The Creative Process - A Day In The Life Of Me

The creative process is what you make it really and what might work for one artist and creator may not work for anyone else. The creative process is a personal one, I myself can get so into the creative process that I get hungry afterwards, which sounds quite mad, but I guess it burns up calories. Each persons creative process can be so personal that it is part of their daily routine and it becomes the norm for them.

Creative processes may require a daily ritual, one that has to be done before the art of creating is underway. I have to have a cup of tea and 10 to 15 minutes of calm before the storm of creating stuff, it's my number one rule.

Then I start to sketch some stuff, doesn't matter what at first, as I just want to sketch some ideas no matter how the end results look. An hour or two of sketching will bring up some sketches you can choose to develop later on.

As I sketch down my ideas I write notes as well to get a further insight into my ideas and so that I can remember certain important points about my work. One of the many reasons why ideas can happen is that I set aside time to think and create and that's the most important thing. You never know when inspiration may hit you, so it's best to cover that by having a few notepads handy or sketch pads.

I tend to look at my art creation process as a progressive one and one that will build to a point where I either run out of ideas or I simply find the drawings and ideas that I want to work with in the next phase of the creative process and that is....

Idea Development

This is the way of taking your initial sketches and developing them further by either re-drawing them or expanding on them. I like to take each sketch and re-work it somewhat by using my lightbox or scanning the drawing into my computer with my scanner, you'll find that the computer can add special effects and ways to change the lighting and colors to suit whatever effects you want to achieve with your art.

Sometimes it's best to go in a very different direction with your sketches and take them down a different path with new backgrounds or different positions of figures or faces. It's the ideal time to change anything you want and let the creative mantra loose on your own art.

The creative process demands that you explore many opportunities to express your ideas and try new ways of working all the time.

So how do you get your creative process working for you? What do you do?