My pencil is sharp but a dull line marks my crumpled torn-off pages. I dive deep beneath the turbulent waters of my imagination, grab a concept with my bare hands and pull the fish up to my drawing board; I know what this should look like, reminiscence of my catch is clear, but only shallow bones remain on my soaked paper.
Avoiding art block or art slumps is not an easy feat; one day or another, every artist encounters them and must work to get through the rough patch. Although I am still young, I have been drawing since many years (my oldest coherent drawings date from when I was about three or four years old), and I have had the problem show up one time too many; I have actually been fighting off an art slump very recently and am only starting to see the end of it now. So what is the magic trick to get through the art block? I do not believe there is. I will however, share with you some tricks I find helpful to get it together on my end.
I would have to say that viewing art books is one of the best ways I get through harder artwork phases; the Internet is a great source to view artwork, but it is also a very discouraging place, there are so many excellent artists out there it can sometimes feel like we are lacking talent. This is not true of course, who knows what these artists have been through to get to the level they got to today? Can you say you draw one hundred figures a day? Maybe they have. Art books are a bit less discouraging in the fact that they are meant to be mentoring tools, you know these artists are good and you can often learn from them in the way you could learn from a teacher; nobody looks at a teacher with jealousy; so this is a good way to get inspired without getting too discouraged.
Dan Luvisi recently posted a list of what inspires him to do his wonderful artwork; now this guy inspires me quite a bit himself, but to know what inspires and artist that inspires you…man, I feel like I’m going to the roots of talent itself. Check out the books he’s got on that list; I haven’t been able to view them all, but I did find a PDF version of The Skillful Huntsman: Visual Development of a Grimm Tale at Art Center College of Design, the book was incredibly inspiring and it has given me the kick-start I needed to go uphill again.
Taking a walk, taking a shower, activities that do not require your imagination or eyes as much as let’s say, reading a book or watching a movie; these “brain off” activities can help you reconnect with your thoughts. One of my teachers and mentors from the Ubisoft Campus, Edouard Kachaami, once told us that the world we live in puts us in constant stimulation, there’s always text at some place, music in our ears, a game to be played (you just lost “The Game” by reading this), a movie or television show to watch…this overstimulation causes us to lose creativity, because our brain doesn’t get a chance to think about stuff. Take some time off to do an activity that requires less brain and enjoy as it fills up on ideas. Feels good man.
While reading The Skillful Huntsman, I got to sketch some ladies from reference pictures I had kept from Yimmy’s Yayo (check out this blog, seriously, it’s nothing more than visual crack, he says so himself), I also followed the artists’ advice from the book and started sketching some thumbnails to capture the design of the Khamaeli lizardmen I’m working on right now.
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