I dunno if it's because New Year's just happened or what, but I'm seeing fat stacks of journal notifications about the same thing: I AM FEELING DOUR ABOUT MY ART / BURNING OUT / UNINSPIRED.

Okay, so that's cool and all; it happens to all of us who make things. But, do not allow despair one inch into your creative process.

...Instead, here are some ideas:


1. GO MAKE ART. (Keep your hands and mind busy, calm down)

This is the problem, right? That's okay. So it's a problem - make art anyway, have it suck, and don't worry about it. Burned out? Make art about being burned out. Then when you're done, go do something else. You don't have to post it - in fact, you probably shouldn't. Do you know how many images you'll make in the course of a lifetime, particularly if you want to do this stuff seriously? Not all of them will be good, or inspired. However, what is true about making art is that it's a visual language and anybody who's had their share of high school french will know that language leaves you if you don't continue to speak it.

So you aren't making your best work. Who cares. Continue making, and treat it as a craft, not as an inspired fine art. People who make furniture and decorate cakes have to get up and make furniture and decorate cakes - even if they don't feel like doing it. They can't just wait for inspiration to strike.

When you aren't inspired, you fall back on your training, experience, learned skills and you continue to make - because you have to. And eventually you'll get through the blah times and the bad art; you'll get back on track. Ultimately, burnout passes as surely as it comes.

And actually, the more you continue to do, the more practice you get in, the easier it becomes to continue in this way without inspiration. You think those people who work at carnivals doing caricatures...

1) on the spot
2) every 10 minutes, all day
3) have them look good
4) and be recognizable

...are waiting for inspiration? or feel passionately about each one? Nope! They have a system, they apply it, they get paid, and they move on to another customer.

So if you're stumped, one answer is to train yourself. Pick up any book on art technique and read it, do some exercises, get some practical tools to pull you through. Don't rely on talent and inspiration.

[e.g. Wally Wood's 22 Panels That Always Work, made by Wood for new hires to help them finish comics by deadline. Wally Wood was a practical workhorse comics guy who demystified his art job, treating it like a craft occupation; he was amazing.]

Which brings me to solution #2...


2. GO LOOK AT ART. (Give your hands a break, keep your mind busy, calm down)

Okay so you aren't inspired and you don't want to force it. Fine. Keep your mind on the subject, though. Take the opportunity to stuff your head with images you weren't able to pay attention to when you were busy making. Go look at good work in a completely different medium. Find a local art gallery and go to an opening. It doesn't even matter what it is. Could be sculpture, photography, floral arrangement, ballet, architecture, puppetry, whatever.

And actually get up and go. Don't view it online or through a screen. Get as close to the active surface as you can, and make yourself study it. Try to see how it was made, how it works, how it doesn't work. Form an opinion about it and explain it. Be a critic. Think about how you would do it similarly, or what you would do differently.

Basically continue the creative conversation in your head, if not with your own hands. Do this enough and you'll find something that somebody else is doing inspiring: either the subject, or technique, or some cool composition. Take notes if you have to. Consider it mental training for when you're again back into your own groove. The point of giving yourself a break is to recharge, yes? So recharge and fill your mental stores back up with material.

You'll see art that you could do better: this is validating - go and do it better. Or you'll see art beyond your abilities: this is useful education - stare at it until it make sense, think about it, go home, come back and keep looking until you get it. Or you'll see something out of left field and realize you were meant to do ornamental gardening or want to try knitting or music or whatever - this gives you more creative options and a way to short cut burnout in one medium by working through another.


3. GO TO THE GYM. (Give your mind a break, keep your hands busy, calm down)

Not literally, but what I mean is: have a simple, standard observational exercise you can always do when nothing else seems to be working or inspiring. Say it's drawing a crumpled piece of paper, or a still life of certain types of objects, or a self-portrait. Draw your shoe, or breakfast. Pick one exercise that isn't sexy, but doesn't require an ounce of imagination or conceptualizing - give your creativity a break and just draw what you see.

Nobody is going to pat you on the back for this, nobody is going to care that you drew your sock. But if you always draw your sock on a daily basis, then when you do burn out, you'll still have a productive system going; you'll still be training your hand/eye coordination; you'll still be making and getting better at it. You don't even have to keep these images: make them and burn them. These aren't masterpieces - it's exercise, just like going to the gym. It's not meant to be entertaining or fun or celebratory or meaningful, it's what you do to keep in shape.

In the gym, you'll see people there exercising to win contests, you'll see folks exercising to recover from an injury, you'll see folks exercising because it's work related to be able to move things, you'll see folks exercising so they can keep up with their active toddler or because they want to fit into some piece of clothing or whatever. All ages, all ranges of ability, all in there pushing their bodies in standard unglamorous ways.

When they leave the gym, what they do with that strength can be vastly different and unique, but all of them are there exercising in the same way. That's how you should think of this: as a kind of exercise. Dancers are creative people who can do amazing expressive award-winning things with their bodies - but they need exercise the same way Grandma does after her hip-replacement surgery just so she can walk to the bathroom. See?

You are not so special that you can't benefit from drawing an apple every day. Your sensitive masterpiece has to wait on inspiration, fine - but in the meantime, you will be better equipped to make that masterpiece if you keep up your exercise routine, especially when you feel least inclined to do so.


4. DO NOTHING. (Give everything a break, calm down)

This is not the same as "Actively despair because you are stumped, burned out, and uninspired". If you aren't feeling like making art, then listen: don't make art. You don't have to feel bad about it. You don't have to beat yourself up about it. You don't have to make excuses. Or explain. Just wait it out, and if it's meant to come back to you, then it will - you'll have that magical flash of inspiration and get on with it.

This also means don't go out of your way to undermine yourself, don't fall into a negative spiral. Don't pressure yourself about it at all. Allowing negative feelings into the situation just makes needless anxiety - because if you really, well and truly, are unable to produce, then how can you reasonably be held accountable? "Ought" implies "can".

Besides, you are not what you produce, your actual identity and actual self-worth are not somehow magically woven into the pattern of lines on paper or arrangement of pixels on a screen. There are plennnnty of people in this world who live full, happy lives and don't make art - and for the time being you are one of them. So stop writhing around about it. Go do something else; art will be here when you get back, annnd art will be here if you don't.


5. Also, TRAVEL.