Creative Block? Go Look at Art

I seem to have two creative states. The first is the wonderful one where the ideas are coming to me so fast and from so many different directions that I can hardly write them down fast enough. The second is when I think I will never have another creative idea in my life.

When the second state hits, as it does to all of us from time to time, I’ve found that the best thing to do is to go look at art. I go to a gallery or a museum. Or I just look online. There are plenty of great sites like Art Knowledge News (www.artknowledgenews.com) that bring you great art every day.

Great art will inspire me. Not to copy it, because that’s unethical and not creative at all. But maybe it will remind me of a medium or a technique or a color palette I’ve liked in the past, or wanted to try. This Paul Klee painting, for example, reminds me how much I like abstracted urban scenes, line and inventive color. 

Even looking at “bad” art does the trick for me. Looking at art I don’t care for, or that I think isn’t very well done, gets the “I can do better than that” juices flowing.