when I am creatively stuck

Not knowing what to create, repeating yourself, feeling like nothing works, feeling empty and so on, is a normal and very common thing to experience as an artist.
Feeling stuck is an awfull feeling that we want to get rid of. And even though I think that it is a normal phase in every creative process I hate it as much as everyone else.

For me there are several things important here.
1. accepting: I make life easier when I accept that that I feel stuck, or uncreative or a failure or whatever it is. When I say to myself: ‘There it is again, I’ve know this feeling, I’ve been here and solved it before.’ it usually becomes a lot smaller.
2. stay in my studio: instead of walking away from the job, I stay in the studio. I look around, doodle, or just be there, and often the juices start to flow again.
3. change: when step 2 doesn’t work I make changes in the routines, media and techniques that I used the last few days. I use collage instead of paint, work big instead of small, start writing instead of drawing or I use my gouache paintingbox  that I still have from highschool (yes, it’s 45 years old and still works).

This morning I did the last thing and I loved the old paint all over again, recognizing the old colors and the feel of it. You see the result here.

Have a great day!

 

‘gouache plant’,

gouache,marker and ink on paper,
reworked digital

not (yet) in my shop

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