I'd put this in the creative corner but it's more of a chitchat/conversation thing. Has anyone else been losing or have lost their creative spark? I feel like mine was fizzling ever since I left highschool and barely held on through college. Like I do draw and can draw but there feels like little to no incentive. I sit and stare at blank pages with an empty head if I don't have some super simple idea to make which is usually just drawing a pokemon or some other simple thing or some incentive to make a holiday related sketch. I feel like I never know what to do about it. Art didn't feel like work in the past but now it does. Some of the draw games kept me going but they keep repeatedly vanishing over and over. Draw something ended up going offline and I even switched to Draw with friends but even that's gone now, went to some third thing that also is now shut down. I'd play garticphone more if I had more actual friends to play it with too because that one feels odd to just jump into random groups with as I'm not exactly the most social person in the world.

Any other artists out there struggling to even call themselves an artist anymore?

I totally get that feeling! I'm sorry you're struggling with it; it can feel super frustrating for sure. When I'm burnt out on art, I'll go from making stuff every day to not touching any of my supplies for so long (literally years sometimes) that I start to wonder if I should just throw them away. The spark always comes back, though. I mainly create collages, so something that helps me is just gathering materials, even if I don't have any ideas for them when I see them. I'm currently on an off phase for art, so that's what I'm focusing on right now. It keeps me connected in some way, even if I'm not actively making things.

i think that's something most creatives go through, at least i know for sure i went through pretty long phases of creative drought myself lol (￣ω￣; )

speaking from my personal experience, the times i felt like that were times when i just wasn't happy with my environment :< sometimes even something as small as changing the room i'm drawing in or changing the time i was drawing actually helped though!

getting into new things has also done wonders for me when i felt my motivation slipping!! i had a huge art funk some years back where i genuinely didn't draw and didn't feel like drawing for almost a year - and then i got into warrior cat roleplay and started drawing cats a bunch and that got me motivated to draw humans again too!! getting into new media and finding inspiration that way is also super good ime, like right now i'm living through shin megami tensei brainrot and it's inspired me to make so many new oc's and draw and write and it's so much fun!!

some people will say to take breaks when you feel burnt out or uninspired by i honestly disagree! i'm more of a "fake it till you make it" person SDFGHJK and when i legit have 0 ideas on what to make and don't feel like drawing anything, i'll either do low-stress studies (usually just pick some photos i like off pinterest and draw them) or free art for people - probably not the nicest thing to admit, but doing free art for people is great for me because it's super chill? i'll just think like "if it sucks it sucks but it's free and who the hell complains about free art" and that gets me drawing LMAO

Maybe some study will do me good then. I honestly often neglect studying fundamentals and stuff. Sure I've taken enough classes, but I don't really do any solo study anymore. could be enough to actually get me moving even if slowly and it's the ONLY thing I'm drawing.

totally!! and sometimes for me studies actually get me to want to draw even more, like i'll do some gesture sketches and suddenly feel inspired to draw my oc's in a specific pose (✿´ ꒳ ` )

i quite like this study schedule personally!! i never did it 100% percent because my goal is to have fun not grind for hours LMAO

You have any free resources to pull from for personal studies? I'm just bad at uh self gestures vaguely at nothing organization? structure? bad at doing the school type stuff by myself without a guiding force. I barely held things together in college.

Def can't always hold a whole hour+ of that but I'm certain I can throw myself into some bare minimum amount of time every other day or something and cycle through these options or possibly use the picker wheel. Though I fear the picker wheel skipping something too often.

pinterest is my go to!! i'll just look up something like 'male muscles' or 'two point perspective' and scroll until i find something i feel like drawing lol (✿´ ꒳ ` )

i also like unsplash a lot!! there's some gorgeous stock photos, and the sizes are massive so you can zoom in and really see all the details (with pinterest sometimes i find photos i really love but the quality is crunchy.... rip.........)

line of action and adorkastock are pretty popular from what i've seen but i personally never used them

but honestly it's all about building a habit imo!! (•̀ᴗ•́)و ̑̑ it's hard at first to be consistent and find the energy but ime once you get into a routine it's actually pretty easy to maintain!!

Well I have plenty of reference with my SO. He just needs to recover from his cold before I go treating him like a studio model. Hes tall and has a wonderful shape for modeling lol i just need to make use of it for once. He'd be happy to as well as he has been wanting me to draw more and wanting to draw himself as well.

And i meant more in the way of actual educational matetial not just reference images. Im bad with the whole "line of action" thing and other basic study type stuff, lighting and all that. Im ok with it but i could use more practice. That and shading and stuff.

aa got it! i do have these videos from yt i think are really good!!

">everything on marc brunet's chanel tbh man's amazing oridays' blind method idr what this specific video is about but it's in my playlist and saito naoki is really really good (it's in japanese tho so you'll have to turn on subtitles

man i thought i had more saved but apparently i don't rip ;; i really haven't watched art yt in so long....... i should start again.........

also so based for getting your so to pose for you i do the same with my brother when he's around LMAO