I'm often wary of using the word 'inspiration' to introduce my work -- it sounds too much like … - Shaun Tan

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Quote of the day

Painting is like making love. You cannot ask, 'How do you do it?' But, hopefully, it is beautiful.

Shaun Tan

I'm often wary of using the word 'inspiration' to introduce my work -- it sounds too much like a sun shower from the heavens, absorbed by a passive individual enjoying an especially receptive moment. While that may be the case on rare occasions, the reality is usually far more prosaic. Staring at a blank piece of paper, I can't think of anything original. I feel utterly uninspired and unreceptive. It's the familiar malaise of 'artist's block' and in such circumstances there is only one thing to do: just start drawing.

Block, Inspiration, Malaise, Reality, Sun

Same Author Quotes

You discover how confounding the world is when you try to draw it. You look at a car, and you try to see its car-ness, and you’re like an immigrant to your own world. You don’t have to travel to encounter weirdness. You wake up to it.

Car, Discovery, Travel, Trying, World

As an artist, even if you are putting out something really dark and disturbing, that's good because it's opening a discussion. Always in the back of my mind is this thought that the world has to be a better place with you in it.

Art, Dark, Disturbing, Good, Mind, Place

Today is the tomorrow you were promised yesterday.

Promised, Today, Tomorrow, Yesterday

The Federal Department of Odds and Ends: sweepus underum carpetae.

Carpetae, Ends, Federal, Odds, Odds And Ends

So you want to hear a story? Well, I used to know a whole lot of pretty interesting ones. Some of them so funny you'd laugh yourself unconscious, others so terrible you'd never want to repeat them. But I can't remember any of those. So I'll just tell you about the time I found that lost thing.

Interesting, Laughing, Lost, Pretty, Stories, Tell