THE MODERN PHOTOGRAPHER: Beta Cover Design by Annette Kim

How to Build More Creative Willpower

THE MODERN PHOTOGRAPHER: Beta Cover Design by Annette Kim
THE MODERN PHOTOGRAPHER: Beta Cover Design by Annette Kim

Don’t forget friend, art is a beautiful struggle.

Be Creative Every Day, Any Where

No more excuses. Unleash your inner-artist with CREATIVE EVERY DAY: Mobile Edition.


Art is hard. Making pictures is hard.

Realize as a visual artist, your goal is long-term endurance. You don’t want to get easily disappointed on the day-to-day level. You must consider and think to yourself:

How can I stay creative and productive for decades?

Why make art?

PHOTOGRAPHY STARTUP MANUAL by ERIC KIM

Creative willpower: I feel ultimately this comes from a larger sense of purpose and meaning in your life.

As an artist, you have a very important role in society. Your job and duty is to make art and images which inspire, uplift, and motivate others. Your job is to uncover beauty, truth, and love. Your job as a photographer is to find the beauty in the ordinary and the mundane — to show your viewer, “The world is a great and beautiful place, even in the small details”.

For myself, I’ve been having a HUGE spurt of creative inspiration and purpose. Why? Because ever since staring our HAPTICLABS Berlin internship with my sister Annette Kim and with Cindy, I have a larger purpose. My purpose is to help empower and employ them, to use their skills, to make artistic products to empower other creatives. And we have been doing that with building up our new visual supply company: HAPTIC INDUSTRIES.

CREATIVE EVERY DAY: Mobile Edition
CREATIVE EVERY DAY: Mobile Edition

CREATIVE EVERY DAY has been our baby, a creative tool that has been a distillation of all our creative wisdom. But it has also been a tool to stimulate ourselves. For example, I personally do a lot of exercises in the book. I’ve been teaching myself how to draw and write poetry, inspired by Annette Kim (my sister, the illustrator) and also from Cindy (the poet, and visual storyteller).

Screenshots from CREATIVE EVERY DAY: Mobile Edition:

VITRUVIAN CAMERA by ANNETTE KIM
VITRUVIAN CAMERA by ANNETTE KIM

SHARE YOUR ART: From CREATIVE EVERY DAY Mobile Edition
SHARE YOUR ART: From CREATIVE EVERY DAY Mobile Edition

HAPTICLABS KYOTO OFFICE: ANNETTE KIM, JENNIFER NGUYEN, CINDY NGUYEN working on CREATIVE EVERY DAY
HAPTICLABS KYOTO OFFICE: ANNETTE KIM, JENNIFER NGUYEN, CINDY NGUYEN working on CREATIVE EVERY DAY

Some tips I’ve learned about creative motivation and willpower, by working on this book, and just from my real life:

  1. Feedback is important: To stay motivated, you must share your work with others. The feedback you get doesn’t need to be positive. It can sometimes be negative. But any sort of feedback — whether good or bad, is a good stimulus to creative willpower. Why? If someone likes your creative artwork or picture, it will motivate you to make more pictures. And if someone critiques it, it will give you motivation to improve, and perhaps “prove them wrong.”
  2. Treat creative work like play, not labor: Labor is doing shit you don’t like to do, and is generally unpleasant. As an artist, “work” should be active, enjoyable, and creative. It must challenge you, and be fun. The more fun you have, the more motivated you will be. For example, whenever I make pictures, I am like juggling visual building blocks. I’m wondering to myself, “How can I re-arrange these visual puzzle pieces, and make a new type of picture which is novel, fun, and interesting?” The same goes with writing and blogging — I never treat it like a chore. I like to write like how I talk, and share ideas that I’m having fun thinking about. Curiosity and enthusiasm is contagious — only work on creative projects which personally interest you.
  3. Diet, exercise, and nutrition: When in doubt, have more coffee. Also, to have more creative energy and willpower, abstain from sugar, simple carbs, and any other foods which make you sleepy and give you “food coma.” Personally, I only eat one (massive) meal a day, which helps me stay sharp and motivated to make art. I only eat at dinner time, because I treat it like a reward after working on a lot of creative work. Also, I do lots of exercise during the day and drink a lot of water, to keep my blood flowing, which helps my creative juices flow. Read more: Diet, Health, and Fitness For Photographers >

Be strong, and be creative every day!
ERIC

HAPTIC INDUSTRIES: Creative Tools to Empower You >