How to get ideas when drawing

When we asked on Empório's Instagram about the biggest problems our followers felt as artists , many people talked about the difficulty of finding ideas , inspiration or being creative when drawing .

After thinking about it for a bit, I realized that this frustration often stems from our own expectation of spontaneously having a revolutionary idea while we're in the shower or walking around, but that's not always how great ideas are born.

Creativity, like any other skill, can be trained to help us develop ideas quickly through methods and exercises that make the process of "creative spark" more natural. In this post, I'll share some of these tips in the hope that the next time you draw, ideas will come flooding in.

Save everything you find interesting and remember where you saved it.

This is a tip many people follow, but often forget or fail to use when needed. Leaving inspiration until you sit down to draw is like tempting luck, and the chances of you ending up frustrated because you can't come up with an idea are very high. To avoid this, ALWAYS have a sketchbook, camera, or audio recorder handy to capture moments, thoughts, and references that cross your daily life, wherever you are.

A great tool for organizing all of this is Evernote, an app that lets you save photos, recordings, and notes in one place. This way, you can access your ideas more easily when you need them.

Additionally, organize your reference folders on Pinterest or another platform you use to save images from the internet so you always know exactly where to turn when you need those files.

Allow yourself to have many bad ideas

There are some creative techniques that use a multitude of ideas to find a solution to a given problem. To do this, you can start by thinking about a theme: let's say you like plants and want to create drawings that fit within that semantic field. You then set a timer for 10 minutes and, within that time frame, write down as many elements or combinations related to "plants" as you can think of. So, you could write down:

• Succulents
• Carnivorous plants
• Plants in the desert
• Alien plants
• (...)

Any idea is valid here, and none should be discarded. All the filters that normally exist in your head can be removed, since only you will see the result, and the goal is precisely to create volume. Amidst a pile of meaningless ideas, you'll likely find one or a few that could very well be used or combined to create something interesting.

This exercise can also be done using non-art-related topics to practice the technique—for example, you might find ways to sell a macaroni burger or put a rubber duck up for adoption.

Train the rapid development of good ideas

Once you're comfortable with the 10-minute method, you can do it a little differently: ask someone to alert you every minute, so you can only work on one idea per minute. If you're not finished, set the idea aside and move on to the next one. This way, you can train yourself to organize your time and generate a high volume of more accurate ideas more quickly (10 ideas in 10 minutes).

Make your mind more malleable

From a young age, we're conditioned to think and act according to certain patterns that are reflected in our creative process, such as a fear of straying too far from what's familiar. It turns out that when it comes to art , the further from reality we are, the more original our ideas will be.

There's an exercise that's really fun to do in a group and that can help you think (well) outside the box that works something like this:

1. Write any question on a piece of paper (e.g., "What is the meaning of life?") , fold it in half, and exchange it with a friend who has done the same;
2. Write on the folded paper that you received the answer to the question you wrote ;
3. Open the paper, read his question and your answer aloud.
4. Try to justify this answer to your friend and ask him to do the same.

It's common for completely irrational sets of questions and answers to emerge during this exercise, and that's precisely what will force you to think of extremely creative justifications.

Combine common elements in different situations

Combining two or more common elements in an unexpected situation also leads to an original composition. I think the coolest example I can give here is the #DesenheOAlfredo challenge , which we recently launched on Instagram with the goal of having each participant create a new version of our Alfredo print .

Hunno, one of the participants, created a composition with Alfredo and the rabbit, two classic characters from Fe 's adventures, who despite already being known separately had not yet been seen acting together - and it was precisely this strangeness that made his drawing super creative.

Hunno's entry for the #DrawAlfredo Challenge

As an exercise, you can write several random elements on small pieces of paper, fold them and draw two at a time to try to create an unexpected combination using both drawn items in a single composition.

Ex:

Drawn paper 1: Llama
Drawn paper 2: Aquarius
Creation: A happy llama floating in space in a tutu with an aquarium as a helmet and several little fish around its head in the shape of the solar system.

Who knows, maybe you'll be surprised by a strange combination that ends up turning into an incredible design?

Don't force yourself

Even though all these tips help develop creative thinking, there will still be times when creativity simply refuses to work. At those times, the best thing you can do is find something else to do and let your head clear, letting you know when it's ready again to create more amazing things.

With love,
Re