Most artists would admit that inspiration and motivation are problematic. I, for one, feel motivated to produce work nearly all the time. The question, and really the problem, is why do I find myself not doing artwork when I clearly have the time and energy to do so? What is stopping me?
It isn’t an inspiration problem. I’ve never experienced the artists’ equivalent of writer’s block. But distraction is the bane of any creative effort and I’ve found that I’m at least as distractible as the next person. So it seems like a good idea to make producing artwork into a habit, into a tendency, something that you gravitate toward doing, almost without effort. If you don’t feel inspired to produce something of quality then make up for it with quantity. Sketching seems the best way to do that.
Sketching works for me in a couple of ways. On the practical side, it’s often necessary to sketch in preparation for a larger work. Any artist can tell you this. Make the mistakes and figure out the problems on the cheap paper and not on the larger work that you’ve poured a bunch of heart and soul into. Few things are more frustrating to me artistically than realizing I’ve made a bunch of unfixable mistakes which essentially render the work unworthy of finishing. But more on that later.
The second way that sketching works for me concerns the aforementioned motivation problem. Quick sketches take little effort and have a fairly high pay off in satisfaction. This alone creates motivation and allows, I think, inspiration to have a stronger effect. Admittedly it is something of a trick I play on myself but it’s done to counter some of my less than desirable artistic work ethic, so I use it.
Lastly, sketching is a good idea for the sake of keeping up your skills. I’ve been drawing long enough to recognize the physical side to putting pencil to paper. Artistic skills become cold when unused, little different from intellectual or athletic skills. In that respect, feeling uninspired is a double blow. Not only are you not producing new work, but your abilities to do so in the future are waning. This brings me back to my earlier point about quantity when quality isn’t possible. I really believe that producing any art, no matter how uninspired, is better than nothing.
Sometimes I begin a sketch with no intention to make it anything more than that. It is simply done for all the reasons I’ve just listen. Above is an example of something I never intended to be more than just a sketch. I drew it while laying on a beach in Turkey after touring the ruins of a roman city. So inspiration was not at all a problem and what better to do under the Mediterranean sun! Yet when I stopped sketching that day, I had no intention of going back to it. I did it for practice and enjoyment.
Oppositely, this drawing above was intended to be a completed work, something I wanted to put a lot of effort and polish into. I’d hoped to create a particular mood and hopefully elicit certain feelings from viewers. But as I worked I found myself dissatisfied with it. It just didn’t seem right to me. I continued working on it for a while but eventually I was forced to admit it was unfinishable. Continuing would have been wasted effort. This brings up an issue that I am sure a lot of artists deal with, the question of whether to stop working on something because it’s not going well. I’ll admit to being wrong about something I’m working on, in other words it seems to not be progressing well but I continue the struggle and end up producing an artwork that I’m more than happy with. I’m not sure how to answer that question. The best I can say is de facto keep working on it. Don’t make giving up your go-to reaction. But be willing to throw in the towel when the truth of the situation becomes clear. Where to draw that line, so to say, is up to the artist.