What helps you push through art or writers block?
Cut Down Time Spent on One Thing
My friends are amazed at how fast I can get something done. Each piece represents a pocket of time and getting something done quickly gives me that hit of dopamine and pushes me to keep going. Make sure you know what your limits are. When I began, my art was really simple and took me a long time to do despite it's simplicity. I built on top of that experience so I can get more done in the same amount of time. I won't need additional blocks unless I am invested in refinement [mainly for big projects, zines, special events].
Every piece you finish is a stepping stone. The piece you're working on now is not your masterpiece. It may be really good and you see amazing potential in it and you love the concept so much it'll drive you crazy, but hyperfocusing on it like that will put it on a mental pedestal. Now every word choice matters. Now every brush stroke counts. The colours, the paragraph ordering, even the title needs to be absolute perfection. You're zoomed in and now you've lost motivation because its taking you forever and your brain keeps making ideas that you feel like you can't do because you havent finished this. I have trouble with this myself. I keep going back to improve on it, edit it and so on, and that Costs Time; Time I could be using to make other things; other things that may actually be the step that let's me make a masterpiece someday. Love your art. Don't be trapped by it.
Ask yourself why you're doing something. Sometimes I talk to people and they express sadness and anxiety and dislike about their own work, prioritizing the reactions of strangers and their hypothetical audience over the story they're trying to tell. I do love making things for people, but when you create for someone other than yourself, that becomes an obligation and obligations can hurt creativity. Consider yourself your primary audience and you are trying to win yourself over. This is true of art as well. Why are you making it if it doesn't bring you joy? Sometimes this is an indicator that you might need to move on from a concept. Sometimes you need to just get your foot off your own neck. I specialize and try not to make too many things that aren't about my direct interests [dialuci] because my motive in fandom is to find like-minded people to enjoy things with. You can extrapolate this advice into non-fandom stuff too.
The Courage to be Disliked
In the midst of your creating, you might experience negativity or possibly even harassment. Nothing blocks creativity more than seeing some absolute bullshit. You have two options: get away from the negativity... or just keep doing the thing you're doing. The reason why some people Waste Time with fandom wank is because they don't spend enough time creating and loving their own concepts. If you follow this advice, your page will be full of proof that your concept is loved. Go through the process again. Evaluate your motives, don't be precious, and cut down on time spent on one thing. I won't destroy myself to appease people who don't like me and neither should you.
Pic 1: “completed piece” XD.
Pic 2: Simple completed piece. Pic 3: Completed piece with hours of deliberation. Pic 4: Rendered Sketch using skills I learned from finishing piece 3. (Note the time spent)
Link to my original Reddit post: "[...] I wanted to show what the difference of three years can make. This is why I chose the concept of DiaLuci kissing, because I have drawn at least one kiss per year I’ve been in this fandom and it provides a baseline for comparison for each of my pieces. Though it appears that each piece took less than two hours to do, what you don’t see is the amount of time I spent thinking about them, the colour choices, the decision paralysis, the dislike for the whole thing. Nonetheless, I persisted because I love them very much. And it really takes drawing the things you love over and over and over to see how far you’ve come."
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