Behind the Scenes: About Creative Block

Often in the comments, I get this question. How do I come up with ideas? I wrote about this several times now, but it never hurts to circle back for those who missed it. Ideas can be a bit flimsy. Even the simple ones. The moment you need them the most, it's suddenly all blank. But other times, your brain won't shut up and hurls ideas at you like machine gun. Especially, when you need to focus on something completely different.

Well, there's an easy remedy. Taking notes. Sounds pretty obvious, but it's not always so easy. If you don't have that habit yet, you just won't remember to write something down every time you get an interesting idea. If that's your case, you need to force it a bit. What worked for me is to create a first note page and giving it everything you got on a first try.

Really sit down and think hard about different ideas you had before. And if nothing comes to mind still, go ahead and search for lists of things. Best movies of all times. 10 vacation ideas. 15 most popular dishes in the world. The internet is full of lists like this and every item on those can be transformed into an artwork idea.

Reference board for the Food Truck Illustration:

Visit the full Pinboard here

And really give it an honest hour or two, until you have at least 20 or more ideas in the queue. So the next time you want to go create something, you know there it is, waiting for you. And now that the list exists, it will get much easier to make a habit of writing new ideas down, because you already established a home base. And the list will grow.

The food truck isn't from my list. It was a random suggestion from our Discord member Mohamed. But why would I write 4 paragraphs about note-keeping, if I didn't even take advantage of it while making my last piece? Well, because I kind of did. Having the list means you're always prepared. Prepared to show up and create something. Even if you don't feel like it. Even if you have a bad hair day. 

Food Truck Illustration sketch:

I really love what Seth Godin said about the writer's block. That when you show up every day and write something bad, your brain will eventually give up and you start writing good. If you look at it like that, what does it matter what idea will you do next? To show up and do something, you only need that next thing from the list. You don't need to wander the streets for two days until inspiration strucks. You just show up.

I already had something else in the works, when Mohamed suggested the food truck theme. It's so simple. So common. But for some reason I loved it. The idea of modeling a cute retro food truck just filled me with joy in that moment and it was on of those bad hair days, so that feeling was exactly something I needed. 

So how did my list of ideas actually helped me in this case? Well, it's always thare. I can always count on it and there's always the next small thing to do. It's a safe haven. I don't need to wait or look for moments of sudden inspiration like this. But when they happen, it feels great. Like getting something for free. And it makes it easy to just jump on a different idea, because I know that when the food truck is done, I'll be back for my next small thing.

It's like streaming a playlist and pushing a song you just remembered in front of the queue to enjoy it. But the playlist will have your back when the song ends.

You can watch the Food Truck illustration process video on Youtube.