Find Your Artistic Voice: The Essential Guide to Working Your Creative Magic

BEGIN ANYHOW:

Sean Qualls. He reminds us that your voice becomes stronger when you “develop your vocabulary.” Of course, he doesn’t literally mean your vocabulary of words. He means your vocabulary of interests, knowledge, and ideas. We develop our vocabulary by going deep into learning and exploring the world—reading books and magazines, watching films, listeni

I ask my students in my idea generation classes to make a list of all the things in their lives they are interested in—the things they spend time thinking about or are fascinated by.

When we are in the process of finding our artistic voice, we are almost constantly straddling the planes of belonging and independence, of being part of a movement and having our own unique form of expression, of emulating artists we admire and breaking away from them.

MAKE A SCHEDULE AND STICK TO IT To get into a routine of creating, I recommend making a weekly schedule that lays out when and for how long you will work on making art each day.

Creative thinking happens in most people, but what differentiates most productive artists from the rest of the population is that they are compelled to do something with their ideas, and they are also usually able to work through fears about not being ready or not having the right set of tools.

The truth is, when we first start something, it can feel wholly uncomfortable. It can even feel risky! What if we fail? When we have an idea for what we want to create (perhaps related to whatever gave us the spark and the urge to make something in the first place), the end result we envision is often so far from what we have the skills to do. So w

And there is no way you can get to where you want to go without making piles of work.

are already making art full time, scheduling can help you make sure you’re allotting time for experimentation (and not just paid projects). If you