Creating Space for Creativity

The Real Question

How do you create the space for creativity? Actually sit down and make something, create something—both mentally, physically, having an area to do it in, financially, the time? These are all things I want to talk about today.

The Mistake I Used to Make

I used to make the mistake of thinking I wasn’t creative enough to make art every day or wasn’t creative enough to make the kind of art I wanted to make. It really wasn’t until I read Steven Pressfield’s book The War of Art that I realized I needed to show up every day for that creativity to come.

It wasn’t about motivation or inspiration. It’s just about showing up every day and creating that space—both mentally, physically, financially—for the creativity to show up.

Mental Space

I have a lot going on myself. For a while, it’s hard to disengage my brain to get it to that point where I can have a blank slate to think about things creatively, to pull in inspiration and actually make something.

Doing this vlog has really helped me have that moment where I can stop everything else and freeze and actually make something cool every day. Today is day 20 of doing the daily vlog, which is crazy to think about. It’s gone by so fast and now it’s already become such a part of me and who I am.

Physical Space

Yesterday I cleaned up my little closet office and set up the space, which really gave me the idea for this whole video—creating a physical space where you can sit down and create.

It doesn’t have to be a room or a closet or a table or some crazy setup. For a while, my creative space was a large sketchbook, a small cutting mat, and a wet palette. I’d been on the couch holding a baby sometimes. Just having a designated area that you can go to be creative is key. And going there every day, showing up every day.

Turning Your Brain Off

Part of having that physical and mental space is something that can turn your brain off from the worries and stressors. What I do, as ridiculous as it sounds, is when I’m really ready to dig in, I’ll light a candle or my olive oil lamp.

Then I use a singing bowl because just 30 seconds of focusing to get the nice tone out of it—without it rattling or ruining the buildup—just takes those 30 seconds to not think about anything else. That repetitive motion helps me clear my head and opens me up for that creativity to flow. That’s my clarion call to the creativity, to the muse.

The Financial Trap

Another big mistake I always made was thinking about art from a financial aspect. For a lot of my life I thought that if I wasn’t making money from doing it, it wasn’t worth doing. Which is a terrible attitude to have.

For a while I was trying to make money from art, from creative avenues. I stopped trying to make money from art. I stopped trying to do things that other people might like and might want to buy. I stopped thinking about it from that aspect and just made whatever I wanted to make.

At that point my art became something for me. Obviously I want to share and instill feelings and emotions in other people. But the art came back to me as this thing that I did for joy and happiness and expression.

The Real Lesson

By changing my mentality from “I have to figure out how to make money from my art” to “I have to figure out how I can make enough money in as little time as possible so I can have both the time and the money to do this thing I care about and keep this thing I love pure”—that took years and years of figuring out.

The lesson is: if you’re an artist, don’t make what you do for money all that you are. Making money is very difficult. Having a job sucks. But if you can figure out a way to not have making art suck, that would be pretty cool.

Inspired vs. Inspiring

When you’re starting out as an artist, you see something and think “I love that, I want to see if I can make that myself.” There’s that emulation, that “is this theft versus emulation or homage?” question.

In my personal journey, I wanted to see if I could make the exact thing that people winning Golden Demons or great kit bashers make. Then it became: can I make this exact thing that inspires me, but tweak it to make it my own?

The next step in my creative journey is: how do I go from feeling inspired and making something I’m inspired by to inspiring other people and making something totally new? How can I pull something out of the ether that doesn’t exist, into my brain, and out into the real world in a way I haven’t seen somewhere else before?

Spellcrow Orcs

One thing hobby-related I want to talk about is how awesome these Spellcrow orcs are. They’re still multipart, still very poseable and interchangeable. I’ve painted hundreds of orcs in my life and didn’t want to paint the same orcs over again. So I got these new guys, got the Forge World dudes. These are all going to be black orcs and I’m very excited to paint them.