Getting Back Into Creative Flow

“To love a painting is to feel that its presence is not an object, but a voice.” - Andre Malraux

For much of my life, I’ve been obsessed with the mystery of the creative process. I know creativity ebbs and flows. Recently, my creativity hit a wall. Instead of flowing, I’ve been stuck in a big ebb, maybe even an eddy. It’s not that I have no ideas; my studio is littered with unfinished paintings and paintings ready to start, but I can’t seem to sit myself down to work on them. It's been more than a few months now. When this happens, I get down on my work, on myself, and feel like making art doesn’t really matter. When I am disconnected and uninterested in the activity I love most, it feels like my powers are being wasted, my groove never returning, and the negative spiral takes on even more energy. 

I’ve been making art long enough to trust that the flow will return in good time. Ebbs always follow powerful flows and are a sign to take time to reflect, redirect, and reconsider my artistic goals. In my efforts to return to flow, I’ve been experimenting with some tools to encourage, stimulate, and strengthen my creative process. Today, I'd like to share with you a few of my thoughts on getting yourself unstuck and unblocked.

The type of artistic block I've been confronting is when you have lots of ideas but can’t seem to finish anything, when there’s not enough energy to embrace the effort and struggle of making art, or much of anything else for that matter.

The prompts below can be done sequentially or you can pick and choose. One may be enough to recapture interest in the art, suggesting the next few steps for you to take along the path. Often, one small step is all that's needed to return to flow.

For this exercise, please take one or two unfinished pieces you were very excited about when you started but now feel very differently when you look at them.  

Put the painting up on an easel and gaze at it for as long as it can hold your attention. Ask yourself these questions:

1. What emotion is evoked? Does it have a feeling - joy, fear, indecisiveness, confidence?
2. Is there a story? Does it hold your interest? Does it intrigue you?
3. Is there something surprising or unexpected? Is it fresh, vital, and authentic?
4. Did you censor yourself or play it safe? Are you embarrassed by it?
5. Can you see yourself in it? Is it good enough?

Intentions

Write down your intentions for the painting when you started. 

1. What were you hoping to capture in this painting? 
2. What constraints had you set up for yourself? 
3. Was there a guiding question or image? Was there a particular artist or photograph who inspired you? 
4. How did you select your colors?  
5. What is happening with the light? 

Sometimes, this will be all you need to recapture the trail you were following, and the next step will reveal itself to you.

A Fatal Flaw?

Compare your artwork with your original intentions. Could there have been a fatal flaw in your assumptions? 

1. Were you trying to convey too many ideas at once?
2. Did you fail to consider the direction of the light? 
3. Did you rush your drawing and start painting before it was resolved? 

If the idea itself still interests you, and there was a “fatal flaw” you might consider calling this painting a first version or a first draft and start a new attempt incorporating what you learned so far. 

Permit yourself to FAIL. F=First, A=Attempt, I=in, L=Learning.

There is no harm in declaring yourself “complete” with the effort you made and what you learned, even if you didn’t finish the painting - especially if it helps to move you back into flow on the next painting. 

Pablo Picasso said, “If it were possible … there would never be a ‘finished’ canvas but just different states of a single painting.” And here’s W. H. Auden paraphrasing a line of Paul Valéry’s: “A poem is never finished, only abandoned.”

Compare to your Body of Work

Compare your artwork with everything else you finished over the past year or so. How does it compare to the body of work you created? 

1. Were you trying to stretch yourself in this one into something new?  
2. Is there a theme that re-appears?  
3. What are the strengths of the body of work, and how does this new piece relate?
4. Considering this work with everything else you have created, do you see progress in learning and skill development?  
5. Is there a skill or technique you could learn that would significantly improve your work? For example, you enjoy painting faces but can’t quite get the placement of the features correct. 

Acknowledging improvement in your work can get you out of the self-doubt loop and give you the courage you need to continue discovering and improving.

Practice not worrying about whether or not something is perfect. Instead, it’s about creating one version of a project that will likely either be improved upon or serve as inspiration for something else. 

Missing Tools or Skills

If you can identify missing tools or skills you need to create work you love, knowing the problem is the first step in finding a solution. 

Many shortcuts to drawing allow you to paint accurate portraits or landscapes without spending years practicing drawing techniques. YouTube offers thousands of free videos teaching almost any painting or drawing skill you want to learn. There are classes to join, and books to read that will help you embrace the slow road of incremental progress.

Consider hiring a coach. Investing in your education always pays excellent dividends.

Critique

You may be happy with your artwork, but it feels unfinished, and you are unsure what it needs. There are things you like a lot about it, but you are confused about the next step. 

In this case, I recommend you call in an artist friend. A fellow artist who understands what you are trying to accomplish is invaluable. Good critique is very different from judgment or criticism as it presents you with possibilities you might not have considered. A good critique will restate all the things you did right and give you at least one avenue to pursue in strengthening your work.

Consider yourself blessed if you are invited to join a critique group. You are welcome to join the monthly group meeting in my home studio to work on and talk about our art. Giving and receiving guidance to other artists at the same level as you will train your eye in a way no college class could ever accomplish.

If you don’t have access to an art colleague, try these steps. The goal here is not to judge yourself but to find the next step to take, the next modification that will put you back into flow with the piece.



By treating your painting as an enjoyable experience, “just a piece of paper,” you give yourself permission to experiment.

1. Photograph your artwork and look at it upside down, sideways, and in black and white.
2. Look at a thumbnail of the artwork, 
3. Look at the artwork in a mirror, 

Above is a recent painting of Hydrangeas at the point when I got stuck on what to do next

Sideways

Upside Down

Mirrored

Black and White

The finished piece. What would you have done?

Critique it yourself. 



A list of standard critique questions is below this essay. You can email me for a free PDF of these questions and procedures using the elements and principles of art to evaluate where your artwork might be strong and weak compared to these “standards.”

Are You the Obstacle?

Recognize that you might be the obstacle. Do you have too much riding on the outcome of this piece? Does it measure up to your internal standards of perfection? Does it fall short when you compare it to the work of artists you admire? Internal standards are the most complicated flow blocks to overcome.

Below are the four most common self-created obstacles to staying engaged with your work. 

Time Anxiety - the feeling that we are wasting our creative talent through procrastination. This one gets me all the time. Now that I finally have all the time, space, materials, etc. I need to create, I am still wasting hours on unimportant urgent things, scrolling through my phone, laundry, email, etc... I get caught up in the priorities and rules I create for myself. I beat myself up for breaking my own rules instead of changing them to prioritize what’s important. 

Achieving excellence is not a linear process. Unreasonable time expectations result in unnecessary frustration and lead to a feeling of failure. Impatience in dealing with the pace of progress is the primary reason most people fail to achieve their goals. 

World Anxiety - “To be an artist is to feel life deeply, to tremble with the terrors of everything that trembles,” says Maria Popova. The state of the world paralyzes us into inaction, anxiety, and powerlessness. How can we spend our time creating such unnecessary things as paintings when the world is falling apart? Tracking all the outrages feels virtuous, but it does nothing to solve even one of the world's problems.

Self Comparison - Few things will eat away your confidence more savagely than comparing yourself and your work to someone else. How could you possibly ever measure up to your role models, why should you even try? Insecurity and envy are the two most common excuses for giving up on ourselves and our growth. 

You are imperfect in every other aspect of life so why would you think yourself capable of making a “perfect painting”? When you compare yourself today to yourself yesterday, you give yourself permission to be just as you are, where you are right now. Can you allow yourself to be good enough as you are? If you stay with it, your good enough will evolve to be better and better. 

Self Doubt - Every creative person doubts the value of their efforts. We want our work to be so extraordinary it will dominate in every dimension, and everyone who sees it will stand up and applaud. But we want it to happen by doing everything exactly the way we are doing it now. We dither even when we know exactly what to do because we are afraid to take a risk. We dance with the fear of being seen and the need to express our inner world.

Don’t hold yourself back from the joy of creating in pursuit of these impossible standards. The remedy for artist’s block is making art.

Take Action

Let It Go - Release all attachments to results and allow yourself to play. Since you don’t really love this artwork, use it to free yourself. Allow yourself the delight of a small child.

1. Introduce some sort of chaos. 
2. Experiment with splashes of color and opaque paint. 
3. Abstract, fracture, and distort your shapes. If your shapes are too controlled, vary, soften, and mess up the edges.
4. Develop a narrative for the painting. Take a risk, this is how you evolve your imagination and your curiosity. 
5. Ask “What if”...and then then try that.
6. Could you cover, veil, or block out large areas of the painting?
7. Could you add personal symbols or foreign alphabets? 
8. Could you wipe off a layer of paint?
9. Could you add negative space, a horizon, or a figure?
10. Could you add a surprise element?
11. Establish a color, temperature, and/or directional dominance.
12. Move strong contrasts away from the corners and add opaque resting places.
13. Open passages and connect shapes to add variety in size. Extend your shapes beyond the borders of your painting. Overlap your shapes to add depth of space.
14. Add more variety. Repeat or superimpose similar values, shapes, and colors to create rhythm and movement. 
15. Use patterns or draw lines to interrupt shapes, energize, or embellish them.
16. Print out an image of your painting a couple of times in color and free yourself to draw your ideas all over it with colored pencils.
17. Overlay a clear acrylic sheet and paint or draw your ideas on the overlay.  

Make a decision + Take Action => do the scary thing! Action will lead to motivation!

Fill the Well - sometimes, our well of creativity is empty and dry. We need life force energy to create and to pull ourselves and our work out of the mire. If you just can’t make an effort to get yourself unstuck, it might be time to replenish yourself. If your life struggles have left you drained and exhausted, try these to fill yourself back up.

1. Care for the Body - Eat, Sleep, Meditate, Move - Creativity and joy naturally overflow into our day when we feel healthy, well, and energized.
2. Spend time in Nature - watch a sunrise, work in the garden, hug a tree, swim in the ocean - try to capture some awe.
3. Take yourself on an Artist Date to a museum and fill your soul and your eyes with beauty.
4. Pinterest - create an inspiration board on Pinterest. Give yourself permission to spend an hour or two being pulled down rabbit holes collecting art you like and wish you could paint too.
5. Journaling - Download everything circling your brain onto the page. Free write until you dump all your preoccupations onto the page. Once you’ve cleaned and cleared some space you will feel ready to replenish with new, fresh ideas.
6. The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron - the seminal book on the subject of creativity. An international bestseller, millions of readers have found it to be an invaluable guide to living the artist’s life. It is still as vital today—or perhaps even more so—than it was when it was first published 
7. Reorganize your studio to make it more inviting and ready for new work.  

If making great paintings were easy, everyone would do it. Creativity is not linear. Ebbs follow powerful flows and often signify that it is time to reflect, redirect, and reconsider artistic goals and then get back to making more art. I hope I have given you some tools to redirect yourself when you are stuck, unsure, and unable to finish what you create.

Staying in creative flow is important. We create our art to save ourselves. The paradox of creative work is that it is both a way in and a way out. It reveals the depths of our most hidden selves and simultaneously takes us out of the despair, the chaos, and the contradictions within.

At its best, the act of creation is self-transcendence. Breaking through self-created blocks and obstacles empowers us, renews us, and feels wonderful. When you chicken out and abandon your work, you don’t just feel the pain of cowardice; you miss out on the pleasure of courage. Courage you need to keep going on the path of artistic discovery and improvement.

In 2025, I wish you to show courage for yourself, your creativity, and your art. With every end comes a new beginning. By finishing a preliminary version of your work, however imperfectly, you free your future self to start a new one even better than the last. 

I write these essays as a way for me to dive deeper into my own artistic blocks and curiosities. Writing this post really helped me to move out of my funk and get the brush back in my hand. I hope it works for you, too.

Whether you’re an established artist seeking new horizons or a budding creative looking to elevate your work, I hope I have given you some ideas on how to get yourself out of a creative blockade. Perhaps I can invite you to join my artistic “family,” where I can support your artistic development. Don't hesitate to get in touch with me if you would like my mentorship, guidance, and advice in exploring your artistic path. It makes me happy to share my insights and my knowledge with you.

If someone shared this newsletter with you and you'd like to subscribe, please reach out to me below with your email address. I promise, no spam, no overloading your inbox, just the good stuff.

 I welcome the opportunity for connection, conversation, cooperation, collaboration, and commissions. 

With Light and Delight

Susan Convery

My resources for this month's newsletter were:

https://nicolecicak.com/blog/2023/10-ways-for-artists-to-get-unstuck

https://pearsetoomey.com/getting-unstuck/

https://storyenvelope.com/overcome-creative-block/

https://www.holloway.com/s/cd-three-exercises-for-getting-unstuck

https://www.themarginalian.org/2024/10/20/kafka-diaries-self-doubt/

https://www.experimental-history.com/p/so-you-wanna-de-bog-yourself

https://x.com/tferriss/status/1826691823789641750?mx=2

Jon Batiste — The Quest for Originality and How to Get Unstuck

Quote:

- Antonio Machado

Classic Critique

Put your painting up on an easel, in a mat, at least six feet away from you, and ASK:

Content:

Is the intent clear?

What is the first thing you see?

Are there too many themes?

Is it unexpected/unusual?

Is it too predictable?

Are there fast and slow reading areas? (Low contrast areas and high contrast)

Design:

Is the technique distracting?

Are the intervals between visual events pleasing? Interesting? Dynamic?

Is there a hierarchy of design elements?

Is there enough depth?

Is there a push-pull, backward-forward movement?

Have you taken full advantage of contrast in scale, gradation, and movement?

Dominance:

Is there a dominant type of line, value, or shape?

Is there a dominant color or temperature?

Are there too many competing elements?

Does the 80/20 principle apply?

Could you unify unrelated parts?

Shape:

How would you describe the shapes - organic, angular, hard-edged?

Are the sizes of shapes too similar?

Are the shapes interesting and varied?

Are there shapes that extend beyond the edges of the substrate?

Is the negative space interesting?

How does figure/ground relate?

Color:

Does the color establish a mood?

Are the color combinations interesting, overwhelming, or unusual?

Is there a temperature dominance?

Is there enough variation within hues, such as in the gradation of temperature, value, and chroma?

Is the color clear/crisp or muddy?

Are muddy colors used to enhance full chroma colors?

Values:

Is there enough value contrast?

How do the light/darks move the eye through the painting?

How does texture affect the value arrangement?

Edges:

Are there a variety of edges? Soft, rough, hard.

How do the edges help move the eye through the painting?

How do the edges separate/interlock shapes to add variety?

Which kinds of texture do you see? Smooth, rough, soft, bumpy?

Repetition:

Is there enough variety? Too much?

Is there enough visual movement through the composition

Do you feel trapped in one area?

Is there a rhythm or musical feel to the repetition?

Does it need a pattern to embellish?

Are there too many different patterns?

Susan Convery

www.SusanConvery.com

SusanConvery.art@gmail.com

January 2025

We had a great time making beautiful holiday cards with iridescent watercolor paint.

Join me again in February, as I will probably try this again for Valentine's Day.

This offer is extended until Friday, January 10, 2025

These are sample paintings created using the same steps we will use in this workshop. The two paintings at the top are student work.

Sketchbook Prompt:

Find one of your old abandoned artworks to experiment with. Try at least three of the following suggestions:

1. Introduce some sort of chaos.
2. Experiment with splashes of color and opaque paint. 
3. Abstract, fracture, and distort your shapes. If your shapes are too controlled, vary, soften, and mess up the edges.
4. Develop a narrative for the painting. Take a risk, this is how you evolve your imagination and your curiosity. Ask “What if”...and then then try that.
5. Could you cover, veil, or block out large areas of the painting?
6. Could you add personal symbols or foreign alphabets? 
7. Could you wipe off a layer of paint?
8. Could you add negative space, a horizon, or a figure?
9. Could you add a surprise element?
10. Establish a color, temperature, and/or directional dominance.
11. Move strong contrasts away from the corners and add opaque resting places.
12. Open passages and connect shapes to add variety in size. Extend your shapes beyond the borders of your painting. Overlap your shapes to add depth of space.
13. Add more variety. Repeat or superimpose similar values, shapes, and colors to create rhythm and movement. 
14. Use patterns or draw lines to interrupt shapes, energize, or embellish them.

Title: SunGlow

Media: Oil on Canvas

Size: 20"x 20"

Frame: Gallery Wrap

Price:$666

.

Title: Something to Crow About

Media: Mixed Media on Arches

Size: 15" x 22" framed 22" x 28"

Price: $555

Frame: Gold

Watercolor, ink, gouache, stencils, so many marks and so much fun! A celebration of the Chinese year of the Rooster.

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