Find Direction in Your Artwork: Where to Start When You are Confused, Overwhelmed, and Lost
Two prominent things stand out to me when I think about practicing art and creating a body of work—building my skills to achieve my vision and understanding and communicating the concepts, subjects, themes, and ideas or topics in the artwork. Both require supporting myself through feelings like confusion, overwhelm, and loss to find direction in my artwork. These feelings can be paralyzing and immobilizing. And they can be overcome with a few practices that provide clarity on what comes next.
Find Direction in Your Artwork
Direction comes from having clarity on what to work on next to make progress on the artwork you want to create. Finding direction in your artwork can feel confusing, overwhelming, and generally directionless. It can be a challenge to know what to practice when you are unsure sure where to focus as an artist.
Feeling directionless in your artwork can happen at different moments and for different reasons in creative practice. You might be at the very beginning of your artistic endeavors and unsure how to formalize ideas and turn them into visuals. Or you might feel confused about what to focus on when you want to improve your artwork. You could be feeling overwhelmed because you have too many ideas. Or you are lost because you are disconnected from inspiration.
Where to start when you are confused, overwhelmed, and lost?
Gaining clarity on what to work on and finding direction in your artwork can be simplified into three steps: 1) building awareness 2) generating ideas, and 3) finding themes in your artwork. These three steps will help you begin to understand how you can start building your skills to improve your artwork and develop your artistic style.
Using Awareness to Kickstart and Find Direction in Your Artwork
Ideas are intangible—they are thoughts or notions that exist in the mind as a representation. Artists find ideas by becoming aware of their surroundings and tuning into what eventually becomes their source. It’s through awareness that you can start to identify what piques your interest and begin finding a direction in your artwork.
How do Artists Find Ideas?
To practice awareness, find tools that aid in noticing, like a paper viewfinder. Use your quiet time, 1-3 minutes a day, to note what is around you. What are you noticing? How are you thinking about it? Why are you noticing it? Document your awareness in a sketchbook, a notepad, an app, or any place that lets you accessibly keep a record of what you are noticing.
What you notice doesn’t have to be concrete or fully thought out. It can be threads of many different things that eventually come together to form more complete ideas in your artwork. Keeping a record will help you hold onto things to pay attention to later.
The more you become aware and find ideas as an artist, the easier it will be to find direction in your artwork. Keeping a record of what you notice will help you go back to your awareness to begin identifying commonalities among them. Here are some ways you can use awareness to find direction in your artwork:
Build word clouds to help you sift through the things that caught your awareness. What things are similar? What are other similar things that also interest you?
Take an inventory and make lists, grouping similar items.
Find things on your list that are curious to you and begin reading about them. What else are you coming across in your reading that excites you?
Pull together a photo collage, like a Pinterest board, of things relevant to items on your awareness list. This might show you other things that you are curious about.
Use your sketchbook to begin sketching different elements of an idea. This might be figures, trees, oranges, or shells… the subjects don’t have to be in a complete scene. Sketching elements will help you visually learn more about your ideas.
Start conversations with other people about what you are noticing. Listen to their thoughts on the topics to learn if any of their perspectives spark something new for you.
Practices like the above help activate artists. It connects you to curiosity which will be a direct link back to you—who you are, what resonates with you, and what inspires you. Your awareness will help you remain connected to your artwork, providing you with a small practice you can routinely return to when you are searching for ideas and need a bit of guidance and direction.
Listen to AWARENESS
a podcast episode detailing how I think about awareness inside my creative practice
Seeing Themes in Your Artwork
A theme is a central idea, concept, or subject. Seeing themes in your ideas will help you find a direction in your artwork that is aligned with who you are as an artist. Noting commonalities will also put you on the path toward building the content in your artwork—what it is your artwork is about.
Regularly check in with your awareness and record keeping. Note what frequently recurs. What are you consistently noticing? Your answer also doesn’t have to be just the items noted. It could be commonalities amongst the things you note. As a basic example, you might have a list of foods like bananas, strawberries, and oranges, and begin to note you tend to be interested in food or fruit.
This practice of noticing what recurs not only helps you find themes in your ideas; it will help you find themes in your artwork. Using awareness, your ideas are connected to who you are. Taking the earlier example, you might notice you are interested in food or fruit. As you keep moving through this process, you might realize after making that observation that you enjoy arranging and visually representing still lives with fruit because they represent the act of gathering. Gathering could become a core theme as you seek to improve your artwork and develop artistically.
You can shift your themes or work in more than one theme. This curiosity will help you improve your artwork. Following your awareness will guide you in understanding and honing in on your themes and how many you might have.
Building Skills in Your Artwork
When you use your awareness to find ideas and begin taking note of what is recurs, you’ll find concepts that you are interested in recreating visually. Each time an idea interests you, use it as an opportunity to springboard into your visual work.
Use something that feels accessible, like a sketchbook, sketchpad, newsprint, or copy paper, to begin drafting your ideas. This is where repetition and practice are required to help you build your skills as an artist and improve your artwork. This process can be challenging. Learn techniques. Ask for feedback. Understand how to use reference photos. And find community and mentors to lean on for support and guidance.
Building your skills can happen at any point during the process. You can note bananas, strawberries, and oranges, and begin sketching them. As you begin seeing themes, you might return to skills building and begin sketching more detailed still lives. This process is not linear. You can move in and out of each phase to overcome feelings of overwhelm, confusion, and loss to find direction in your artwork.
Move in Your Direction in Your Artwork
Using awareness, building ideas, and finding themes will help you find direction in your artwork. Encourage yourself to tune into what is around you. Use your awareness to guide you in your process to help you find ideas. Then, keep an inventory of your ideas. Return to your inventory and begin noting what recurs. Ask yourself what these themes mean to you. Then, turn back to your artwork and begin building skills. This process will help you find direction in your artwork. It will help you find themes, improve your artwork, and develop an artistic style.
What comes next?
Download the ARTIST MIXTAPE—a resource bundle of books, playlists, and residencies to provide inspiration and company in the studio. DOWNLOAD TODAY →
If we haven’t had the pleasure of meeting - I’m Lauren Sauder, a visual artist and creative mentor. If you enjoyed this post, here are a few more ways you can connect with me:
The Artist Mixtape—a mix of books, playlists, and residencies to provide inspiration and company in the studio.
Listen to Viewfinder—a podcast that explores different concepts, themes, ideas, and subjects of my creative practice.
Receive letters from me—bi-weekly letters from me about what I’m working through in my creative practice and life.
Enlist me as your mentor—if you are interested in unlimited support and guidance to grow your creative practice.
Get in touch with me directly—send an email to laurensauderstudio@gmail.com.
