Thursday Art Walk 312: Art Block And Overcoming it

In Which Sometimes Everyone Gets Stuck

Art block can happen to anyone who makes art at any point in their careers/hobbies. It can happen multiple times. It can persist for an exceedingly long time, but the important thing to remember is that, despite what your self-doubt is telling you, it's not because you're a bad artist. Maybe you've run out of ideas, or your ideas are bigger than you think you can handle, or maybe you're just not motivated, but none of this makes you a bad artist or a bad person.

Sometimes it's just procrastination because you fear failure - spending hours on a piece only to hate it to death once you've decided you're finished is excruciating, but it's part of making art. Sometimes we don't like what we produce, and it can make us very prone to giving up or not wanting to try again.

But that's not how art works, right? You know that!

Art is 100% practice.

It's a secret that no one likes to believe because we've all had that one classmate or relative who puts pen to page and produces beautiful work like it's second nature (and it may be!), but here's what that person likely never told you:

They have Art Block and Self-Doubt, too.

Unless they're a narcissist, then it's just not fair to everyone else :|

But yeah, everybody fails sometimes, everyone struggles to see the worth of their art, and everyone stares at a blank canvas or page or notebook, or through the viewfinder of their camera or GoPro or whatever, and has no idea what to put into it. Everyone is out here fighting to pour out their art into the world.

And sometimes it's a slog.

Art isn't always fun. Sometimes it's fighting the urge to break your pencil in half because it's your last one and the sketch is just not coming together. Sometimes it's staring down at an entire day's effort and realizing you have to do it all over again because something is fundamentally off. Sometimes you're bored to tears because this is the 80th time you've tried to draw that damn penguin and it's just... it looks like a panda and a peanut had a very productive New Year's Eve or something...

Sometimes, the joy of creation is actually a miserable wallow, and it can be hard to come back from that.

And sometimes you just... don't feel like making art. Even though you know you should (or you need to for a class or your job or something).

If you don't feel the art, then how do you make it happen?

You follow the advice of those dumb Nike ads, is what.

You just... get it done.

How do you start? Well, for me, I just... doodle. I start sketching out vague shapes on the page until I can start filling in the details into something more picture-like.

Sometimes that's enough.

Sometimes, I'll just find a poem and break it down into coordinates, then have the internet give me a random pallet of colors and make a bubble art from that. It's not always pretty, but at least I've started something!

Today, I did the doodle shape approach and came out with something that I actually think is adorable:

"Radbert"; permanent marker and ballpoint pen on printer paper; 2020

It's a blurry photo because I had a cat on my lap (she's still there, guys, she won't move, I have to pee so bad...), but there's my little dude pulling some (I'm sure) sick tricks or something on a skateboard. He also found a clip-on earring somewhere lol.

The shapes I started with were a long horizontal oval and a circle (the board and his body). From there, I started filling in Dedbert's recognizable features and suddenly I knew what I was drawing. At first, it was going to be a surfboard, but I think Dedbert is feeling more 90s than 80s, so skateboard it is!

Fun fact: I can't skateboard. I've never had the balance.

But yeah, doing something artlike while you're not feeling the art can absolutely help trigger your creativity, so I recommend arting when you don't want to art. It can be as simple as sketches or as silly as just mushing up some Play-Doh while you're staring into space, but creation begets creation, and there's very little better than that feeling of accomplishment when you've wrestled something from nothing.

I hope you all have creative days!

Stay safe out there.

I love you all.

Go Enjoy Something!
FC