3 ways to find inspiration while working as a freelance artist
Happens all the time, sometimes you’re handling a commissions as a freelance designer/illustrator/writer, and you’re there, standing in front of a blank page with no idea of what to do next. Unfortunately there’s no magical spell or anything for this kind of stuff, so I’m gonna speak from my personal experience as a freelance illustrator.
Truth is, it’s pretty common that sometimes you don’t know where to start and you’re just swimming in a pool of tears and self-pity since you’re not able to come up with something interesting to propose to your client. In the social network era where everyone’s seems to be shiny & perfect, we’re all actually in the same boat, everyone tipped a toe in that pool once.
I’ve always said that creativity it’s not of a gift of the good lord, but it’s something that you gotta keep trained like a muscle, so here’s 3 simple ways to overcome that awful lack of ideas:
Books
I love books, and I love handling book looking for visual references. Not only you’re gonna find some cool references, but also you’re gonna see how that color palette/color contrast and composition looks on paper. Check out if your favorite artists ever released a book, and buy it. One of the first art books I got was Godmachine’s first artbook. A british dark art illustrator who worked with several big bands.
The Art of Godmachine
It taught me a lot about skulls shapes and skeleton, at the time I was working only in B&W on super dark concepts. I also got the full serie of Jim Phillips’s books, one of my favorite artists ever.
A lot of people don’t know what Jim was doing before the Screaming Hand or all those incredible skateboard graphics, and he was already killing it. Small comics, ads for motorcycle parts or local grocery stores, can you imagine? Dude, go buy a book! Here’s a picture from the first book, which i guess it’s my favorite since goes far away back to the roots of the artist.
Surf, Skate & Rock Art of Jim Phillips
Yeah I know, a lot of people talk about getting inspired by Pinterest and you don’t know where to start. Fact is, Pinterest is an incredible place to get inspirations. I’m gonna help you right away, here’s my profile, there’s ton of stuff: https://it.pinterest.com/joetamponi/.
How did I do it? Well I think that one of my first boards was the one for Psychedelic vintage posters. I always loved the work of Wes Wilson, Stanley Mouse, Victor Moscoso, Rick Griffin, their insane use of composition and mostly the color contrast between those trippy texts and the background. The more I started saving pins the more came out, I was out of my mind! Here’s the board link, wear sunglasses dude.
Psychedelic vintage retro posters on my Pinterest board
The second one was for Ed Roth & Von Dutch art, that was before buying another cool book about Kustom Kulture. I started seeing tons of pictures about muscle cars, hot rods and weird monster driving them. Oh man.
Kustom Kulture Pins on my Pinterest board
Music
Might sound pretty predictable right? Well it’s not. Think about to all the things that you can connect with the music business: merchandise, cover artworks, poster designs. That’s ton of stuff. Ya need a hint? Let’s make a test, let’s go type punk rock posters on Pinterest, here’s what I got in the first page:
Punk rock posters query on Pinterest
It’s not just that it’s full of stuff, it’s that it’s full of different styles, let’s dig a bit into that. Look at that Husker DU violet poster in the third row to the left, pretty sick. Let’s look for other posters like that, here’s the first result of typing Husker Du posters.
Husker Du posters query on Pinterest
And beside of a couple of awful results, here’s a full page of hand drawn, 80s xerox kind of posters that you’re gonna hang in your studio to feel like Minor Threat just released their first 7’’. Think about what you can do if you start doing it with stickers, tees, or whatever come in your mind.
Beside of Pinterest ( which should pay me for all this) go look at what labels are releasing as new merch or new records, check the pages of your favorite bands and look at the posters of their latest tours. You’re gonna love the band even more, and hopefully you’re gonna overcome that block.
Another little help, listen to something different. Trust me, I’ve been stuck to a couple records for a lot of time, and I was coming out with the same stuff over and over. We live in a lucky time with youtube, Spotify & stuff. Pick a new record. your mind is the most powerful thing you have, you’re gonna start evocate different kind of ideas, visualizing different moods, environments, pictures of places. Maybe I’m gonna do a playlist of my favorite songs of the month if that’s gonna help yo
Last but not least, get the fuck out.
Sometimes you just gotta get out the studio/home/office or whatever it is. Staring at the screen or to paper sheet is not gonna help you dude. It’s just gonna devastate you, it’s gonna make you think that you’re not able to do it anymore and it’s not always true. You need time to clear your mind and maybe even get some rest. A lot of times I had to record my ideas while driving, coming back from surfing. Caught a couple waves had some fun and boooomm there it is.
Sometimes happens because you’re overthinking it, maybe the idea you’re gonna get is unbelievably simple, but you couldn’t get it.
Another thing that happens to me all the time, is that part of the idea starts growing up while I’m driving, then I have to work on it a little bit and build from there, but it’s still something.
I think that I’ve yapped enough. Hope I helped ya!
