Share your smarts: Overcoming the fear of a blank canvas

[Preran]

"Many painters are afraid in front of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the real, passionate painter who dares and who has broken the spell of `you can't' once and for all. - Vincent Van Gogh"

It would be fair to say that all of us at some point in our professional lives have had to deal with a blank canvas wondering if we were at our creative end, and if we should throw away everything and do something else with our lives. But we did persevere, and it was worth it in the end.

We would like to hear your stories and suggestions for dealing with a blank canvas, and how you overcome your initial jitters. Everything that you share will benefit the thousands of experience designers that make their way to this forum every single day.

We will feature the best guidance on our social media properties, with the required citations, and with your permission.

Thanks,

Preran

[Joseph Labrecque]

I've heard this sort of thing from a lot of people. Not just about creative software but any sort of project. I think the most important thing is to START. Yeah, you might start over, revise, whatever... but by that time you will have more direction and focus - and that is more useful than a blank canvas.

[cmgap]

@Joseph - using your comment as a springboard.

Don't wait around for inspiration. This quote from painter Chuck Close is a favorite:

"Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you're sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that's almost never the case."

[dj.summitt]

One of the best pieces of advice I ever heard was that the first stroke of a painting is the most difficult and, qualitatively, the least important. To make the first mark you have to overcome inertia. The ease and comfort of doing nothing. But the moment you start, the first stroke leads to and informs the second which informs the third. Before long you have a direction, then a perspective. You can always go back and cover the first stroke. But it will always be the one that started it all.

[joanH]

The blank canvas syndrome can apply to any dreaded experience. So it is all about attitude! After collecting successful experiences you will not dread the blank canvas beginning. Joy comes with knowing you can do something again and again. And you will improve.

I have a sketchbook with me at all times and I rough out an idea or project - nothing grand, just a few circles and squares placed on a page, maybe a perspective guideline or two. These sketches serve to stimulate my imagination if I am stalled and without a fresh idea.

I call creating art playing with the tools and colors. I am always looking for a happy accident that is worth saving.  Try not to become too serious about starting a project. Approach it as a child would. Picasso found this out late in life - it worked for him.

When I had a limited supply of paper and colors, I would worry about how best to use the

expensive paper or canvas. Now, digital art has unlimited canvases and paint and colors without end.  If you have created something wonderful once, you know you can repeat that and even do better work. If you are new to the digital art world, you will want to get to know your equipment and what inspires you.

I am inspired and enjoy strolling through the various portfolios on Adobe Stock and other Stock offerings.

My summary, attitude is everything. Fear nothing. Be who you are and express it.

Joan Arlin Hibbs

Artist/Illustrator

[Wilder.Bolaños]

Hello,

If it is true, initiation will always be difficult, but why be afraid to start if experiences are learned. It's not just going to the canvas and seeing what you achieve. In particular before starting anything, I will explore a little, trends, jobs, internet, pages like Behance or Pinterest becomes a sea of ideas.

Some recommend watching movies, reading a bit, what would I say, look for that, that inspires us, look for scratch for scratching, in a notebook, on a board, wherever, that first step may not be the best, but it will be the that leaves behind as experience, then from that minimum, either line or point, a wonderful job comes out.

Then go to the computer and begin to capture everything, not always the first step of the brush are the final, but I can put that step for the final all.

Regards,

Wilder

[Nancy OShea]

Get a stack of old magazines & scissors.  Cut out images of whatever appeals to you and paste them into an art journal or scrap book.  It can be anything you like -- typography, colors, shapes, textures, designs, you name it.

What to do when the creative juices stop flowing:

• Refer to your art journal for inspiration.
• Listen to music.
• Get outdoors and take some pictures. 
• Spend the afternoon at an art museum.

[pziecina]

I'm going to go down the website and application route, mainly because that is my speciality.

Many these days start without looking at the audience that they are designing and building the site/app for. Which is a mistake in my experiance, simply because doing so has 2 major problems -

1. If you don't know what your users require, then you don't know how anything should work or look.
2. You end up with a site/app built for yesterday, not tomorrow.

Following trends is fine if you don't mind being mediocre, to avoid this, once you know the end users requirements and stop thinking that the site/app is for you or your employer/client, you can start to inovate, the first thing to do is turn off your computer.

Then the important work starts, get your notebook and sketch pads out.

Create at least 3 user profiles, list everything you have been told/reaserched/think about how/why/what each individual using the site/app would like, would require, would want in the future.

Make sketches of how each and every page/section is connected, and don't forget that a website/app is not restricted to having the same layout for every page.

Next design the layout(s), how you would like them to be (sketching). Forget every web design that you have used/seen and use the knowledge gleamed from your user profiles, remember that if you can do it in inDesign, you can do it on the web, if you can do it in an animation, you can do it on the web, (etc, etc) and finally, you think of what you would like without any limitations, (you bring a website/app down to reality later).

The main limitation of any website/app, is the designers thinking.

[Peter Villevoye]

Great answer, pziecina !

It's indeed wrong to start staring at a blank canvas in Adobe XD. There needs to be some stage before that: the exploration of needs, ideas, constraints, and many other UX matters, followed by sketches, sketches, and maybe some more sketches. And only then you can start drawing wireframes and create decent mockups and prototypes in XD.

BTW, not every design element or detail needs to be thought out or thought through as if it were the first time this element existed. There are many collections of resources, pattern libraries, and other reusable designs and materials based on conventions already available.

[Monika Gause]

Start with the obvious: gather all the information about the project, the client, the product, the audience, the competition. Try and get into the mood. Find out the needs of all parties involved. Find out about the goals your client wants to achieve with the new website or artwork you produce for them. They don't just "want a new website", but they want to intensify communication with clients or attract new business or sell more goods or whatever.

Talk to the client about what their business is. If this is not remote work, let them show you the company and the services or products. This helps you to get an idea of what kinds of shapes and designs the people in that industry are accustomed to. How do they deal with their customers in real life? The website has to fit into that.

Ask the client about the competition and which of their websites they find useful. And why.

Perhaps they already have a website. And/or other marketing material. Let them tell you what they like about it. And what they don't like. Does it fit into their strategy?

[cmgap]

Follow Monika's advice even if it is a self-assigment or for school. Become the client in this instance.

PS - do a visioning exercise to help get in the right frame of mind to begin.

[vincents94959602]

For me, research is the one thing that will get the process started without fail. The main killer of creativity is the idea that the wheel needs to be reinvented every single time, or that what we do is only an expression of our individual selves, rather than an expression of personal taste and skill, coupled with an awareness of trends, the works of others and the history of our trade. When I'm completely stumped on a project, I take a look at what other designers and artists are doing. I ask myself "Do I like how they did it? Why? Why not? How would I improve on what they did?" and before I can even let the blank canvas stress me out, I know how to make the first stroke.

[John Mensinger]

If the canvas is blank, and your mind is too, you're doing it wrong. Both are inert, and inert + inert = twice as inert.

Long before finding him/herself in front of a blank canvas, the successful creative will have already formulated the basis on which a purpose for the the canvas may even exist. The real work of creativity comes well before the canvas, in the imagination, where the very reasons for the project itself, its message, its objectives, and its style are cultivated.

A human being consumes foods—three of them: 1) the air breathed, 2) matter eaten and drunk, and 3) impressions. Each of the three is processed by the being in various ways to produce particular results. By way of internal processes, a portion of each food is used in the refining of fuel. Matters surrounding the foods, the fuels, and the intervening processes are not simple matters, but if a person starts to think of them in this way, before long it becomes possible to visualize and sort the foods, the processes, and the resulting refinement of fuels. All three foods, alone and in combination, play respective roles in fueling the activities we label as "creativity," but when the internal processes are left to run without conscious intervention, most of that third food—impressions, perhaps the most integral to results we'd consider creative—is routed through the gates where waste typically goes.

So think about it. Impressions are the built-up gum of everything you've ever seen, heard, and thought about. It's the ads in the newspaper, on billboards, and on television; it's the music on the bus, in the department store, coming through your earbuds; it's what you think of people, the feeling of eating chocolate, the aroma of street-vendor fare, the sight of a delighted child. All these positive things, and even more of the negative impressions typically stored deeper inside, constitute a fuel reserve that goes to waste when efforts toward creative production are detached from it. The first step of a creative endeavor is not a blank canvas; it's the gathering of project-specific impressions, done consciously to awaken the stored fuels of past impressions. When intentionally brought together, natural associations materialize providing the spark needed for creative combustion. Go now and know no "blank canvas".

[barbara_a]

It's difficult for newcomers because while they may have ideas, and some have many wonderful creative ideas, they struggle with how to implement them because they are not familiar with the applications. While it seems that online videos are the preferred way for many people to learn, I don't think there is any substitute for attending an in-person instructor led class to get newcomers up and running

[angie_taylor]

When I have trouble starting an image, or a project, there are a few things I try. First of all, if I am starting a new sketchbook, I never draw my first image on the first page. I’ll go to a random page somewhere in the middle and start drawing there, that way I’m not concerned about it being the first thing people see when they open my sketchbook! Once I’ve done one image, the rest are easy.

if you are trying to come up with ideas for a project, don’t wait for the idea before you start on it. If you can draw, just start doodling. Draw what you don’t want to use instead of what you do, that way you will figure out what works by a process of elimination. Draw anything and the ideas will start to flow.

if you can’t draw, just open up Photoshop, Illustrator or whatever creative app you use. Create a document and then drag in a few images from Adobe Stock or Pixabay. Play around with them, chop them up, try out belnding modes on them. When something accidental happens that you like, follow that lead.

most importantly, don’t beat yourself up, just try to be in the moment and concentrate on what you re doing as opposed to the bigger picture. Forget about the end goals and just get lost in the craft of what you’re doing - that’s when great things happen!

[barbara_a]

One of the best ways to get inspiration is to have limitations. Projects for clients usually have limitations, parameters, goals that the client wants to achieve. Inspiration can be found in the problem or project itself.

[Ares Hovhannesyan]

My slogan is: Just do it!

[Abambo]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Barbara+Ash  wrote

One of the best ways to get inspiration is to have limitations. Projects for clients usually have limitations, parameters, goals that the client wants to achieve. Inspiration can be found in the problem or project itself.

The nearer the deadline, the better the inspiration...When setting my own deadlines I'm the most productive. Before that, however, I need to take a walk with my dog. That empties my mind...

[Silkrooster]

General Beginner's advice for Adobe XD or any other program for that matter.

• Know your audience - If you do not know who you want to communicate with, what age group, etc. You will have a difficult time filling in the canvas. Yes, it can be done, but it needs to come alive. Why design something that won't survive?

• Collect your thoughts - You must come up with a plan that will organize how you wish to communicate with your audience. Should be animated? A slide show? An app? What program(s) should you be using? Even though this was meant for XD, that doesn't always mean it is the best alternative or should be the only tool to use(it is OK to also use other programs with XD).

• Create an outline - This can help organize your thoughts.

• Create a flowchart - This is helpful for any animations or apps as another organizational tool.

• Drawing sketches - Yes a sketch can help keep you on track of what your thoughts are and how they are connected to your organizational tools.

• Gather data - Now is the time to create art, go on photo walks, collect images from other sources (Getting licensing as needed), other assets (UI objects, etc), doing interviews if needed, running web searches, refreshing your skills if needed, etc.

• Finally- Yep canvas time, whether it is XD, Illustrator, Photoshop or even MS Word.  Time to start your creation...

• Lastly - Have fun. This step can easily be over looked. If you are not having fun, then step back take a break. The money is the Goal, but it is the fun that "drawed" you to this work.