When it comes to deadlines, you need to be flexible for time to get as much work done as possible before the final day of the project. However, sometimes it can be hard to get everything done, especially if you feel unmotivated and stuck for ideas. On this post I’ll be giving some tips on how to overcome these problems from my own experience of meeting deadlines for art projects.
Just a quick note before I start, I just want to make it clear these tips aren’t a ‘100% guaranteed’ advice, as they might not be suited to your flow of working. However, they can be altered to suite your flow of creativity if you wish to.
Creative block
Sometimes, when your planning on what your project concepts based on a theme, you may hit a creative block. This happens when you may be stuck on what to do, getting stressed out because you cant think of what to do for your art work.
A solution to this was given to me by one of my art tutors a few years back, when I was in a creative block during my GCSE Art planning. Rather than trying to mentally focus really hard on an idea , my tutor instead suggested that I should try sketching/shading/mark making simple 2D and 3D shapes.
At first I was skeptical about this advice, because it just didn’t seem to make sense on why it would help me for conceptual ideas. However, the technique eventually made me realise that the excersize wasn’t about figuring out original abstract and conceptual ideas, but instead relaxed my thinking process.
The whole point of doing these shape sketchs was to relax the mind from overthinking, to flow at a relaxed pace to rebuild new ideas. Not only that, but it’s also helpful if you haven’t done drawing for a long time, as the excersize also helps to strengthen muscle memory for hand drawing.
Research artists/ sample works
It’s important to fully grasp your chosen theme or project from doing research and sample testing. Whilst artist are very creative and resourceful in their skills, it can however sometimes be a lack of inspiration that stop them from developing further on their project towards the deadline.
In order not to follow this path, you could do some artist research based on your chosen theme. This way you have the resources available to you if you should need some inspiration for your project. However, I would like to mention that some websites and pictures on the internet aren’t 100% factual as they aren’t officially by the artists themselves. So the best way to get factual information is to either:
- Email the artist for questions on what influenced their work and how they created them.
- Google Scholar is a good place to get factual information, though some sites are at a cost to look at them
- Sites like Tate are gallery sites that feature many artists works, ranging from different themes to research from.
- Some artists do have their own official websites for people to look at their collection of art pieces. As mentioned above, you could email them for more information.
I hope this has been helpful for you, and hopefully it might help you get through to the deadline day. There’s an endless amount of tips and skills that you can gain from artist who share their skills for the next generation.
If you have any more questions post a comment below and I’ll reply back as soon as I can. Thanks!
-Bjorndovah
