Where Do Artists Get Their Ideas?

“Artists often get their ideas from their surroundings and experiences.”

A good way to introduce this idea would be to start a class discussion with the question “Where do artists get their ideas?” One common misnomer about artists is that all of their ideas simply pop into their heads from out of nowhere. The mystery of ‘inspiration’ makes some people think that it is a gift that is bestowed upon the ‘enlightened’ artist, with little or no effort on their part, and all they have to do is translate their vision onto a canvas for ordinary people to see. (Granted, there are instances where artists create pieces based on dreams, but even these are technically drawn from life experiences.)

To teach this principle, I could show students a series of several artworks, perhaps by famous artists, and explain how each artwork arose out of the everyday experiences of the artist. Some artists, such as Rosa Bonheur and Edgar Degas, purposefully placed themselves in certain environments, or around certain subjects, to make their favorite subjects part of their everyday experience. Others just made art from that which they happened to see throughout the course of an average day.

Following this discussion, the students could research the art themselves. They could even create and perform skits which involved actual people, places and things which made their way into the work of the artist, and showed a bit of the artist’s creative process. Assessing the students’ understanding in this case would involve evaluating how much of the skit actually linked the artist’s work to the artist’s life, rather than simply showing them as co-existing.

Another way to drive this point home would be to use the students’ art journals. In order to do this, it might be beneficial to have the students focus on studying the lives of a small number of artists throughout the year, by means of internet research, reading time, unit projects and or class discussions. As a starter exercise for multiple classes, I could show them a slide of one of the artists’ works and have the students hypothesize about the inspiration of the artist’s ideas, based upon what they know about the artist’s life. In assessing this, I would to see that the students drew upon the knowledge they had about the artist’s life, or that they tried to look at the subject through the artist’s eyes, in order to come up with their answers.

Students could see this truth at work in their own art by keeping a sketchbook. In using this tool, I would instruct them to draw items, people and places from their lives, and encourage them to incorporate their drawings in class projects. I would especially challenge them to think outside of the box, looking for beauty or interest in objects or places that they might not normally think to create art about. They would be required to write a sentence or short paragraph about their drawings, explaining why they chose to draw what they did, and how each person, place or thing is significant or interesting to them.

In assessing these, I would look to see that the drawings and writings had strong connections to one another, and were, in fact, part of the students’ life experiences. I think this would be easily reflected in the writing and in the detail and uniqueness of the drawings. By doing this exercise they might see firsthand how many ideas an artist tries out in his sketchbook before incorporating one or two of them into his artwork. They would also understand from personal experience how an object that may seem mundane in everyday life can be transformed as the subject of an inspired work of art.