How Do I Get Into Flow State as an Artist?
Learning to Let the Work Lead: Flow State and the Art of Not Forcing It
Over the years, making sculpture has taught me something no art school or YouTube tutorial ever did: your best work comes when you stop trying to control every part of it.
I call this flow state. Learning to find it and trust it has become one of the most important parts of how I create.
What Flow State Actually Means in the Studio
For me, flow state is not about waiting for inspiration to appear out of nowhere. It is about getting into the process and letting it guide you. Forcing things usually leads to a weaker result. You can sense it in the finished piece—something feels off, and the work looks strained.
When I get stuck on a piece, pushing harder is rarely the answer. Instead, I slow down and spend time with the work. I try not to get frustrated and just stay present. Sometimes I need to sleep on it. Other times, I step back and let the materials guide me, picking up different pieces of leather or components and turning them over in my hands until something feels right. It is trial and error, but I do not force a specific outcome. The solution usually shows up when I stop insisting it happen right away.
The Process Has an Order
Flow state does not mean working without any structure. For me, it starts with a color palette or a theme, a direction the piece seems to want before I even choose materials. From there, I block out sections and pick out the main patterns and focal points I want to highlight.
Then I start layering. I lay down materials and map out sections to build depth, overlapping leather and found pieces in patterns, shaping contours, and creating the visual distance that gives the work its character. Each type of leather has its own texture and weight. Arranging them together creates effects that a single piece could not achieve. My signature wood-grain texture comes from this process—not from one material, but from layers of overlapping pieces that, when seen from a distance, look completely different than they do up close.
That layering process is where I find flow state. When you stop overthinking and start responding to the material, to the piece, and to what works or does not, something changes. The work begins to guide itself.
Roger Roger: Where Everything Came Together
The life-sized Roger Roger Lux Battle Droid is the piece that best illustrates everything I'm describing.
This sculpture challenged every limit I had set for myself. The size alone was difficult. Building something life-sized that has a real presence in a room is a very different challenge than making a helmet or a bust. Besides the scale, I had to capture the character’s essence. The Roger Roger droid has a unique silhouette and feeling. If I lost that, I would lose the whole piece.
Choosing the color palette was one of the hardest parts. It had to capture both the character and the look I wanted, including the luxury materials, the LV monogram, and the gold hardware, but without taking away from what makes the droid easy to recognize. I had to spend time with that problem and let the answer come to me instead of forcing it.
Then comes the sealing process, which I now see as the moment of revelation. After hundreds of hours of work, putting sealer on the leather always brings both tension and relief. The sealer darkens the piece and deepens the colors. Details that were always there suddenly stand out in a way they did not before. The wood grain textures become sharper, and patterns that were once subtle become the main focus. The piece finally looks finished, and sometimes that final look is even better than what I imagined at the beginning.
That's flow state. That's what happens when you trust the process.
What I'd Tell Any Artist
Do not get too attached to your plan. It is only a starting point. The piece will show you where it wants to go if you are willing to listen, and the best thing you can do is slow down enough to notice.
The solution is almost always already in the room. Sometimes it's in a piece of leather you haven't picked up yet. Sometimes it's in a component sitting in a bin that suddenly makes sense. Sometimes it's in the sealer you apply at the very end that ties everything together in a way you couldn't have predicted at the start.
Trust the process. Let it lead. The work will be better for it.
