marie j.engelsvold

View Original

Find inspiration everywhere.

Are you sitting in front of a blanc piece of paper, feeling totally uninspired? Take a look at your surroundings.

Sometimes I have a rare attraction to the way a jacket is hanging on a hook, or a lamp is hanging from the ceiling. I suddenly feel an urge to draw things that are hanging.

It could also be a stack of plates. I suddenly see stacked and piled things all around me. A pile of clothes, a pile of stones, pile of papers, a pile of cans in the supermarket. My drawings will be full of piles and stacked forms.

Be present and observant, when you are walking around in your neighborhood. We have a tendency to not look properly at the surroundings we are passing every day.  One day I notice a funny staircase, and suddenly it appears in my drawings. Or maybe I get inspired by a puddle. It makes me think of water in different forms. Water which comes out of the tap, a waterfall, or a flood, waves on the ocean or tears.

I can also be very inspired by other artists work, especially sculptures. Very often my drawings are inspired of  3-dimentional forms, that are connected in some way. 

But I never copy orther artists work, I think it's not possible to copy anything when you work from within. Because all you care about is to make your own unique expression, which mirrors you. It would feel completely wrong to just plain copying other artists work.

But study the works that attracts you, and ask yourself why you are so attracted to that work? Is it the feeling it gives you? Is it the tecnic? The colors? The tools? The composition? Try to figure out what you like most about the artwork, and see if you can bring those elements into your  drawings, in your own way.

A social situation can also be a trigger for new ideas. It could be observing people at the dinning tabel, discussing politics. The fact that we all have our own perspective on the same situation, can mirror some conflicted parts inside my self. These inner conflicts can very well be a theme for my next drawings.

So If you lack inspiration, take a renewed look at your daily environment, and see what happens.

See this content in the original post