3 Ways to Break Through Creative Block and Sculpting the New Starter Pokemon
Hello Hello, I’m Patrick and I’m a sculptor.
If you’ve been around my youtube channel for a while you know I like sculpting pokemon. In fact, I was trying to sculpt all the original 151 pokemon. I am still working on it on my twitch stream and today I wanted to share with you a special project I made based on the new starters from the upcoming Pokemon Scarlet and violet. While I do that work I wanted to talk with you about breaking your creative block.
The most essential thing to becoming a creative is doing the work.
The more you do, the more you practice, the more you push yourself, the more likely you are to progress in your craft. Whatever happens, you gotta keep moving forward. But, all of us have creative slumps. Seasons that make it hard to create. And this is a natural part of being creative: You output so much that the well runs dry.
Now in suggesting that you gotta keep pushing yourself I’m not trying to say run yourself into the ground but what I am trying to say is that you gotta keep the pace. When blocks happen we all need to find ways to break through them. So here are 3 ways to break through a creative block.
Find a list and work through it.
Sometimes all you gotta do is start making. And when you don’t know what to make the best solution is to find yourself a list. A list of things to make. They don’t have to be amazing or wildly inspiring they just have to help you choose to make something.
It could be as simple such as a list of fruit. It could be animals. It could be monsters. It really doesn’t matter.
This is why projects like inktober and mermay are so popular with artists. It gives them a list of things to create without having to make the difficult choice of what to create.
And this brings me back to pokemon. For me, Pokemon was my list. When I’d reach the end of a busy week and I had ambitious goals to make something but had no idea what to make I’d pull out my list of 151 and look through and find a pokemon and make it. Sometimes these were amazing projects. Other times I felt like what I made was crap. But the list got me making. And kept me making when I didn’t feel inspired.
And just making it helps work through the creative block.
2. Remake something you want to improve.
We all have that one project. The one that we don’t talk about much. The one we keep at the back of the shelf and hope no one finds.
I actually talk about mine too much: it’s Elsa.
But I know the truth is there are plenty of projects I’ve made that could benefit from my learned experience. Things I made when I started that if I made now would look different.
When inspiration is lacking, I recommend going back and trying again. The best example of this for me is my work with Baby Yoda. I love baby Yoda. And one of my earliest projects was a sculpture of him. It was fine…. But not excellent. Don’t ask me about how long his neck is…
But a year or so later I needed a project and couldn’t figure out what I wanted to make and decided to give it another go. And not only did it help me break through my creative block it helped remind me of the progress I was making as a sculptor.
So the next time you find yourself wondering what to make ask yourself: is there something I want to remake?
3. Seek out new inspiration outside of your art.
As much as I want to believe it, I am not a neverending well of creative energy. I can’t just make stuff up forever and hope for the best. And when the well runs dry it's ok to go out and fill it somewhere else.
One of the first places I go is to youtube or twitch to watch an artist do their work. There is something incredibly inspiring about watching someone else tackle the creative work. You learn, you grow, and you get reminded that art is a process and that you are not alone in fighting that process.
Other great ideas include:
Taking a walk
Watching tv
Talking with a friend
My personal favourite is taking a nap.
Whatever it is recharge those batteries by filling yourself up. And you’ll be surprised to find the well of creativity slowly filling.
