I made an idea-generator, great for defeating creative block

Ash Weaver

Hey guys! So I wanted to share a tool I created that has really helped me overcome creative block and exercise my creative muscles.

When drawing in my sketchbook or doing personal work in general, staring at a blank page can sometimes be overwhelming. When I have the chance to draw whatever I want, I can't think of what to draw! I want to do something more creative than just drawing a plain cat/dog/tree/person/etc., but then I end up spending too much time coming up with ideas and less time on the execution side. That's why I created this tool in Google Sheets and I've had a lot of great results.

Basically, you start by listing anything and everything that might be interesting to draw. Then on the next page, it will generate random combinations of those things for you to figure out how to put them together! For example, recently I got "daisy" and "schoolbus" as my prompt, and that gave me the idea for this cool hippie schoolbus drawing that I'm working on (would post an image of it but it's not done yet).

It probably wouldn't work for client work or projects with specific prompts, but it's great for open-ended drawing (cough Inktober cough) or just for stretching those creative muscles. The act of trying to put A and B together has made a noticeable difference in my creative problem-solving skills.

Here's the link to the Google Sheet:
Art Ideas Generator
Save your own copy of it and start adding things to the list. The more you add, the better. Pinterest is a great source of inspiration.

It would also be fun to share ideas or finished work below to see what other people are doing. I hope you find this as helpful as I have!

-Ash

Coley

@Ash-Weaver this seems pretty cool. I am not sure how to get the generator to work? I'm a bit technologically clueless so that could be it ha ha!!!!

Ash Weaver

@Coley You have to manually type in random numbers from the random number generator that's included, and make sure the checkboxes are checked. Let me know if that does the trick.