Creative Block

I am willing to bet that a lot of people who claim to not be creative are more likely experiencing some sort of creative block. “I don’t know what to paint, so I can’t paint”. Having creative block right off the top, I am sure, would give anyone the wrong idea and discourage any notions of creativity.

Creative block is deadly to a good groove. It makes me frustrated. I know that my art is good for me, that it will balance me, but I don’t know what I want to draw so I don’t, and I get frustrated, etc etc etc.

My creative block can come from a lot of things. The main one is mostly exhaustion. After a long work day, my brain is fried and I don’t want to work through the muddy ideas I have in my head. The ideas don’t come as smoothly when I am tired or stressed out. There’s a lot of other things that impact my creativity: my mood, my surroundings, life events, my environment, and how long I have to sit in the studio. I definitely work better if there’s a rough amount of time in the studio, but not a hard line to stop working. Getting productive sketches while I am constantly checking the clock on my lunch break is just not a thing haha.

Now, as there are million causes of creative block, there are a million more ways to work through it. Here are a few that I use regularly:

• Go for a walk. Sounds simple because it is. Going for a walk, for me, is an opportunity to really clear my head of anything that might be blocking my creativity. I’ll pop on a podcast or an audiobook and walk off any lingering stressors in my day. That really frees my mind up to be open to inspiration.
• Listen to music. I am at my most inspired when I listen to music. I get some of my best ideas from different songs, lyrics, and artists. When I listen to music I let my mind wander, when it does I usually come up with some great visuals or scenarios. Some of the time they don’t have anything to do with the song I am listening to, more what I think about when I listen to it.
• Go through your sketchbooks/journals/photos. I try my hardest to get ideas down on paper as soon as I have them. I might not need them right now, but I will later. Sometimes now isn’t the time for idea, it’s waiting for the perfect creative block moment to strike.
  I also take a lot of photos of book pages. If I read an amazing line that sparks a bunch of ideas (Erin Morgenstern anyone?) I like to write the quote down, but usually don’t have a pen, so I take a picture. My phone is full of book page photos. Now, if I could remember to go back to them right away so I remember what book it was haha.
• Switch up your routine. Maybe you’re trying to be creative when your creative bones aren’t ready. I know I tried to be doing my studio time over lunch for part of February, and I was getting so frustrated. None of my ideas were flowing as I had come to expect and none of my sketches came out to anything I liked. It turns out, like I mentioned above, that one of the problems was that I was limiting myself to that half an hour that had a hard stop on either side. I didn’t let myself get absorbed into any ideas because I knew I had to get back to work, to that meeting, to answer this email, to contact that person. It was just no good. I put studio time back to after work and things started running a little smoother.
• Scroll through things that inspire you. Pinterest search something that interests you. Go through Behance. Visit the sites or read the books of those that really inspire you. Does something stand out? Why? Dig into that a bit.
  Be careful here though. You don’t want to steal any ideas or risk plagiarism. I have a post coming up on this as well. Just use these things to get the juices flowing and then close them all to workout your own ideas.

These are just some really simple things that I have found work for me when I am trying to be creative but I am just not feeling it as much as I would like. Don’t give up, power through, take a break, feed the interest, and you’ll get there. I have a lot more in-depth ideas to share here too, but I thought I would start somewhere simple, and not write a novel for us all on this Wednesday morning.

What do you do when you hit a creative block?