How To Get Creative When You Run Out of Ideas

It’s Not Rocket Science

Get creative! But how do you do that when you run out of ideas? For a creative person, it can get super frustrating when that happens. Not too long ago I wrote a post called What to Draw? What Happens When You Run Out of Ideas? Keeping up a daily practice of drawing isn’t always an easy task. Finding the time isn’t the only challenge. Often, the biggest challenge is deciding what to draw. When you run out of ideas, it’s like running head first into a brick wall.

An idea generator can be kind of like Cards Against Humanity for your sketchbook.

One of the ideas in the post was picking subject matter out of a hat or a jar. This idea expands on that a little bit. It’s a little like Cards Against Humanity for your sketchbook. This idea requires three jars to pick from. The first jar will contain different characters. The second jar contains the situations. And the third jar is optional, but can add some interest to whatever you pick from the first two jars.

So for example, if you pick out of the first jar ‘A near-sighted alley cat’ and out of the second jar you pick ‘is the star quarterback for geriatric football’…well I don’t know about you, but that alone gives me a bunch of ideas. If you feel you need more however, you can reach into the third jar. Who knows? Your near-sighted alley cat could now be ‘wearing a monocle and mustache’. Get the idea?

You just need three jars for this idea generator.

So when it happens again…when you run out of ideas (and you know it’ll happen sooner or later)…I’ve provided a downloadable IDEA GENERATOR file to get your jars started. Just print it out, cut the strips apart, and put them into separate jars. The yellow strips are your characters. The blue strips are the situations. And the pink ones are your optional conditions. You can start off with these and see how you do. As you get the hang of it, and if you find it’s helpful to you and you’re having some fun with it, you can always add more strips to each jar. You might even take some ideas from Cards Against Humanity if you’re not easily offended and have an off sense of humor.

Click here to download your copy of the IDEA GENERATOR.