What to Do if You Hit A Creative Block

We've all had those days where you just feel restless or tired, or just can't think of what to work on. Sometimes, you whittle away the day doing lots of small other jobs rather than what you need to do, especially if you work from home. Here are a few ideas to get you in the right frame of mind or at least to make the most of the time you have!

1. Clean up your studio or workspace. It's amazing how quickly things accumulate, especially if you are working on a lot of projects or you like to collect inspirational objects, reference material etc. Sometimes you don't realise how much the mess is making you not want to go into the space or how much it is slowing you down. So, clean up, organise or even go and buy better storage solutions for the things that are stacking up. When it's more ordered, you will feel more ordered in your mind. Also, just finding small projects that you haven't finished can give you that extra burst of motivation and energy you need.

2. Sharpen your pencils, clean and shape your brushes, tidy the canvasses and paper etc. I know I've said it before, but this really works to get you in the mood to work.

3. Have a change of scenery. Go to the park, cafe, garden, beach or whatever. Take a camera and/ or sketchbook if you like or just rest. It can seem like you are wasting precious time, especially if you have a deadline, but will usually pay itself back many times over in more energy and a relaxed state of mind.

4. Listen to music, a cheap and easy way to get out of your state of mind. You can try dance music to get you energised or calmer music to keep you focused. I like reggae for this. If I need to concentrate I listen to music from other countries where I don't know the language. In this way, the lyrics don't distract me.

5. Plan career goals. Set out your goals for the next few months and years. it will help you focus on the important stuff and may motivate you to head that direction.

6. Hang with other artists, visit studios or galleries or look at other people's work online. Every time you do this, you will learn something or get inspired for the next work.

7. Teach. Some people intersperse teaching with artmaking because they learn a lot and it gives them their love back, seeing things through the students' eyes.

8. Work in your sketch diary. You may create something you want to expand.

Good luck. These phases usually pass quickly, so hang in there!

Drawing is Understanding

'It is often said that Leonardo drew so well because he knew about things; it is truer to say that he knew about things because he drew so well' - Kenneth Clark

A Gentler Solution for Washing Oil Painting Brushes

To reduce the amount of turps you need (or cut it out altogether!), try using liquid woolwash with eucalyptus oil to wash your brushes. This is also a strong, yet gentle alternative for other brushes, though you won't need as much. I find it conditions my brushes, keeping them soft, and I can reshape them easy.

Drawing

Painting vs. Drawing

One question that students often ask me is why they need to learn drawing when they want to paint. The main reason for this is that black-and-white drawing will teach you most of what you need to learn about painting - form and direction, light and shade, perspective, positive and negative space, foreshortening, composition, anatomy, character, texture and detail. It will give you hand control and eye-hand coordination. It will also give you observation practise and critical evaluation skills, which further teaches you how to see and correct your own mistakes.

And it will do all of this without colour (hue). That is an advantage in that colour has its own complex rules, so that is one less thing to worry about. But in the overall scheme of a painting, colour is a small part of believability. When trying to convince your audience that your subject matter is real, getting the form right (through tone, direction, perspective etc) far outweighs the importance of getting the colour right. Colour changes rapidly and often, through movement, light, shadow or the presence of other objects. We recognise the object through all of these changes because the form stays the same. If we convey the form believably, we have our audience.

In fact, colour can distract us away from form. It can dilute the all-important tones and tonal changes that create the illusion of form. We can get so caught up in trying to make a vase a beautiful orange that we forget to make it round, shaded, highlighted, full, heavy and reflective. Learning to convey these subject qualities without colour means that you learn their importance and the skills required to achieve them. Colour can then be added to into a working system, taking its place as one quality within many.

Courage

Degas