“The reality is that it’s easier to be inspired than it is to create an original idea and we are hardwired to take the path of least resistance. It’s easier to jump onto a design inspiration gallery site than it is to sit down with a blank sheet of paper and a pencil. It’s easier to follow a pattern than it is to test-drive new options. It’s easier to copy a style or idea that works than try something that might miss the mark or outright fail. Above all, it’s cheaper mentally for us to rally around what’s already been done and emulate it…”
The above excerpt is from a brilliant post by Owen over at Viget.com. Well worth the read. Do it.
Personally, I couldn’t agree more. How much time is the right amount to stroll thru galleries, troll creative sites, and watch online videos?
And what about you?
Are you too busy getting inspired by the work of others to create your own?
Do you read about the failures of others, so you don’t have to try?
Is the convenience of information actually reducing your willingness to struggle to make something worthwhile?
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It’s so true… Glad to read about this subject. It’s something I have been thinking a lot about. Thanks for passing it along.
After the fair amount of wandering through the galleries and sites, reading and watching videos of and about various creative people, great and bad, there is hunger. Hunger of doing. It’s like your soul is anxious to create, to produce, to give birth to something on her own, without consuming second hand food anymore. If this hunger is not satisfied, she starves and dies slowly, losing her fertile potential. And after a certain point, it is too late, and you become a copycat, and it is unbelievably difficult to return to this hungry state of your soul, in which she can create, produce and give birth to great art again.
These philosophical posts are amazing.
Even when I set pen to paper to eek out a sketch of a photographic idea, I’m drawing on everything I’ve ever seen before. To not expand the scope of what I *have* seen before would be akin to telling someone to create a mathematic proof having never taught them subtraction.