Equally artists, nosotros always take our antennae up, gear up to be inspired. When information technology comes to the piece of work of other artists though, it tin exist a tricky tightrope to walk. It'southward all too easy to beloved some other artist's work so much that it unwittingly or otherwise seeps into our own. Particularly since, as artists, we're curious and always want to be developing our skills and abilities.

Now, with the internet at our fingertips, it's easy to discover, follow and even exist taught past artists whose work we love. But, of grade, that's a two-sided money. When inspiration abounds, often, so does copied work. It'southward when we don't move beyond that that we're not being true to ourselves, or fair to those who inspire us.

There'south nothing incorrect with copying per se. It's a tried and tested means of learning and being apprenticed to an established artist used to be standard exercise. Leonardo da Vinci, for instance, was an amateur to Verrocchio.

However, there are ways to be inspired by artists whose work you lot love without resorting to outright copying or even heavy influence. Even when we dubiety our own ability to make unique art, there is e'er more than room to develop and transform. And in function, evolving your own work does happen naturally over time.

And then, how do you lot get from influenced to original?

Ane mode is to spend some time with the work that's inspiring you and notice what exactly information technology is that you dearest and then much. Is it the color palette? The way they use marks? The compositions they tend to choose? The concept behind the work? The discipline matter?

When you accept greater clarity about what it is y'all love, you can use what you're looking at as a starting point. As an do, you lot can privately copy an artist just to get a feel for their marks and a sense of how they pull a painting together. Generally, information technology feels unnatural, although y'all may discover that you dearest a sure aspect.

From there, work to bring what y'all learned into your own fine art in a way that is truthful to you, rather than equally a direct copy. This originality and uniqueness comes from taking any it is that inspires you and pushing it until you lot enter a new realm that's entirely yours.

Some things will feel boring when you lot try them, some will spark a little something merely not feel quite 'it'. Stay alert to how your torso and feelings respond to each thing y'all endeavour – this is the single most useful way to detect what's really yours.

Hither are some suggestions to help ensure that all that lovely inspiration you lot're taking in doesn't but get recycled into your own piece of work, only becomes a tool for growth and development.

Vary Your Marker Making

Love a sure blazon of line or mark some other artist makes? Attempt using it in equally many ways as you can come up with:

  • Apply your non-dominant hand

  • Effort a stick instead of a castor

  • Employ a large brush and then a tiny one

  • Make it in various different media

  • Make one huge version of it or hundreds of tiny ones in a pattern or block

  • Use collage

Limit Your Color Palette

Utilize Pinterest or Google images to reveal an array of piece of work by a single creative person y'all honey. Mix a few colors that friction match the main colors they're using. Keep it to three or four at first. Using a reference image if you wish, make a exam painting using that palette, simply in a unlike bailiwick to your called creative person. (Make certain it'southward one that excites you!)

You'll soon find if it works the way you desire it to, whether you need a greater range of values or to bring in an accent that was missing.

Find a Different Bending on the Discipline Matter

Many artists don't reinvent the bicycle in every painting. They've found a style of repeating a subject field with just enough variation to proceed things interesting.

Selection a subject that feels exciting, flexible, and open to evolution, and then choose a "way in." Perhaps paint information technology repeatedly from a certain angle or from different angles with the same palette. This commitment to a single subject is part of what makes your work become recognizable.

Of course, you don't e'er know if what you lot're well-nigh to try fits all those criteria. That's why all answers tin can simply be found in actually painting or making the work, rather than just thinking and theorizing about it. Sometimes what looks promising turns out to exist boring, and sometimes a new door opens while painting that yous wouldn't have found otherwise.

Get a New Perspective

Take a subject you honey, or fifty-fifty ane you lot're curious about but aren't yet well acquainted with, and draw or paint it with a limited palette for simplicity and consistency:

  • Direct on

  • At quirky angles

  • Upside down

  • From across the room without your glasses :)

  • Zooming right in

  • Repeated in layers

The trick is to find a perspective that intrigues you lot and makes you lot want to explore farther.

It tin can help to have a deeper bulletin or idea procedure backside information technology. For example, painting close-ups tin be a way to explore ideas nearly intimacy or focus.

Repeat Your Composition

Artists will often use variations of the aforementioned composition over and over – it's role of what makes their work recognizable.

It'south not that they're non interested in other styles – being an artist is synonymous with existence infinitely curious. It'southward that they've institute a way to swoop below the surface and say something that feels truthful, with space to explore.

Looking to organize your business and cutting the chaos out of your studio so you tin focus more than on what inspires y'all? Check out Artwork Archive today.

Tara Leaver is an artist, online art teacher and "creative encourager". Tara works from her attic studio by the bounding main on the south coast of England, making art, blogging, and teaching online courses focused on helping others uncover and develop their own unique artistic cocky-expression.