Sometimes an idea doesn’t disappear when you stop working on it.
It simply waits.
A few months ago, I was fascinated by the cracks, lines and structures I kept noticing in the city. I photographed them, looked at them, and thought: I want to bring this into my work somehow.
So I tried.
And it didn’t work.
Or at least, not in the way I had imagined.
The first attempt
For the first three days, I tried to draw what I was seeing.
I was interested in the cracks in the pavement and the lines and structures around me. I thought that if I could somehow translate them into drawings, I could bring that inspiration into my work.
But I quickly realized that drawing wasn’t the right way for me to do it.
The results didn’t feel right.
So after three days, I put the idea aside.
I didn’t think much more about it at the time.
Or at least, I thought I didn’t.
The idea came back in a different form
I continued with my 100-Day Project and moved on to other experiments.
Then, around Day 30, something happened.
I was experimenting with printing on packaging material, and suddenly I noticed something familiar in the results.
The shapes and structures reminded me of the things I had been noticing in the city.
But this time, I wasn’t trying to draw them.
I had found another way to get to something I had been looking at for a long time.
That was an important realization for me:
I didn’t have to draw what I was seeing.
The inspiration was still there. I just hadn’t found the right way to express it yet.
And then I kept going
I continued experimenting.
Some prints worked. Many didn’t.
Some went into my box of experiments and stayed there. Others became part of my Art Journal.
I wasn’t consciously trying to develop the original idea anymore. I was simply continuing to make things, notice things and follow what caught my attention.
And then, much later, on Day 162, I came back to the packaging experiments again.
This time, the work looked different.
There were primary colours, transparency, layers and vintage paper. The structures I had been drawn to were still there, but they had found their way into my work through a completely different process.
Looking back, I can see that I hadn’t really abandoned the idea.
I had only abandoned the first way I thought I had to make it happen.
And maybe that’s an important part of staying with an idea.
You can’t always control how an inspiration will return.
Sometimes you have to keep making, keep observing and allow yourself not to know what will come next.
The inspiration stays — but only if you keep going.