Nurture Stupid Ideas

So many people feel bored or stagnant in their current life, but hold themselves back from taking on a creative project because they don’t know what to create, or think whatever ideas they have are silly or insignificant. 

The thing is, creativity isn’t an inherent quality. It’s a practice. The most creative ideas don’t come when we sit on the sidelines, pondering what to create. They come when we create. 

To demonstrate, let me share how I went from not touching a pencil in 20 years to pursuing a career as a mixed-media artist. When you lose patience with the endless iterations, skip to the next header.

1. I take a random portrait oil painting class because everyone in personal development says you should do things you used to do as a kid. I quit midway—I hate being told what to paint.

2. I decide to try to paint what I want to paint. Oil paint is messy, so I try acrylic. Acrylics are hard to work with because they dry too quickly, so into a drawer they go.

3. I discover the iPad pencil and draw occasionally.

4. I see an Instagram post about “The 100 Day Project” and decide to do it. I commit to posting a new drawing on Instagram every day for 100 days.

5. A new Instagram follower asks to buy prints of my drawings.

6. I send a couple of drawings to be professionally printed. I find myself $90 poorer with ugly prints and realize I’m clueless about printing.

7. I buy a printer and experiment until I can produce decent prints. I realize I want to make bigger artworks, but prints won’t look great at that scale.

8. I remember the acrylics in the drawer, buy a few canvases, and spend several weeks turning my drawings into paintings. The acrylics I abandoned because they were difficult to blend end up being perfect for the blocks of uniform color in my drawings.

9. I start painting seriously, creating about 15 paintings..

10. I see a collaboration of an artist I follow with a big rug company—and love the rugs.

11. I get feedback from a couple of art professionals that I should paint with more texture. I really don’t want to slap more paint on my canvases.

12. Texture… texture… Rugs have texture! I take a short rug-making course.

13. I decide to travel for several months. I can’t paint while traveling, but if I make the rugs small enough, I can fit the rug frame into my suitcase. So I divide one drawing into several parts. But too many rugs in one piece seem… weird. Why not make some into… paintings? 

Skip to Here

This is the abridged(!) version of how I became a mixed media artist. I spared you at least 20 more steps, as well as multiple projects I started and discarded in parallel to these artistic endeavors.

If you’re worried your ideas aren't good enough or don’t believe you’re creative, start creating something. Anything. My career started from a class I didn’t even finish.

1. Trust that you‘ll evolve as you create—your skills, your ideas, their scale, and their impact.

2. Keep relentlessly pursuing what you’re curious about and/or what “bugs” you and doesn’t feel quite right.

3. Be in the moment, not in your preconceived notions of how what you do should look or what it should produce. 

4. Don’t put pressure on yourself to figure things out by a deadline. But also, spend time creating, not just procrastinating because you don't have a deadline.

5. Seek inspiration and inputs, both related and unrelated to your current project.

6. Know that nothing is wasted, even if it seems like it is. Drawbacks or failures often become advantages at a later point. “You can only connect the dots looking backwards,” etc.

The more you create, the more creative you become.

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