How to deal with creative block
Taking a walk never worked for me, nor did exercising or all the other activities creative people often recommend. The only one thing that seems to get my creative juices flowing is drawing, or better yet, doodling,
This may sound obvious but it is harder than what it looks like. How — or what — are you going to draw if you are feeling uninspired or if you don’t have a brief? It gets even harder if you attended an art school in which you were constantly told to think about the concept of each piece before executing it — forget the old days when you were a kid and just drew for drawing’s sake.
Every time I find myself in this position in which no idea seems good enough I make a conscious effort to shake off my professors’ advice and I start doodling. I draw faces in sticky notes and houses on napkins, nothing too precious. Sometimes (most of the times) only garbage will come out of these experiments, but other times ideas start to slowly appear and just like Picasso said: “Inspiration exists but is has to find you working” and working is the right word to use in this case. If you chose this as your profession, you got to do the work, even when you don’t feel like it.
Although concepts do help make a piece stronger, especially when you are in a museum and read their explanation on the label, images made out of thin air can also encapsulate unconscious ideas you were struggling to get out. And in my experience, these personal “empty” projects can lead to clients and commissions, since your audience can project their emotions onto your piece. So, if you are feeling blocked my advice is to just draw.
