#i really want to draw but I have artblock for MONTHS I CANT IMAGINE SHIT

[babaykataco]

God I wish blonde British people were real I would hate them so much

[spearxwind]

Hey Windy, I've been struggling lately with artblock/fatigue, and I was wondering; how do you go from idea to art, even with like little scribbles? Do you have like a mental list of ideas for drawings already, or do you just sit down to draw and have it come to you then? Do you ever have to force yourself to draw something? What would be your advice to someone who is trying to draw more frequently, but is struggling with ideas/things to draw?

well, that’s funny because I have ALSO been going through some bad artblock/fatigue lately

I rarely RARELY have an idea come to me when im facing the canvas, I cant just sit down and wait for an idea to slap me in the face. usually when i try to do that i just end up either scrolling through social media or just looking at a blank canvas for hours and hours without doing anything

most of my ideas I get either through friends or through music! I talk a lot about ocs with my friends, and we think about interactions with each other or send each other memes that remind us of our characters, and sometimes we do that (even though we DO talk about cool, more aesthetic ideas) but shitposts are a effort-cheap and easy way to draw stuff or break out of art block 

With music I just let it play and let my mind go nuts with oc AMV scenarios. Like not to be cringe on main or whatever but imagining your ocs doing crazy shit to edgy music?? absolutely fucking rules and I think everyone should do it.  I really like making different playlists for my characters and playing them depending on who i want to think about, since i end up associating the songs to each character whenever i hear them my brain goes hey!! think about this bitch now!!!  I’m not sure if you yourself have characters, but if you DONT then making playlists for general vibes works just as well. want to draw something dark and gloomy? make a dark ambience playlist. want to draw smth dynamic and actiony? bam, playlist with songs with a high bpm.  this doesnt ALWAYS work, but it helps me enormously!  I only have singular oc playlists for like 6 of them (my main ones) even though i have many characters, because its actually very hard for me to associate songs to a character, the rest of my oc lists are general story/universe vibe lists. My bf though has a playlist for each of their characters its incredible idk how they do it

sometimes I will have ideas while listening to music but i cant act on them until weeks later, for whatever reason, so a lot of times i will make a WIP file (i have a folder specifically for WIPS) and pick it up whenever in the future i feel like it (or maybe never)  or if i cant get to my laptop ill make a note of the idea wherever I can so I can remember about it (for example that pic of alex shredding a guitar i did for tapas? that one actually sat as a single line of text on my sketchbook for like 2+ months)

speaking of, having a sketchbook is also great! just a small little notebook where I draw... random crap. very low effort nonsense, with pencils and pens and dollar store markers. its a cheap sketchbook too, it doesnt have to be anything fancy either, but it helps for drawing out ideas/thumbnails (that you may or may not polish later), just drawing things to get them out of your system (with the least effort required) and keeping notes for overall stuff (i have... so much extinction crap written down on these its so disorganized oh god)

I hope this helps! at the end of the day there’s not a guaranteed-to-work solution, but you could try other things in the meantime  a lot of people also just tell you to plow through an art block by forcing out art which is horrible advice. unless art is your work you shouldnt HAVE to force it. youre doing it for fun! it’s ok to put it down and focus on other things. it might take a couple days, or over a week, but sometime you’ll think ‘oh shit i want to draw’ again and youll get back to it :3