-By Dan dos Santos

Oftentimes, I’ll get a client that tell me to paint ‘whatever I want’. As good as that may sound at first, it’s actually quite intimidating. There are a limitless amount of things I could paint, and without some sort of direction, I flounder, usually resulting in a mediocre piece.

I’ve realized in recent years, that from a creative point of view, I flourish under restrictions. Maybe it’s a restrictive subject matter, or a difficult template, or even something as simple as a specific palette choice. However simple, or complex, the restriction… I like having one. The inherent problems immediately causes me to come up with solutions, and ideas begin flowing quickly from there.

After all, you can’t think outside the box, unless someone puts you inside a box first.

Artist David Jablow recent completed a series of drawing that I feel capture this sentiment perfectly.

David took a vintage doodle pad with an adult theme, and rather than going with the most obvious solution, he came up with literally dozens of alternative solutions… all of them surprising and wildly creative.

The drawings are fantastic in their own right. But I suspect that David wouldn’t have been half as creative if he allowed himself to just draw ‘a woman doing whatever’. Having that difficult restriction gave him something to push off from.

The next time you’re stumped for something to draw, try challenging yourself. Limit your options a little, or give yourself a seemingly insurmountable obstacle. You’ll surprise yourself with the great solutions that come out of it.

You can see dozens more of David’s solutions at his Tumblr page:
http://doityourselfdoodler.tumblr.com/

Or check out his Flickr page which also contains a lot of his preliminary sketches too:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/davidjablow/