It’s not fun, and it’s definitely not fair to your new artist self. Work at your level no matter what you are doing.
Be aware of the next level, and watch for an opportunity to jump on that merry-go-round of improvement. Be mindful of the higher and ultimate levels to strive toward, but don’t try to work at someone else’s level. You will just get frustrated and want to quit. How To Learn To Be An Artist When You Think You Aren’t Creative
Try This.
This is an excellent book for people wanting to learn to draw. Often, beginners don’t know what to draw, much less how to draw it. This takes care of both issues. It has pages and pages of suggestions and then shows you how to draw each one.
Click here to check out How To Draw Everything-300 Drawings.
Can Being An Artist Be Fun Even When You Get Stuck?
Yes, Because Things Can Be Fun When You Allow Them to Be.
It’s important to remember what made you want to make something, create something in the first place. Usually, people love the color, shine, line, and form of visual arts. In music, it’s the harmony of chords, tones, and great lyrics. In writing, it’s the invoked emotion and the ability to express yourself and help others feel something.
Whatever it was that called to you, don’t ever forget what it was. Even seasoned artists often keep something handy that is fun and don’t have to think about much. Some call it a warm-up piece. Some call it a play piece. They may be working on something that involves lots of time and money. But they remember what called them to create. Can being an artist be fun? Yes, but don’t forget to do things just to play.
Try This.
This is a fun “Play Piece.” It’s sparkly, colorful, cute, fun, and cozy, and anyone can do it.
Click here to check out Cat Shaped Diamond Art For Beginners.
Can Being An Artist Be Fun Even When You Don’t Do It Like Everyone Else?
Yes, It’s A Great Time To Think Out Of The Box.
If you were to go to an art school, one of the techniques they use is duplication. You draw, paint, or sculpt a piece just like one of the famous artists did. You might look at one of Van Gogh’s paintings of sunflowers and try to duplicate everything about it. Then you would do something opposite, like making the sunflowers purple or do the same painting using gladiolas instead of sunflowers? This is, again, an exercise that helps you see like an artist.
Another enjoyable thing is to see if you can think outside the box and, as the movie The Matrix says, “Realize there is no box.” What if you created bright, warm sunflowers but made them out of safety pins and beads? What if you caught the light like Van Gogh but did it with a mixed-media canvas of shards of glass, rocks, and marbles? Then what if, instead of three sunflowers, it was two Geccos?
We like to believe that someone in our life sees things exactly as we do. Unfortunately and fortunately, we all have our unique way of seeing…everything. Our way might harmonize with someone else’s view, but no one sees exactly what we see in life or in a painting.
Try This.
This is an excellent tool for practicing seeing things with YOUR eyes instead of someone else’s. It’s called a reverse coloring book. The color is already there; you create the outlines. Imagine lying in the grass and seeing shapes in clouds. That’s what reverse coloring is. Only you get to take a pen and outline what you see.
Can Being An Artist Be Fun Even When You Just Want To Play With Art?
Yes, It’s a Great Time To Try New Things.
Back to that “Creativity takes courage” idea, being an artist can be fun when you allow yourself to try new things and give your ideas room to dance. Again, this is true whether you are new to this “being an artist” thing or have been creating for years. Maybe you don’t choose to be an “artist” but just want to play with fun art stuff and ideas. That works too. How To Learn To Be An Artist When You Think You Aren’t Creative
Try This.
We love this tool for helping us keep things new. It offers 10,560 ideas and endless possibilities for what you can create independently from each suggestion. To create a new idea, you turn the outer wheel, which covers a subject, a color, and a texture. This generates all sorts of different possibilities.
Then, you spin the wheel to see which combination you land on. This is another tool that is fun to use by yourself or with other people. If you have 10 people in the room, you will have 10 completely different concepts of what those instructions might look like… 10560 things expressed in endless ways. That should keep you busy trying new things for a while.
Click here for a fun art game you can play alone or with your friends.
So….Can Being An Artist Be Fun Even When You Don’t Know What You’re Doing?
Yes, it can when you stay in the best head space and use fun tools to inspire you. When you find a creative outlet that speaks to you, protect the fun you see in it. It will serve you for as long as you create. Play, mess stuff up, try again, play some more, and have fun…have some more fun. You’ve got this!
Pixi-Pebbles when you are pondering, Can Art Be Fun Even When You Don’t Know What You Are Doing.
We’ve used these little Pixi-Pebbles to move ourselves from a feeling we’re not enjoying very much…to a feeling that helps us discover our vision of intention, awareness, and direction.
They lead us to hope, possibilities, and a fire under our butt to live life by design instead of default.
In our blog, Can Being An Artist Be Fun Even When You Don’t Know What You’re Doing?, here is a Pixi-Pebble that came to mind…
Just a little inspiration to get you from here to there…
Fun comes in a lot forms. One of the forms we happen to appreciate a lot are videos of cute animals. Check out this one…may it inspire you to take the leap into finding the fun of art (of course, after you’ve watched some sweet kittens and puppies!)
