The Creative Process

How an artwork is born

Sep 11, 2024

This post is a part of a broader conversation on creativity, the creative process, artistic style and voice I plan to introduce in my publication. My thoughts are a work in progress and I’ll be happy to hear from you!

This month I am also launching a new regular section - a list of creative prompts to explore together the ways we can experiment and grow in our art practice.

What is a creative process?

The creative process is a series of ideas and actions leading to the creation of a work of art.

Basically, a creative process can be seen as a procedure with specific steps to be taken in order to “produce” artwork. Developing a repeatable process and being consistent are instrumental in developing a recognisable style and cohesive body of work, but how it’s connected to things like inspiration, originality and artistic expression?

To me a creative process does not equal a predictable algorithm, it is more of a structure or system that helps to focus my creativity on expressing myself instead of being overwhelmed by all the decisions I have to make before even starting to paint.

Introducing some limitations (colours, materials, size of work, etc.) provides the inputs for the creative process and the output - finished artwork - would reflect the decisions about limitations. The more consistent you are with your inputs, the more consistent your body of work looks.

Your inputs also include less controllable things, e.g. how your hand moves naturally, which compositions you prefer or how you approach colour mixing - this is what gives your art a personal and unique touch and ensures it’s originality.

What are the advantages of a repeatable process?

Making art is about consistency and practice. A repeatable creative process allows to:

Streamline the process of creating artwork.
Save time on additional decision-making.
Develop a cohesive body of work.
Develop your own “library” of marks, shapes, colours leading to a recognisable style.

Do you need a repeatable process?

It’s important to experiment and change things from time to time, because this is how artists grow, hence, your process isn’t set in stone. Focus and source of inspiration for your art can (and would) shift throughout your life and career.

Having said that, I’d argue that narrowing down your choices - for a period of time - will help you to develop an original and natural to you way of working.

Think about Picasso - he was incredibly prolific across various media and genres, but we still recognise his work as uniquely his. He created tons of work from paintings and drawings to sculptures, tapestries and pottery, but themes that he explored, how his hand moves and style of work remained consistent throughout his career.

How does a creative process (can) look like?

Everyone’s creative process is unique.

A creative process for a beginner artist will arguably differ from a creative process of a seasoned artist. Some artists work primarily on location, other artists work using only post-consumer materials, some work using a specific set of materials, other work across media and genres. The result - finished artwork - is also defined by the artist. It can be anything - a painting, a sketchbook page, a temporary installation.

I really enjoyed this article about 10 artists who share their creative process - there is so much variation in approaching art making and it’s very inspiring.

My process usually consists of three stages and I found that many artists work in a similar fashion:

Planning - collecting ideas and inspiration, working in sketchbooks, creating inspiration boards.
Creating studies - combining inspiration and developing smaller works, creating compositional thumbnail sketches, developing colour schemes.
Creating finished artwork - bringing studies into larger substrates, working towards a cohesive body of work devoted to a specific theme (a collection, series, etc.)

These descriptions are very broad and I do not attempt explain all the complexity that goes into each of the stages in one post. The creative process consists of all the choices we make within those three stages.

I don’t always follow this exact “algorithm”, but it’s how I generally approach art making in my practice. Sometimes I prefer to have a free flow of ideas and just experiment without a specific result in mind, but I feel that working towards a goal leads to better results. Also this year I am focusing on learning and growth in terms of skills, so I didn’t create large works, mostly devoting time to my sketchbook practice and making studies. Moving to a larger substrate is my goal for next year though!

Additional thoughts

Life has been intense in the past months with more things to come, so I’ve been thrown out of my regular routines and will come back probably (hopefully) only by the end of the year. Having a better understanding of my creative process resulted in being able to quickly dive into creating when possible. This has helped me a lot to stay on course with art making during these past months. Creating more structure in my art practice through developing a creative process also helped me to have enough time and clarity to continue with publishing my newsletter.

Creativity has to be nurtured and stimulated in a variety of ways, including finding inspiration in artwork made by others, playing in our own practice and learning about or own sensibilities and preferences. There is always room for experimentation, changing directions and exploring new avenues in your art. I find it inspirational to draw ideas from other creatives - not only visual artists, but writers, actors, musicians. How they approach their creative process, what can you learn and borrow from them?

There is also an unexpected bonus of knowing your creative process. Understanding your preferences in colours, materials, subject matter, etc. has a beneficial effect on the outcome of joining courses, workshops and memberships. Instead of repeating step-by-step after the instructor you can approach the tasks relying on your creative process. It helps to make art that still looks like you, but benefit from learning new techniques and experimenting with new ideas.