Breaking Artist's Block

If you’re an amateur or professional artist, there is nothing more frustrating than hitting a block in your creative process. Blocks can occur for many reasons, and they are not all broken the same way. Keep a list of block-breaking tips handy before you feel your creative juices drying up. Try a couple to find out which ones will work for you.

Relax

For some, creating art is a relaxing endeavor. For others, the moment a creative idea seizes them, there is no rest until the project comes to fruition. If you find yourself getting more and more tense as you search for ways to complete your work, consider taking a relaxation break. One of the best tricks to ease a frantic mind is to meditate. Take 10 minutes to sit still in a quiet area and just focus on your breathing. Some artists find it helpful to repeat a mantra over and over. You could go with the standard “ohm” or create your own such as “My mind will open.” The point is to create some white noise in your brain so that your worries and frustrations can take a backseat. Other relaxation techniques include taking cbd gummies or doing yoga.

Exercise

If the problem is that you’re too relaxed and you need some adrenaline to get your brain working again, take a 20-minute high-intensity exercise break. If your art demands that you stand or sit in the same place for long hours, jogging, jumping rope or lifting weights can help you relieve some of the built-up tension in your neck and shoulders. Getting a good sweat on will also help you release endorphins which hopefully will help you see your work from a new perspective.

Concentrate

If you have trouble freeing your mind through meditation or exercise, give it something completely different to do. Pull out that 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle from the back of your closet and get to work. Challenge your brain in a completely different way. Puzzles help the creative and logical halves of your brain work together in harmony. They also improve your visual-spatial reasoning. Both benefit you as an artist. If you don’t have the space for a big puzzle, buy a Lego set or model kit. Neither must be particularly challenging, but by concentrating on something other than your art, you are creating space for the solution to your problem to form.

Change

Sometimes changing the medium of your art can help you break the block. For example, if you are a sculptor and can’t figure out a certain aspect of your work, dance it out. Put on some inspiring music and become the work. How would it move? Where would it be solid? If, on the other hand, you want to paint something but don’t know how to get started, write a poem or speech or detailed description about your project. Translating your work from one medium to another is all about getting at the heart of the inspiration.

Copy

Having trouble breathing life into your art? Copy someone else’s! This “reproduction” is for your eyes only. It’s all about going through the process of a master to regain your focus. If you’re working on a portrait, try your hand at the Mona Lisa. Trying to get a landscape exactly right? Dabble in some Monet. By taking the emphasis off your own art and walking in the footsteps of another, you will begin to understand more the direction you need to go and what makes your art yours and no one else’s.

Rework

Finally, if your artist’s block has gone on too long for comfort, take the aspect of your work that you are having trouble with and rework it a different way every day for a month. Don’t worry if your daily work fits into your bigger work as a whole, just try 30 different mediums, colors, perspectives or techniques. Hopefully, one of them will release an “aha” moment for you.

Every artist will hit a wall at some point. When that happens, grab your grappling hook and get climbing.