Many artists struggle with finding inspiration for their artwork. Oftentimes, artists either have a type of writer’s block, or may have trouble finding something original enough to expand on. Aylar Orasheva ‘23 and Madison Balaskiewicz ‘23 are two Artists of the Week who share where they get their inspiration from.

Aylar Orasheva, an active member of the Bolles Art Club and AP Art class, has been interested in the arts for as long as she could remember. “I have been [interested in the arts] since a very young age. Since my dad got me an iPad. I just liked to sketch and stuff,” Orasheva said.

She became involved in the arts at Bolles when she first took Foundations of Art class. “I just thought that it’d be very cool to complete the entire course,” Orasheva said.

Orasheva’s piece that won her Artist of the Week on October 18th was what she describes, “a girl and this monster that was leading her into a forest,” She recieved the inspiration for this from a YouTube video about a Windigo giant. Her artwork included a type of monster leading an innocent looking girl into an eerie forest. “I got an image of it and decided to go with it,” Orasheva said.

Whenever Orasheva can’t find inspiration, she likes to go to social media in search of ideas. “There are several artists that I really follow in shape, kind of like my ‘inspirations.’ I always like to look for different art techniques and stuff like that,” Orasheva said. She believes that the internet holds a vast variety of different techniques, themes, and styles of artwork in which she can dive into.

Orasheva isn’t the only artist who tends to the internet for art inspiration. Madison Balaskiewicz takes AP 2D Art, and so she is very experienced when it comes to having inspiration blocks.

The piece that Balaskiewicz believes won her Artist of the Week on September 26th are photos she took on her trip to Oregon. “I remember I was messing around with collaging in my photography class last year… Mr. Myers actually told me about this collage contest that’s online. And I thought I would do it,” Balaskiewicz said.

“I like it when my art has a flow, and when people are in action…I like when my art like tells a story to people.” -Aylar Orasheva ’23

Another piece of artwork Balaskiewicz was working on at the time were photos of her trip to Oregon. She had become interested in photography, and decided to try and explore it. Balaskiewicz believes that by going out of her comfort zone, she was better able to gain a different perspective of the world around her and capture it in her photography.

Whenever Balaskiewicz finds herself searching for inspiration, she too goes to the internet for help. However, she takes a different strategy while finding inspiration. “If I have an idea, or a general broad thing that I wanted to do, I would just look it up online from there. Once I find someone that I really like, I’ll click on who they are, research them, and look at some of their works,” Balaskiewicz said. She believes it better allows her to dilate on a certain topic she is interested in.

A piece of advice Balaskiewicz would like to give to other artists is to not be afraid to explore new things. “Once you figure out what you want, don’t be scared to try new things, like something that someone else did… Be sure to try other things and experiment in different ways,” Balaskiewicz said.