Artist’s block and boredom are a common occurrence in creativity. With all of the distractions and noise, our minds have evolved to crave instant gratification and success and when our hands and paintbrush don’t match up with those results, we get FRUSTRATED. The cycle of frustration, discouragement, boredom and blocks are very closely related. Mindless scrolling definitely won’t help you out of that hole. Let's overcome that pesky artist's block.

Related: Finding Artistic Inspiration

6 Steps to Overcome Artist’s Block

Set the scene

This may sound obvious or simple, but clean your desk, put on some good music and set the scene. If my desk feels cluttered or there’s any stress in the environment whatsoever, I find it hard to be truly inspired to paint and be creative. Give yourself the upper hand by setting the scene!

Exercise

YUP. Going for a walk or doing a 20 minute at home workout can make all the difference in my energy and the way my mind works while I’m trying to be creative. Think about the masters back in the day. Many of them were painting outside, they walked a whole lot more and they didn’t have smartphones to check every four seconds.

Journal

Journaling my thoughts and inspirations before my painting time always helps to calm my mind. It opens it up to ideas I wouldn’t normally have if I just jumped right into painting. Bust out your favorite journal and just let the words flow.

Get outside

Similar to step number exercise, but make sure you’re getting some good sun and fresh air. Your body needs it, your mind needs it. It will impact your creative process. I promise. You use your body and your mind while you’re painting, right?!

Ditch perfectionism

There are a lot of perfectionists out there. But something that I’ve found interesting about perfectionism is that it mostly stems from a fear of failure or Imposter Syndrome. Think about it. Not starting a painting because you need to have everything just right, or scrapping something before it’s finished and getting down on yourself…every artist has crumpled up pieces in their trash. Embrace it and keep going! Nothing is going to be perfect.

Related: Overcoming Imposter Syndrome

Try The Artist’s Way* Book

I’ve mentioned this book on here before, but it’s the perfect tactile book for taking you through a 12 week journey on getting unstuck from artist’s blocks. It’s truly awesome! I worked through it a couple of years ago and still come back to it to this day to remind myself of practices and mindsets that help with getting out of creative ruts.

*This is my affiliate link which means that I earn a small commission if you purchase using this link which allows me to keep pumpin out all my free content on the blog and YouTube channel. Thanks for your support!