How Beeple Let Go of Creative Block
By Noah Berkowitz
Most writers, artists, musicians, and creatives experience creative block at least once in their career. Either something happens in their life that prevents them from creating, or they doubt their ability to create something worth presenting to others. Whatever the cause, it’s only reasonable that at a certain point creatives will run out of steam and need a break to recharge, right?
For many, this may be the case, but not for Mike Winkelmann, known mainly by his online alias, Beeple. You can check out his work on his Instagram page @beeple_crap. Since May 1, 2007, Beeple has posted a piece of digital artwork online every single day.
Every. Single. Day.
Each piece Winklemann posts is created on the day that he posts. No backlog. And this is on top of all the other responsibilities he has for his day job as a working professional.
This feat is inhuman. Not all of his work is necessarily of the same quality, and some of it is, quite frankly, unsettling. But Beeple’s progression as an artist (although he feels the term artist is pretentious) has been massive, evolving from messy digital sketches in 2007 to beautifully rendered, detailed 3-dimensional landscapes and abstract visuals today. It truly goes to show the value of repetition and practice.
In posting a unique piece of artwork every day for the past 13 years, Beeple has taken the cause of many people’s creative block and turned it into his own reason for creating
“By posting the results online I’m less likely to throw down a big pile of a**-s***,” Beeple says. “Even though most of the time I still do because I suck a**.”
This quote from Beeple, while vulgar, carries an important message for any creatives out there who are struggling with creative block. Many creatives won’t start a project because they’re afraid that it won’t be of good enough quality to release, but Beeple releases a project every day in an attempt to ensure the quality of his work. Instead of being weighed down by fear of failure, Beeple accepts that most of his work won’t be perfect, it may not even be good, but he still strives to make something new every day. It is ok if your work is not perfect.
Although some of his work may, in Beeple’s own opinion, “suck a**,” it clearly doesn’t matter to his 2.1 million followers on Instagram. Nor does it matter to the two investors who purchased the collection of his first 5,000 “everydays” for $69 million in cryptocurrency at an auction on March 11 of this year. This sale makes Beeple’s “Everydays: The First 5000 Days” the 4th most-expensive piece of art auctioned off since 2020.
Not bad for “a big pile of a**-s**”.
Personally, I have been in a creative slump due to lack of inspiration. So I am going to commit to posting creative work every day. If you want to follow along, follow @brrk____ on Instagram.
