If you’re an artist, you will know the feeling of being immersed in whatever project, exploration and/or pieces you are creating at any one time – that shiver of excitement you feel upon waking in the morning and remembering that you have embarked on an adventure where you are making art that fills you with joy…
But what happens when you find yourself bereft of inspiration? You want to create something – in fact, you are desperate to create – but each idea you have, ends up being either abandoned after a few pencil strokes, or possibly reaches a more advanced state but then ends up crumpled in your bin? It can be so demoralising and believe me, I have been there myself many times…
It’s at times like these when I find myself turning to tried and tested inspiration sources – the shelves in my studio which house my art book collection; old sketchbooks; drawers full of discarded “scraps” and failed prints; even the camera roll on my phone (home to literally 1000’s of photographs taken each day on my walks). Rather than sitting at my table and staring blankly at a fresh sketchbook page, or trying too hard to make fluid marks on a new piece of paper, I find that any one of these sources could have the potential to ignite that little spark I need to start making something that excites me.
I’ve always loved collage. From my earliest days of making art, I have used this process; either as a stand-alone way of working, or as part of a mixed-media approach to achieving specific outcomes. In the event of having “creative block”, there are fewer more positive triggers for creativity than a table spread invitingly with an array of torn/cut up papers of varying colours, textures and patterns. Images printed on “failed” linocut prints or similar, can be cut or torn around and placed against different backgrounds – instantly giving birth to new, often richly complex ideas.
Finding myself recently stuck in the creative doldrums, I opened one of my printmaking paper drawers to find a smallish piece of heavy, slightly textured watercolour paper. I had been thinking about collage – and finding this paper gave me an idea for making a concertina journal. It’s small size (the pages measured 12cm2) made it seem less intimidating to work in – a good thing, when creative confidence feels low!
In a strange way, I found the very process of making the book reassuring – deciding on the measurements, seeing how many pages I was able to make with the paper I had, deciding how it should be folded. Mechanical, almost mundane steps, but comfortingly purposeful in their execution. I cut two squares of heavy mount board to size for the front and back covers – and I was good to go!
But what art to actually create in the book? I had an idea to fill it with little collages – bird collages – but making that leap from having ideas in my head, to realising them in a tangible way on paper, was holding me back. Sifting through a folder from 2021 on my computer hard drive, I came across some digital illustrations of birds I had made for an Instagram challenge (anyone familiar with the 100 day project?). I liked the simplicity of the images – essentially they consisted of flat blocks of colour, put together to make the bird shapes – against textured backgrounds of scans from various handmade papers I’d had in my drawers at the time (and probably still do!). I had never developed these ideas beyond the images I had on my hard drive, but I still liked them three years after making them, so I decided to use them as a starting point for the concertina book.
I was actually surprised by how much I still liked these birds – surprised also by the buzz of excitement I felt at the thought of developing them in a fresh way. I wanted to take them out of their current, slightly sterile digital state and make them into real, tactile pieces of art, whilst aiming to keep the character and vibrancy I’d managed to achieve digitally. There ensued the questioning, decision-making and gathering of the materials needed to make the collages – I was starting to enjoy myself. My first decision: should I remake the birds? I decided not to – I liked them as they were, so I proceeded to print them in colour using my inkjet printer, flipping some of the images first, to create variations. This kind of felt like “cheating” in a way – although I don’t know why – since I was the original creator of these images. I have reached the conclusion that it really doesn’t matter what processes or steps we use to achieve our creative goals, provided we are happy with the final outcome and of course, that outcome is totally original and unique to us.
I used a sharp scalpel to cut around the bird printouts and then decided to coat them with clear acrylic matte medium. Why did I do this? Well, my initial reasoning was to protect the non-pigment inkjet colours from fading – whether it will, I don’t know – but I liked the accidental “brush strokes” that appeared on the birds as a result of the slight smudging of the inkjet inks by the acrylic medium. The effect gave an instant change to the birds, causing them to lose the slightly “cartoony” appearance of the original digital images – a good thing, I thought. I then proceeded to try them against different printed and painted papers for backgrounds. Some of these papers had linocut images printed onto them which I had previously rejected, and some were purpose-made collage papers using my gelli plate (great fun!). I also had a large envelope stuffed with “paste paper” – decorated sheets of paper which I had made a few months previously using the recipe from the fabulous book “Raucous Invention: The Joy of Making” by Mark Hearld. If you don’t already own a copy of this wonderfully inspiring book, you must treat yourself!
Making collage is such a creatively liberating experience. It enables the artist to work with multiple colours, textures and elements within one piece. The stimulus of the decision-making, along with being able to wilfully move these elements around within the composition, translates to pure joy – and in this instance, was the very antidote to my “creative block” that I was searching for! I won’t say I breezed effortlessly through the whole project – many challenges cropped up as I was working and sometimes I had to change an initial idea for a collage completely for it to work as I wanted it to…but isn’t that part of the joy of creating art?
In fact, I look upon every piece I embark upon making as a wonderful challenge. In the case of this one, the challenge was taking forward some images which I had created three years ago, in ways I possibly wouldn’t have done, had I continued to develop them at the time. Rather than setting myself the target of creating some “finished collages”, I found the idea of the concertina journal somehow less intimidating. The project became more of a fun, “no pressure” activity – with the added bonus of designing and making a beautiful object (the book) just for me, which I knew I would enjoy owning.
If you ever find yourself suffering from a period of creative block, I hope you’ll find a way of coming through it soon – a way that works for you (but of course you will!). If you’re not sure, do try some collage – it may surprise you! If you swear by any other processes or media, I’d love to hear about these! Please share your thoughts in the comments below 🙂
Leave a Reply