[Tarandon]

I have been browsing and posting on this forum for several months now, and I find rather disturbing the amount of sleep some of you people seem to be getting. Or should I say the lack of sleep. I see people pulling all nighters, going to sleep at 6 am, basically just wreaking havoc on their internal clocks and it's not a healthy practice. Why then does it seem to produce rather interesting pieces of artistic composition? Are these sleepless wonders bordering hallucination when they concoct these masterpieces? Perhaps I should start negating sleep in the name of my art. Any thoughts?

[Queezy]

I was actually pondering this very same thing about a week ago. For several nights I had stayed up, and in the mornings would find myself drawing stuff, and everything came out way better than stuff I do while my nerves are still calm.

[Binke]

ever heard of timezones?

although I kinda agree, I seem to have painted most of my "good" pieces on the night/mornings, when im the most tired or whatever.

[ January 21, 2002: Message edited by: Binke ]

[Probus]

I tend to become more productive and especially more creative when i had i had a night of no sleep. weird isn�t it.

[ January 21, 2002: Message edited by: Probus ]

[suny]

Night is calm, no people, no sounds, no light, only you in front of your screen, some good music, your headphones...
I work well between 10pm and 4am.
beacause i'm more focused on my work, i guess.

S.

[Liser Studios]

yeah, I would have to say I do better work late at night/early morning.
i've noticed i do my best work between 11:00-3:00 i usually go to bed after that though, i get too tired and i would like to wake up at noon. If i stay up later then i'll wake up around 1-2, and my day is a waste. but that may change when i'm older, since you need less sleep when you're in your 20's and 30's.
then i can work until 3, then wake up at 9 or 10, and work some more! that would be so cool. lol.

[balistic]

I seem to be most artistically productive between maybe 3 in the afternoon and midnight. I seldom do artwork in the morning, or really late at night.

[morphgfx]

and I thought i'm weird or something...
i'm usually most creative in the later evening/at night/early morning... only problem is i can't work when i'm too tired :|... i hate it to lie in bed with the coolest ideas in my head, but beeing to sleepy to get up... argh... maybe i should sleep more in the afternoon... or in school...

[Tarandon]

I'm well aware of timezones

I'mm referring to posts where the speaker says "I spent 17 straight hours on this" or "Here's a little doodle I did last night when I couldn't sleep".

It all just seemed a bizzarre trend to me is all. Nice to see I'm not the only one out there.

[roundeye]

i draw better tanked, which i allways found weird. as well as pantsless.

[lalPOOO]

I tend to draw well from around 11:00 to 3:00 at night because of the lack of disturbance, and also because I don't know what I'm doing all the time so sometimes i stumble across new techniques.

[Lunatique]

When I was younger(from age 13 and on), I thought I was the only weirdo who was a night owl. I would stay up and paint, write, compose music..etc, and the later it got, the more inspired/excited I was.

Well, it's still like that 16 years later. And in these 16 years, I've discovred most creative people are similar.

I used to analyze the cause of this late night phenomenon, and this is what I came up with:

1)no distraction(all the stores are closed, all your friends are asleep, and there's nothing good left on TV).

2)You have a whole day's worth of inspiration and thoughts to channel into your creative stuff(things you saw on the street, ideas in your head, conversations you've had with people, films/TV shows you watched, music you listened to..etc etc).

3)The "I shouldn't be doing this" syndrome. You KNOW you should go to bed(growing up to "It's bed time! Go to sleep! You have school tomorrow!"), and yet you WANT to stay up because it's "wrong" to stay up late. You always think, "Just 15 more minutes, then I'll go to sleep," but 15 minutes turns into another hour....

4)Isolation. At that hour, you feel you are in your own little world, and nothing can touch you. Only you can understand yourself, and only you can create the things you truely love.

well, that's the case for me.

[PixHortHiT]

I dont really do it on purpose, when I stay up all night drawing. Its just like I fall in some kind of trance, loosing touch with my surroundings, all sound except those emanating from my computer dies away, the longest time I think was about five or six hours completely cut off from the outside world, of course, these things only happens when I�m at a LAN-party...

[Mr. T]

same as Suny... i can't do much over day

[morphgfx]

hey Lunatique that absolutely fits me too, especially point 1 and 4.
by the way, Frazetta mostly worked at night as well.

[Jesta78]

I agree, I work the best from 11pm to 4am. I mean, I had a big project to do and I got up early in the morning to do it. I didn't even get a good idea until 1am in the morning. I definitely think I need to be isolated with no distractions to create anything, maybe an insane asylum would be perfect for me, my friends and family already think I'm crazy for staying up so late every night, lol .

[ken]

quote:

---

i draw better tanked, which i allways found weird. as well as pantsless.

---

well. i'm never going to look at your pictures the same again...

every holidays between uni terms i usually stay up to 5-6am, like now. last summer when i was working on a project i hit 10am as deadline approached.

lunatique has it pretty much nailed. kinda sad that we can't be more social or functional while being creative

-Ken

[Dekard]

r-mode.

While in r-mode you lose all track of time, while you are in the 'zone'. Most artists get into this zone and can be in the day/evening or whenever. Most of us probably US based don't get off work until 6 or so and work on art late into the evening, and lose track of time. Is my view.

[gekitsu]

well, as long as it's day, everyone is usually in stress of job, school, life etc... at the night, it is quiet, one is alone. imo, that's the right time to therapy oneself by drawing.
one thing even more weird is: i made my best drawings when i was sad as hell and didn't want to live anymore...

[a_sh]

I too draw best at night.
Although it's not all good. Last year I've managed to destroy my internal clock totally. I'm no longer capable of keeping up a normal day-rythm (or what's it called in english). :/ It has caused some serious damage to my results in school, as well as other stuff.

Anyway, I read somewhere that there are more alfa-waves in the brain when you are sleepy. Alfa-waves has been shown to promote creativity, so there seems to be some scientific reason behind the night-owl-syndrome among artists

[jabber]

my ex-gf who is a psychologists told me once, (when I asked the same question) was that sleep deprivation slowly shuts down your logical part of your brain, your left side, and the right side, the creative side over compensates trying to get into that "dream" realm so your brain can relax, kick back can catch a good dream flick.

if you cant get to that dream place when you sleep, you've got problems. its also been documented that people who dont get to that dream place, can eventually go nuts after long peroids of non-dreamless sleeping. They also are just plain cranky. reality and fantasy blur, and the next thing you think your a goblin saving the whale princess when your really just a naked freak runing around the mall.

just one possible answer. i embellished a bit.

[Kaete]

It's not that insomniacs make better artists...

Artists just make great insomniacs.

[egerie]

Well, I used to make my best works during the day or the evening while in college... Was sleeping at least 6 hours a night.. The inspiration was overflowing etc.
Now that my sleeping hours are completely wonky, I can't paint anymore.
I don't think crativity is solely due to the sleeping patterns but on how you psyche yourself in the 'r-mode' like Dekard pointed out (been reading some Betty Edwards lately?). Of course, going more than a few hours without sleep can unbalance your hormones cocktail and perhaps help you fall more easely in that r-mode.

0,02c

[MiNdInK]

Yea I would have to say I am an amazing artist when it's late into the night, it's like I'm in my own fantasy world and I can draw from it.

[Ian Jones]

Count me in too.

I always have these really cool ideas late at night, and when I goto bed I get so many images whirling around in my head that I can't get to sleep. I usually read to try and tire my eyes out, and by propping myself up on my arm and reading lying down, it also helps to get me really tired.

[spooge demon]

morning is for sleep! everyone knows that...

[jr]

i'll sleep when i'm dead.

[glody]

no sleep is very bad for the body/mind/and anything else you have....haha...i am.... in fact an insomniac i do find that i draw better at night to early morning....and ive also realized that if i keep this up im going to be living a very short life

as is everyone in this post

haha....take your vitamins!!!

[ January 26, 2002: Message edited by: glody ]

[lalPOOO]

meh, I'm still young, I'm hoping that before it can really affect me physcially they'll devolp a cure for not sleeping heh heh heh....

[Malachi Maloney]

I paint best between the hours of about 10pm and 5 am, when it's real dark and quite out. I don't qualify as an insomniac though, because I do sleep. Just not at night.

M