My Creative Block Story
Every artist has heard of and more than likely experienced creative block: when you have minimal inspiration to create art and immerse yourself into a piece. I have just recently found myself coming out of a creative rut (and boy am I thankful that I have), but this sort of thing comes and goes. Right now, I’ve got an abundance of energy and inspiration to sketch, illustrate, paint, and even write: but this was definitely not the case a couple of months ago.
When I was experiencing this creative block, it had been months since I had completely immersed myself in artistic practice. There was a time when I’d draw every day and my skills were improving: this was back in the days of primary school! Once I reached high school, I became less focused on my artworks and decided I should work towards a “real” career. I buckled down, did my study and managed to get a great OP to go into university with. Even during uni, I was studying a course that would give me more “realistic” career opportunities (real is in quotations because growing up I was told that being an artist wasn’t a realistic or sustainable career choice). Now I realise where I should have focused more of my attention: artistic improvement and doing what I loved. I always knew that I would have a career doing something creative and artistic, but for now it’s not enough of a creative outlet.
During that time, I had been feeling upset for what I deemed was no good reason at all. Now I know it’s because was not as creative as I needed to be. Now, it seemed simple at the time: draw more, paint more, even start that writing project I’ve always wanted to. However, this wasn’t the case. Everytime I would open a sketch book, the blank page would stare back at me and I’d feel completely daunted about the artwork I would create. Since I hadn’t practiced drawing extensively in many, many years my drawings and skills just aren’t at a standard that I felt like they should be. This made me feel worse about it so I would put the sketchbook down and think “why bother?” I would come up with every excuse under the sun to prevent myself from being creative. I’d say “My studio is messy, I have to clean it first.” or “It’s too late in the day to start anything and I need to get a good night’s rest” (then proceed to stay up hours later procrastinating). Making ridiculous excuses starting to sound familiar?
I began to break free of this block at the beginning of 2019 when I’d thought to myself that I’d just had enough of not improving. I had a bad year in 2018 in terms of my self-confidence and self-worth, which lead to the worst creative block I’d ever had. I’d surround myself in art at home and on social media, feel an overwhelming sense of happiness in any art shop and splurge on art supplies, but I was never actually creating anything myself. Why? Because of fear of the outcome. Fear of my work being crap, fear of judgement and criticism. But the only person harshly judging my work was myself. This for myself has improved a lot, but could definitely be better. Art and practising art is about having fun with the journey and the story, but I always focused on my next awesome piece which often never met my expectations.
You’re probably asking how I got myself out of this creative block. For some people it’s just as easy as forcing yourself to be creative, others just suddenly feel inspired and can get back into the rhythm of things. I feel like changing my mindset and focus less on creating a masterpiece and more on the creative journey and having fun with it, was (and sometimes still is) a very hard thing to do. As I said, I began to feel unblocked in January and I honestly believe it was just a matter of changing my thoughts and my perspective around art and self improvement. Often I would set goals, fail to reach them and feel worse (something I would say isn’t uncommon for many people), but after changing my perspective, I feel as if I am finding my goals that little bit more achievable.
By changing my thoughts and perspective, I am focusing less on the outcome and more on having fun with my art. This helped unblock my creativity as I want to improve, I can relax and enjoy it, and I now understand that it’s about progress: not perfection. Also, it’s okay to procrastinate a little! You can’t be working and creating all the time: that would be exhausting. Allowing yourself to express yourself instead of creating things for the sake of an extrinsic goal, you are taking yourself on a journey and discovery of not only your art, but yourself also.
