Art from Humans – Inspiration vs Dedication

Art for Humans – Inspiration vs Dedication – by Alexander Cardinale.

Motivation and Inspiration are seemingly directly tied to the process of making art. In any medium, in any scenario, with any artist, it seems that inspiration and motivation are a must to have a work of art done and at first glance, this would make sense. I mean how can you conjure up the soul-stirring emotions needed to make an effective dark and gloomy landscape painting, or channel the natural beauty of floral still life without that spark of creativity in your soul? Well, I would argue that while motivation and inspiration are important to making the art that makes you happy deep down in that same vein I would say even more important than that is dedication and discipline.

I am an illustrator first and foremost, I do other mediums all the time. I’m doing a different medium of art right now by writing this but at the end of the day, I’m hunched over my desk drawing characters and scenes. The thing is as a working artist, as someone who draws things for clients to make money I can’t rely on waiting for that spark of inspiration and the unbridled drive of motivation that comes with it; to get my work done. Deadlines don’t care if I’m not “feeling it right now”, no I need to slump out of bed, sit down and draw, and keep drawing til the art is done.

Now this may sound callous and harsh, as if I’m suggesting artists need to work themselves to the bone til their brain is run ragged and their hands cramp but that’s not what I mean at all. Through my time in my college career so far, I’ve met many artists many of whom were my teachers and there was one shockingly common thing. They rarely ever made art, it’s not just that their jobs got in the way but they simply didn’t have the motivation and they would sit on their hands just waiting for it. Waiting for a muse, an epiphany, for just the right moment to pick up the brush again. One of my professors showed us some of her work and it was great, she was an extremely skilled artist in multiple mediums but then she followed that up with a chuckle and a telling sigh as she said “Ah but I haven’t made anything in around 2 years now…”. I was shocked at the very idea of this, to just be waiting for an unknown amount of time to just feel like you can paint or draw. It’s sad to see how commonplace this kind of thing is for artists.

To me, that’s why dedication and discipline are far more useful tools than motivation and inspiration in art because one set makes the other appear. When I’m commissioned to draw something that at first sounds very boring or odd to me of course I don’t want to draw it but when I make myself sit down and work it’s like breaking open a dam that holds back a massive river. At first everything is stagnant but after a few swings of that hammer against the dam, after a few lines of that pencil against the paper. The water erupts out and the flow begins just as the inspiration erupts and the motivation is followed when you push yourself just a little.

For example I once had a client come to me practically begging for me to do work for them which was odd enough on it’s own as I’m not hard to reach nor do I often turn down clients so to this day I’m confused at the man stumbling into a private message as if he had been trying to get in contact for days. Once we decided on the art and the money was sent his attitude switched up entirely. Gone was the man who was on his hands and knees asking for my work and now he was replaced with a harsh and oddly cold person. I didn’t want to work with him or make his art, I had less than zero artistic motivation to do the work but I still got up and sat down at my desk. After a bit I still ended up enjoying the work I was doing, even though I couldn’t stand how suddenly callus my client was.

You shouldn’t push yourself too hard but sometimes you need to just sit down and work. You can’t rely on some magic jolt of inspiration to appear and save the day unless you’d rather end up telling a group of artists much younger than yourself about how you haven’t picked up a brush in years.

More from Alexander Cardinale…