Surround Yourself With Creativity

We’re in the homestretch of Inktober! And whether you’ve done 5 or 20 drawings, the point is that you made an effort to be more creative this month, along with millions of other like-minded people. Reading everyone else’s blog posts so far, they’ve shared so many good ideas to stay inspired in the crunch of Inktober, I was almost at a loss as to what to add to the myriad of wonderful suggestions. So I started to think of the things that are inspiring to me, and keep me going, not just for Inktober, but during the rest of the year as well.

My advice would be to surround yourself with other creatives.

There can be an uplifting social aspect of art, and whether it is through taking a class, teaching a class, joining a local art association or community group, or just getting together with a group of friends at someone’s house to have beverages, some snacks and do some art is great for inspiration, and getting the creative juices flowing. In a forum, sharing and bouncing ideas off of for new artworks, giving encouragement to keep going, offering gentle constructive criticism, and lending a helpful fresh eye, can all be beneficial to your artwork.

If you are capable, share your talents by teaching! It’s inspiring and an excellent fuel for creativity. I recently fell in love with a quote on a t-shirt website: “some people dream of meeting their favourite artists, I teach mine”. I have taught classes for a number of years and have been lucky enough to have many of my once students become now treasured friends. Along with several other non-student friends, these people are my favourite artists. I love being along in their journey of learning to find a love for art in whatever capacity that it entails for them. Seeing someone discover their love of colour, form and shape, and hearing about when they look up in the sky and get excited about noticing that clouds are not just white but have dimension and colours or that they saw an amazing tree on their walk to the store and desperately felt the urge to want to run home to paint it, that is inspiring to me.

I love seeing everyone’s art journey, through all of their stages. It takes courage to express yourself, but do it, because it inspires and gives strength to others to do the same. And we are all just trying to get through it, so it’s better if we do it together, isn’t it?