I’m starting a new project: To answer the question of what do you do when it’s time to work and you are confronted with a blank page. Where do you start? What approach do you use? I put together some of the approaches I use.
Some of these approaches might be effective for visual art more than for other types of creative endeavors because that’s where most of my training and study in this has been, and most of my experience of working within a field. However, some may apply just as well to writing a story, poem, or song. Or even to something outside of the context of a creative project within a career.
Here’s some approaches I’m aware of to start work with a blank page:
1. Showing up
2. Start rearranging, cleaning, ordering or fussing around with materials in your working space
3. Sidling into work
4. Random start
5. Underpaint some canvases
6. Start working on a previously started piece
7. Build a model
8. Arrange things in a subworld
9. Set up a still life
10. Hunt for a view
11. Meditation
12. Trance
13. Automatic drawing and writing
14. Frottage
15. Scrying
16. Collage
17. Trial and error
18. Work between 2-D and 3-D
19. Repurpose content
20. Paint or draw your own work, rewrite your own song, write your draft over again
21. Work up from a small, indefinite maquette to a larger, more complex and resolved piece
22. Warm up on large sheets of paper
23. Be prompted by a cue
24. Answer a piece
25. Dream up a start
26. Go limited palette
27. Build momentum
28. Work in series
29. Keep a sketchbook or journal
30. Use a model of the creative process
Some of these I use extensively and some I just know of and might try to work with more in the future.
Do you use some of these? Which ones are most effective? Am I missing some important approaches?
Let me know what you think.
-Troy Blum
If I’m working with a 2-d surface, and I’m not sure what to do with it, I use textures like sand, cheesecloth and papier-mache or other stuff that’s adhesive. I like painting over texture. A lot of your suggestions are really useful, like 4, 6, 13, 10, 26,29, etc. But the most important one is #1, definitely.