Anyone who has ever considered themselves a creative has also experienced creative burnout. This means your creativity is sort of in a rut — either you aren’t coming up with new ideas, you aren’t enjoying being creative, or both issues are existing simultaneously.
One way you can help to release this creative block is to try a different, unconventional medium that you’re not necessarily used to. Why not give these four a try?
Crayons
For those of you who like to draw, paint or utilize visual creative mediums, sometimes you get a little too in tune with your medium of choice. When artists begin to feel stifled, sometimes they switch to a different type of medium in order to unclog their proverbial creative toilet.
But sometimes it doesn’t work to switch to a similar medium, like moving from pencils to pastels. If you really want to see how good an artist you are, move from something high quality like oil paints to something frustratingly juvenile like crayons. These harder-to-use tools can force you to go back to basics and channel your creativity in a different way.
Short-Form Content
It’s not that hard to write a long form blog article. There’s lots of room to ramble, and your thoughts can be explained in flowery language, unending speech and with multiple examples. Books and non-limited forms of creative writing are also easier to tackle in the long run because of the creative freedom.
If you’re a writer who feels burnt out, try to move in the opposite direction. Pick a topic or prompt and try to explain or create content based on said topic or prompt in only a few words. Whether it’s 200 words or even 100 words, try to keep things exact. This exercises your brevity and ability to tell a story in a short amount of time.
Sculpture
It’s possible to paint with your hands and use your fingers to smudge a charcoal drawing to create shadow, but that doesn’t exactly make these mediums very hands on. Sometimes the best way to remove a creative block is via good ol’ fashioned tactile stimulation.
You may not have the means to spin amazing clay bowls in your backyard or have access to a kiln for keeping your sculptures, but even playing around with a block of clay on your kitchen table can do wonders for your creative spirit. Also look into local pottery classes so you can get the full sculpture experience.
Scrapbooking
Finally, creativity requires inspiration. You need to know what inspires you in order to make masterful, creative art. We often lose sight of what exactly it is that drives us, so why not combine an exercise in humility with a creativity building activity?
Scrapbooking isn’t just for retired women or soccer moms. Anyone who wants to recreate an experience or memory in a visual medium can find joy in scrapbooking, and it’s often an interesting perspective to take on as an artist. It’s a different way of looking at capturing a moment, and you don’t have to go all out to benefit from the activity itself.
