mochikat

I made 2 versions cuz I couldn't decide which one was better, so here's the other one

(They're not in any particular order, but 3 and 4 are art related if you're more interested in those!)

Take a break. A lot people advice this, but if you're an overthinker or get too anxious or frustrated, the best thing to do is to take a break and go back later. When you're experiencing an art block, you might tend to think too hard on what to do or how to do it better, since art block usually comes with this need of everything to be perfect and not having inspiration. If you step away from your pieces or even from drawing in general, you might notice how that stress and pressure goes away. You can also try other things beside drawing in the meantime! (more of this on the next point). In my experience, the duration of the break depends on a lot of things, mainly involving if you have school/university/a job, a strict routine or your mental state. These breaks can be from short to super long, but I'd recommend that, if you're doing this, take at least 2-3 days minimum for your brain to rest, and don't feel guilty if you take too long, if you need years, that's what your brain needs until it's ready again. Personally, during the roughest moment of my life, I took a break of like half a year and it helped me a lot. As an extra advice for the breaks, if you're taking a long break (say more than a month), be sure to go back and try doing something once in a while, nothing complex, that way you can be constantly checking how your relationship with your art feels.

Try new things. You can do this with or without taking a break from drawing. Doing new things might help you unlock a new point to take inspiration from or help you relax. What I recommend the most is doing something that requires learning, even if it's minimal, like learning a new language, photography, playing an instrument, cooking, knitting, embroidery, and a long etc. I recommend these kind of activities because if you don't know how to do something, messing up will be seen as normal by your brain and that mindset can later help you with your drawings. There's new things for everyone, but if you're too afraid to get out of your comfort zone, try with any other kind of manual activity. This new thing doesn't even have to become a hobby or something to keep improving on forever, it's just for you to open your mind (although if you liked it and want to keep doing it, that's a double win). Personally, I started doing crochet a long while ago, even before that half a year break I mentioned. It started small and I dropped it after a while cuz I got bored (I was 15 lmao), but during one of my art blocks I picked it up again and fell in love with it. Crochet taught me to be patient and that the good results take a loooong time, I learnt different techniques and I started seeing some stuff with different eyes, thinking "can I turn this into crochet?" or "what can I draw that I can crochet?", and that gave me the spark I needed to go back to draw. Now I still do and love crochet, but I've been dedicating more time to my art, but I know my yarn and hooks will be there when I need them <3

Use different techniques. Say you draw only traditionally and use alcohol markers (as an example). Don't do that anymore for a while and try a different medium, technique or art style. You could try acrylics, oil paint, colored pencils, crayons and whatever else you can think of. If what you did before with those alcohol markers was a heavily inspired anime style, maybe try going more realistic or more cartoonish and mix it with another medium. You can now try to draw semi-realism with acrylics (for example). If you draw digitally this process is 10 times easier, you can just find new pencils and brushes you like and go wild. There's a lot of websites with pencils for clipstudio, procreate, photoshop, etc, but you can always experiment with the ones your app offers. This will help you open your eyes to new ways to do art. You can like it, you can hate it, you can find it meh, but at the end of the day you saw another perspective of art that can make you say "yeah no, I liked what I was doing before" or "omg this is so fun, maybe I should stick to it". Personally, every single time I've experimented with new things it has helped me one way or another. I always say that experimenting is ALWAYS positive, even if you don't like it, because that already gave you the information that you don't like it and that's something that we can cross from the list. I've tried a lot of everything during all my life, for mediums I've tried watercolors, acrylic paintings, oil paintings, charcoal, graphite pencils, colored pencils, acrylic markers, alcohol markers, gouache, obviously digital art, and probably more but that's what I remember (I'm almost 23 for reference). ALL OF THOSE made me realize what I liked and what I don't because I experimented and discovered. Even if today I do 99% of digital art, I still really enjoy gouache and acrylic markers! So out of every single thing I tried, I only stuck with three, but the experience of using other tools was very helpful and rich for my artistic vision.

Study. Yeah, there's no way for this to not sound boring at first, but with this I don't mean reading (I mean, you can, but it's not necessary). There's a lot of ways and things you can study depending on what you want. You can focus on improving basic things like anatomy or color theory OR you can experiment, like on the previous point, but being more technical instead of just doing it. You can make exercises where you draw poses to study proportions and action lines, you can grab an artist you like and study different things from their art, like how they use colors or how they draw facial expressions, you can practice drawing hands in different positions and styles, and a big long etc. With experimenting, I can recommend you look at other artists you like how they do something specific, like the eyes for example. So you grab that artist and study JUST the shape of the eyes, leaving everything else like face anatomy or colors behind. Then, you can grab an artist that you like how they draw clothes and repeat the same exercise. All of this will help you learn new things and improve your art level, while also leaving behind your current art style that you're frustrated with. These exercises also don't require for you to think an idea and feel bad when you can't do it, it's just observation and repetition. Personally, this is one of the things that help me the most when I have art block. I don't do much poses or anatomy studies because I took body figure classes in school for like 5 years since I was 13 so that's pretty engraved in my mind (but even with that I still struggle, so don't let that demotivate you). What I've been doing to study is the second part where I mention to just mix and match new things from different artists. EVERY art style is inspired by others and there's nothing wrong from taking things from different artists (as long as you aren't tracing) to get yourself inspired just as that artist did one day! I think this is the best way to forget the insecurities of your art style during art blocks and just go wild while studying art you really enjoy. Since this is my favorite way to get out of art block while also improving, I'll leave some of my examples through the years :]

After that I tried going back to the old style and then I got my biggest art block ever (2022-2023), so what did I do? (after my endless break) KEEP EXPERIMENTING!!

Here a compilation of different things I tried that aren't listed up :]

I got chills doing this ngl-