Where can I go to be inspired again by life? Lost. All ARTISTS help!?

Question

Hi, I'm a 20yr student in a 3 year college career Illustration program. However it's fairly intense and I've had to take it at my own pace and take time off here and there. I havent been taking any classes this past semester but i'm going back in the next semester. my problem is i feel like i've lost my motivation and inspiration in life. Like my interests have been limited and i just don't know where to go to open up my horizons about different things. be it anything, i'm interested in fashion, illustration, painting, history, philosophy, tv, movies, MUSIC, reading of all sorts. i'm a knowledge junky but i feel like i'm not learning anything new right now. i don't even have a favourite artist at the moment. if anyone has any suggestions, recomendations or adivce of any kind! please feel free to give me your opinions. i just don't feel like myself lately and i'm not sure how to get it back.

Thank you :

by the way, my style is sort of alternative. i listen mostly to indie or rock music but i'm open to almost anything from classic to hip hop. i'm all over the map. i love painting with oil paints and using photoshop. i love reading all sorts of books and i love random facts....hmm ya. :) just not sure how to improve myself and my interests culturaly and such. thanks!..

Thank you so much to those first five answers of advice!! they are a great help and reassurance! :) I have been doing exactly that. I've spent the last almost 6 months working part time retail jobs trying to get more experience working with people and have really just taken the time off school to reinvent myself. Sleeping and just figuring myself out. I've been spending almost too much time with friends and family trying to clear my head, forget stress, help others and find myself again. It's helped me to accomplish and overcome some things but not others. My only only problem is that I feel that this phase has ended and i'm ready to get myself working again on art and everything else. But thank you for the answers!

Answer 1

I absolutely agree that the more YOU focus on YOURSELF and YOUR problem and YOUR interests or lack thereof, the worse this problem will get. I went to art school and had the same experience. I lost myself by trying so hard to be excited and inspired in a world where I was just flooded with information. The solution is to get invested in others. To be selfless. I believe many great artists found inspiration in a world in which they had to fight for the time and space to create. In today's society where we are handed so much input, I believe it is essential to rebuild that part of our minds that finds creativity and art important, vital, worth fighting for. Working to better the lives of others through teaching disabled children and doing regular volunteer work has reignited my passion to make things. My life is really phenomenal today because of this choice. Try it. Go out of your way to help as many people as you can every day. Your creative mind will start to repair itself.

Answer 2

First, I’d like to say hello to a fellow artist(I had to help you).I understand your pain, you are such a young one, but we all go through this stage in life, being so young, you’re a little fearful and misdirected at this point in your life, you’ve grown-up but still having to deal with how you did things and made decisions when you were younger, in other words, you have entered the mental sphere of adulthood. You are now thinking like an “Adult”. You are doing just fine - but I can clearly see you are being attacked by negative thought patterns. Your problems lie in the way you are viewing yourself and your surroundings. Remember, art, music, entertainment - everything can contain bad, negative impulses that can and will affect how you view and live your life. Read this article: http://glendellsartandmusic.blogspot.com/2007/08/do-this-and-you-will-have-better-your.html "Do This And You Will Have A Better Life". This article will talk more deeply about these things. It’s not the things you do, it’s what those things do to you. Do happy, positive things and get a happy, positive life. Hold your head up, you’re doing just fine!

Answer 3

Do you know what you don't want to do? Maybe illustration is not really what you want to do for the rest of your life. Did you go to work while you took the semester off from school? If not, maybe you need to take a longer time away from school, go to work and get some feeling for what life is really all about. When I was 20 I was going to school to be a chemist because that is what my Dad wanted me to do. I took some time off (a long time as it turned out), went to work, got married and had two children. When I went back to school at age 35, I knew I wanted to be an accountant.

Answer 4

Inspiration is a funny thing. Mostly, it's more a matter of just forcing yourself to sit down and create... some of it will be bad, some if will be good. Eventually, you'll hit on something you really like. Michelangelo didn't start out as a master, so people like us shouldn't expect mastery right away, either.

Don't let the pursuit of perfection stand in the way of your creativity.

Answer 5

Go flip burgers. Pick up trash. Volunteer for a homeless shelter. Be only home to sleep, not even to watch TV. Keep this up for 6 months and you'll be back to 'normal' though your life will never be the same again.

May sound drastic and it is but it works. Oh AND keep all your classes as well.

Answer 6

What I would do, go to the libary on art places are listed, look at the art of others, and ask, where do I fit in. I'm hoping for myself, to get connected to some art orgiciations to take a CD of my art for the blind, I'm partly blind, to go to one's areas of the weakness, to gain stright. or sail it over the Web, I yet not have for myself. or find some who are weak in sailing what they have, find those with that strigth, if you drive, that is an advantage to go to film festveals of the arts,, I do see you starting an art club or some type of meetings of others in your own intrest. For me, I acan't drive. do to my sight. I d understand your challenges. I am in art myself with drawing. painting, wrtitng, playing instruments, making up music, or poems, or stories. I do miss all of it. I do carry a book or recorders an camera where ever I go. if I get an dieas...I hope it helped. Thank about it. were ever bad place your in or stuck. those are cartacters for your canvis of life.