Inspiration

This is a random list of all kind of things I occasionally do. If you feel stuck or just don’t have a lot of ideas at the moment to do in your free time, then it’s great to follow one of the suggestions. Get inspired:

1. Is there anything you did in your childhood and stopped doing?
   For example coloring with crayons. Or use a soft pencil to color the edge of a piece of paper (torn or cut) and then smear it with your finger on another piece of paper. Or scratch on paper with a soft pencil while there is a penny underneath.
   .
2. Check out the pictures on Instagram
   Get inspired by the many photos you can find on Instagram. You can search for keywords by the hash tags that most people use.
   .
3. Look at shop windows
   What is the current fashion look? What resources have been used to decorate the shop and make it attractive? What materials are hip?
   .
4. Visit archives
   If you are looking for inspiration for a product, you can look for archives in design museums. Are you interested in old texts or letters than archives of newspapers or city archives are a treat. I spent quite some time in a regional archive to discover my family tree.
   .
5. Visit the theater
   What do the decor and costumes look like? What has been used dramatically to make an often performed play or opera attractive or modern?
   .
6. Leaf through magazines
   If they are old magazines, you can tear out photos and try to combine them with new images. Make a collage.
   .
7. Do something you do not dare to do
   .
8. Dream
   They say you can’t thrust dreams. But they can be such a great inspiration for new ideas.
   .
9. Take pictures using a theme
   Just make photos of trees for a month. Or photograph only round shapes. Also try to find scenes in just one color (monochrome).
   .
10. Check what the color of the fashion season is
    Look at the trends. What’s hot. What’s not.
    .
11. Go to the movie
    One of my best recommendations is Bon Dieu. I have laughed until my face was hurting. Hilarious.
    .
12. Imitate
    Imitating has a negative meaning in our society, but in the time of the guilds an apprentice had to imitate the master to learn the craft.
    .
13. Look into a dictionary
    Open it at a random page. Or search for a specific word and see what terms are mentioned in the explanation and then look up those as well.
    .
14. Look at advertisements
    Promotional photos and commercials Have to pinpoint an idea in an extremely short period of time. How do they get their message across?
    .
15. Look at Pinterest
    .
16. Watch the empty space
    One of the exercises in model- or stilllife drawingclass is to focus on the negative space instead of on the subject.
    .
17. Listen to music
    .
18. Make a poem
    Use rhyme in the ordinary way. Or you can write the letters of your name in separate lines and take them as the first letter of a sentence.
    .
19. Make lists
    .
20. Model
    Give your own twist to an imitation
    .
21. Take a hot shower
    The best ideas come when you are relaxed and no longer consciously thinking about a problem. Eureka!
    .
22. Do not just open your eyes, but also your other senses
    Or close your eyes and listen carefully. Only use your hands to ‘view’ an object. (It’s such a pity most museums forbid touching the statues!)
    .
23. Write with your left hand if you are right-handed and vice versa
    You literally use another part of your brain when you discard your own automatisms.
    .
24. Cut stamps of potatoes
    .
25. Speak a foreign language
    .
26. Draw
    Droodle, mindmapping, sketching, but also draw what you see in front of you are great sources of inspiration.
    .
27. Make things up that can not be
    Einstein has been able to develop the theory of relativity because he imagined that he traveled through space on a lightbeam.
    .
28. Walk
    Walking in the town the buildings and the crowds inspire. In nature the trees and the quiet are the sources.
    .
29. Sing
    .
30. Find an exhibition
    There are so many great museums that I always have a shortage of time. (Do you have my tips for a museum visit yet?)
    .
31. Find an object and make a lot of pictures of it
    Change the point of view. Go far away for an overview and get closer by to the details. Lie on your stomach or stand on the stairs.
    .
32. Zoek etymologische betekenissen op
    Of wat ook een geweldige manier is om los te komen: zoek woorden op in een andere taal en bekijk overeenkomsten met klanken of woorden in onze eigen taal.
    Find etymological meanings
    Or look up words in another language and examine similarities to sounds or words.
    .

What do you do to get an stream of ideas flowing? Let me know in the commentbox below.