40 Days of Art: Stuck in a Rut?
Apr. 16th, 2011 09:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tealin1. This one's easy and probably best for minor blockages: Try drawing with your non-dominant hand. I find this works a treat when I'm struggling with a caricature and I feel like I keep drawing the same (wrong) thing over and over, when I can feel how it ought to be in my mind.
2. Ban yourself from drawing your own stuff for a few days and throw yourself into studying other people's artwork – copying while thinking about what you're drawing can teach you a lot, and learning how other people approach design problems and express themselves can give you tools you might not have had before. It also sort of resets your muscle memory, as you are drawing unfamiliar shapes and speaking someone else's visual language.
3. A change is as good as a rest – sometimes you come up dry because you've emptied the well and you need to let the groundwater seep in again. Go for a walk out in nature and take your sketchbook; draw anything and everything that catches your eye, be it a flower, a shrub, the ridgeline of distant mountains, whatever, but NOT whatever it is you normally draw. Try to create a nice landscape study, maybe. Play with composition. Sometimes inspiration can sneak in without you even knowing it. (Of course if you normally draw nature stuff, this is obviously bad advice.)
4. Try changing tools. A tool that does not allow you to make a 'pretty' drawing, or one that is too imprecise to put your line exactly where you want it, will force you to concentrate on other things and will free you up a lot (no matter how frustrating it might be to start with). Try sharpie, chalk, fountain pen, fingerpaint, crayon, a stick in the sand, ketchup on a plate, whatever. Then, when you finally go back to your regular tool that does what you tell it to do, WOW! So easy!
2. Ban yourself from drawing your own stuff for a few days and throw yourself into studying other people's artwork – copying while thinking about what you're drawing can teach you a lot, and learning how other people approach design problems and express themselves can give you tools you might not have had before. It also sort of resets your muscle memory, as you are drawing unfamiliar shapes and speaking someone else's visual language.
3. A change is as good as a rest – sometimes you come up dry because you've emptied the well and you need to let the groundwater seep in again. Go for a walk out in nature and take your sketchbook; draw anything and everything that catches your eye, be it a flower, a shrub, the ridgeline of distant mountains, whatever, but NOT whatever it is you normally draw. Try to create a nice landscape study, maybe. Play with composition. Sometimes inspiration can sneak in without you even knowing it. (Of course if you normally draw nature stuff, this is obviously bad advice.)
4. Try changing tools. A tool that does not allow you to make a 'pretty' drawing, or one that is too imprecise to put your line exactly where you want it, will force you to concentrate on other things and will free you up a lot (no matter how frustrating it might be to start with). Try sharpie, chalk, fountain pen, fingerpaint, crayon, a stick in the sand, ketchup on a plate, whatever. Then, when you finally go back to your regular tool that does what you tell it to do, WOW! So easy!
