Every artist experience this one thing called an Art block. If you’re an artist I’m sure you’ve experienced this every few months or even weeks. This is very normal for not just artist but creatives—people whose work revolves around ideas and skills.
And I, as an artist that has been drawing for over 6 years, have experienced this countless times. And I have collected a couple of ideas to bring back that creative spirit so that I can get back to drawing again over these past few years.
Here are my top 5 favorite things to try when being stuck at drawing or when I seem to have zero ideas what to draw.
1. Use a Medium You’re Not Used To
I tried this with acrylic marker and gouache before and it really helps for me. It made me try tricks to make the drawing looks good since I’m not really familiar with these mediums. And searching for tricks and applying them to your art really helps at recovering from art block, because when you try new things you tend to instinctively try to adapt with it—it's the same concept as when you move into a new house, humans have the instinct to adapt into a new environment especially when they know they will have to live there for who knows how long.
But do note that it won't automatically recover you from your art block especially if you've already tried all kinds of medium or if you can't afford to spend money on new art supplies—broke artist unite. In that case, you should try the next method.
2. Learn a New Art Technique
Have you heard of a saying "Learning is the key to all kinds of problems"? Amazing if you have, because I made that up in the spot. But incase that's a legit saying, have you heard of it? Well that's true because every hobbyist artist like me have a lot of improving to do to their art.
And it can be a good starting point to your art block recovery, by learning new art techniques you can improve your art and recover from your art block both at once!
The good news is you can do this for free! There's millions of art tutorials available on YouTube. You can also use books, e-books, courses, etc. There's plenty of resources out there that can help you improve your art and I love that about the internet.
3. Try Recreating Other Artists' Art Style
This third one is a nice way to go out of your comfort zone, especially if the reason you experience an art block is because you are tired of your current art style.
Sometimes adding new elements to our art style is really an eye-opening experience, because all art styles are unique and you can take any artist's art style and try recreating it with the stuff you usually draw with and you will end up with elements of other artist's art style that you find stunning to be in your art style.
I like adding new stuff to my art style, and I'm actually the type of artist that can not stay in one art style and constantly switching up my art style. I took a couple inspiration from 2000's cartoon and I really love how they draw a 3/4 view face, and that's why I always draw 3/4 face now.
4. Do Art Challenges
This is also a nice way to slowly recover from your art block. By following art challenges like Inktober, and other 30-day art prompts, you can draw consistently for 30 days and watch as your drawing gets better day by day.
You don't even have to post it online to follow the challenges, you can get your sketchbook, your pencil and eraser, and set yourself a 30-min timer for you to draw, and you'll get used to drawing everyday more and more.
And this is a good sign, as long as you have the determination and consistency, you can easily recover from art block every time! But incase you don't like getting told on what to draw, you can do this last step instead!
5. Don't Forget to Practice Everyday!
In the days of art block, we may feel motivated to draw but don't have any ideas on what to draw or in any way we draw something it would not come out as we expected.
But motivation can fuel our ideas in a way we do not expect sometimes. In my experience, if we have motivation or intention to draw the more we notice the things around us that we can try to draw. I personally really like this concept because it pushes our right brain to think creatively towards our surroundings. And if you think about it, that's what being an artist all about.
So that's all of the things I usually try when I experience an art block, and I hope it can be useful to anyone out there because I know art block is really frustrating and sometimes it can happen when you're in a state where you really need your creative side to show up, e.g. when you were entering an art competition, etc., and so that's for this week's article, see you soon next week!
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