Four?
- When I first started painting, someone told me: "paint one hundred paintings and maybe then you'll know a little bit about painting". I gave each one a title and wrote them down on a numbered list. ONE AT A TIME! And that's what you need to do. If you wait for passion or inspiration, you'll just be wasting time. So you've painted four paintings. Give them titles, and write them down on lines one through four. Then go paint number five. You'd better get started, you've got quite a ways to go.
- —coopkja
To overcome a block
- If I waited for an inspiration to paint, I'd never do it. Sometimes, I have to pull myself away from the plethora of life's activities and distractions, and make myself get started. Soon after starting, I "get into it," and the more I get into the painting, the more "inspired" I become. It's like so many other things, like exercise, walking, etc. Much resistance to getting started, and much satisfaction afterwards. Not easy or comfortable to do, but very worthwhile. Just one way to deal with your "block", which I call "resistance." And p.s. It's nice to receive praise, but in my opinion, best to forget about it shortly after, keep your painting activities private, and just do your thing. It's the "doing" that's important and primary. What follows is not. Cheers, and Good Luck.
- —Guest Fran Zak
How do you beat a block?
- Change mediums. Look for coupons good at local art/craft stores and use them to buy a set of watercolor paints or acrylics and a pad of 140# watercolor paper. Just play and don't try so hard. Enjoy the freedom of doing it "your way". If you aren't happy with the results cut it up into shapes and when you have a bag of colorful scraps, donate them to an elementary school for art collages. Be a kid again, paint for the fun of it!
- —Guest Mary Ellen
How to Beat a Block
- I think "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameraon is a great book about blocks. I read it before I get blocked and just like reading things that say you will fail you will find critics etc, it helps to know these feelings are going to happen. I also like to just give some art away, maybe a donation to a good cause, but some times someone falls in love with your work and you know they can't afford it. I just let them have it and it makes me feel good and they have something they never dreamed they would have. And just recently something very strange happened to me. I fell in love with drawing. A step I couldn't wait to master and get on with the painting any many years ago, now I've gone back and really enjoy drawing, it's just for me, I feel the success or failure and it's not for sale or public viewing unless I decide it is. It doesn't take expensive materials or a lot of energy and I'm really enjoying the outcome.
- —Guest Cyndy Nesbit
Pick Up the Brush
- I do smaller projects when I am blocked. Sometimes it's the time to copy that Master's painting you intended to do but keep putting off. I read the book "Art and Fear" and dismissed my irrational thinking. Sometimes in the middle of a painting, you know intuitively that something isn't right and haven't yet put your finger on what it is. A mentor can be helpful because sometimes they can make a suggestion on something you are working on that may make all the difference, or at least encourage you with a sort of accountability. My own procrastination comes from seeking that "next great painting." The solution to solving that kinda of block is,"Don't fret, it will come." I read that Georgia O'Keefe and other artists had months in between paintings.
- —upsydaisie
Research on-line
- I find that if I cannot paint I can help myself by going on-line and researching a topic. Look for other artists who paint the particular topic, the history of it, the different ideas you could explore. I studied Slavery and the link with Arabs and came up with 6 very good paintings, and a wad of information on the subject which I never knew before. I could not wait to pick up a brush! Another way is to go outside and study what Mother Nature has done when she created flowers, leaves, bark, shells, stones. You will find endless subject matter there to give you inspiration. Look for Fibbonaci spirals in plants and flowers, they are all around you.
- —Guest Francis
Not "good" or "bad"
- I had been a professional artist for 20 years and had blocks of at most a month when I hit a huge block that went on for almost a year. It wasn't that I didn't paint for the year, I did but I spent as much time in the studio trying to decide what to paint as I did painting. At one point I was so discouraged that I was considering a new profession. With my previous blocks I had done all of the suggestions that I see above, looking at art in magazines, looking at my favorite artists, looking at earlier art of my own. A year's block was making me feel that it was insurmountable. What finally broke it was thinking about what made me want to do art in the first place. Whatever that was for you, is the key. For me it was something I did to nurture myself. I went back to my roots, the reasons that I first picked up paint and started putting it down. I realized I was judging it all of the time. I decided instead to think of it in two ways; it wasn't good or bad, it was finished or not finished
- —Guest bobbie jansen
Overcoming painting block
- At 50 I divorced, moved 350 miles from where I'd lived all my life. It was a year before I got back to the easel. I was not rusty as I thought...but going up to another level of proficiency. I kept working at the one painting until I broke free from the emotional baggage I'd brought with me. I'd say FOCUS on the project at hand. Ease into the right side of the brain. That is the key. Don't expect too much too soon. It will come if you create new goals for yourself. Make them higher than usual but not unachieveable. Relax, too. It happens to everyone at sometime or another. Tell yourself that this is only temporary. It is. Relax, really. Just produce. It will come.
- —paintpiddlerdlux
Painter's block
- When I am blocked for new ideas I try several strategies. One activity is to leave my studio and take a walk around the neighborhood. If it is close to lunch time, I eat lunch and then return to my studio. A third activity that works for me is to sit and meditate for 20 minutes; it helps to clear my head. A fourth activity which I find helpful is to look at art in books or on the INTERNET for inspiration. Finally I say to myself, "this too will pass" and it does.
- —Guest Elaine
Revisit old works of art
- I always get my creative juices going by going through archives of my old paintings or drawings. Some are finished, some unfinished because there was something about them I was dissatisfied with because I didn't have the knowledge to solve the problem at the time. Usually a second look, days or months later, reveals they weren't as bad as I thought and I will have discovered some new technique by then that might help correct the problem. Also, it helps to browse through my shelves of art instruction books and get inspiration from other artists. Support system at my fingertips.
- —Guest Sandy
Beat a block by understanding yourself
- Blocks come from advances in taste but follow advances in skill. Appreciate your better aesthetic sense, then practice.
- —jrjarvis
3 methods
- 1. the relaxed method: just stop worrying; art isn't something you have to do, it is something you want to do so give it a rest till the desire returns, it will,if it doesn't perhaps its time to do something else. 2 the disciplined method; just do it, find something, anything, to draw or paint and you will likely find the desire follows the action 3 the amateur psycoanalyst approach: you may want to think a bit about why you have lost the desire to paint; is it other people's reactions; a sense of dissapointment in your work, unrealistic expectations? always remembering that although the unexamined life is reputed to be not worth living too much introspection can be self defeating and mildly irritating to bystanders
- —squatdwarf
Visit an Art Galley
- We have a small but quite a good public art gallery and they change their exhibits frequently. They also offer lectures and guest speakers and that can often spark an interest in trying something new. We also have several artist's galleries that display work by local artists and it's inspiring to see what work others do, even if you don't particularly like their style. It's good to know what you don't like as much as to know what styles you do like. Both can be inspiring or set off questions in your mind and that can start the process of creatvity again.
- —Guest Bonny
Get outside
- I go for a walk -- preferably somewhere you haven't walked recently. Never fails me.
- —Guest toddnorg
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