Have you ever felt stuck creatively or wish you could boost your creative productivity? Unfortunately, I think most of us have. Sometimes making a change to just one habit can make a difference. In this article, we will look at 5 ways to improve creative productivity.
Productive Setting
The environment to which you choose to be creative in makes a huge difference. Thus, if you are currently in an environment that produces a lot of distractions, this can hinder your productivity. For example, tv and social media during your time of creativity will cause you to lose focus from bouncing back and forth. Try removing yourself from the media distractions once you have an idea of what you want to create. Lighting and chaotic noise are other key factors. Therefore, head to a quite and well lit room, or a nearby window. If your place of dwelling is not a peaceful one, a porch or balcony will help separate you from daily nose. Additionally, going to a park or your favorite cafe might do the trick. Sometimes having your favorite drink or giving your mind a break from chaos, enables it to focus on the task you would like it to do. Take advantage of the sunlight and outdoors!
Sketch Warmup
Some days you just can’t seem to tap into the mood to draw. Thus, when you start to draw it looks like crap and you’re completely over drawing for the day. As a result, this can make you feel depressed and apathetic. However, that’s completely normal! It’s just your brain not being in the mood. A way to trick it is by just doodling. Have You ever noticed if you draw when you’re the most carefree you have the most fun and productivity? Therein lies the solution, not having stress and feeling relaxed. If you doodle with nothing but lines and basic shapes, then after a while your brain will unlock creativity and form a pattern or simple object. Next, you find yourself having an idea, and before you know it you may be inspired to draw out your next project!
Listen to Music
Does it ever feel like there is too much noise going on when you try to sit down to do a project? As mentioned earlier, the modern world presents a lot of noise issues. Our tvs, traffic, construction, pets, and even family members can be the leading cause to breaking focus. Therefore, concentration is an important component to staying on course with any project. One solution to wipe out the noise is to cancel it, or to make more noise. The easiest way to do this is to use noise canceling headphones.
I use the Corwin 7 noise cancelling headphones, which can run around $50 on Amazon. They are great quality, and offer a noise cancelling feature! So you can listen to music while creating your project, or you can surround yourself in glorious silence. Either of these options can power your ability to focus, as well as put you in a better mood to increase your creative productivity!
Create Thumbnails
Thumbnails often get scoffed at by most creatives. However, thumbnails are necessary for any art discipline! We either want to go to the first idea that pops into our mind, or we sit stumped that no grand solution has presented itself. This is where thumbnails come in to play a vital role. If you have an initial idea, that’s good. Go ahead and sketch that. If you don’t have any ideas, don’t worry. This is almost like the doodling section above. Begin by creating a bunch of 2×3 sized squares on your paper or sketchbook. As a rule, keeping them small helps you focus on crafting the idea, and not getting hung up on the details. In each square, sketch out all the things that enter your mind. After you have a few ideas, start mixing and matching the concepts in each panel. This will help you expand your ideas even further. Therefore creating new compositions, or at least add more to your original idea(s).
Drawing Upside Down
Art and creative projects are very challenging in nature. Even after you get the perfect idea and are ready to manifest your vision, problems may still arise. You may run into the issue of feeling like you can’t draw that because it’s too complicated. Alternatively, you may try to create your vision, and are not satisfied with the results. This usually leads to self doubt of one’s skills. However, the for this may be that your brain is drawing from preconceived memories of how shapes should be drawn, rather than what you truly see before you. Don’t worry, there is an unusual solution to this challenge, and that is to turn your reference(s) upside down. Boy, your brain will probably reject this at first. It just shuts down!
However, this is the point where you refocus and look at the image as just unrecognizable shapes. Henceforth, you will be forced to draw the shape proportions correctly. I had a class in college demonstrated this method. I was drawing cartoon-like landscapes and just couldn’t get it to look real. My professor instructed me to flip my reference upside down and the results were much more satisfactory! Give it a try sometime and see for yourself!
Wrap up
I hope the suggestions made in this article helps you to boost your creative productivity. These are all methods I was taught in college, and have put to the test to this very day! Getting stuck creatively is normal and happens to us all. Just remember anything you can do to improve your mood, will also boost your creativity! If you found this article helpful or have any questions, feel free to leave a comment! Stay tuned for more insightful articles on the way!
