Just paint! Or at least doodle, to keep up line work. When I’m not completing a commissioned work, I sit around drawing small appliances in my kitchen (or anyone’s kitchen, really). Some of them have such unusual lines and subtle curves, and yet it’s when I’m concentrating on mundane things such as these that I usually come up with ideas. “Oh, I can totally picture myself drawing/painting _ instead of this toaster.” is a frequent.

Just like this: I went through a painter’s block a week ago, couldn’t even get up the creativity to paint things I had been paid to do, and had been told almost completely how to do them. I knocked on my neighbor’s door (who I’d spoken to twice before, as I just moved into a new place) introduced myself, asked if she was free, and ran home to grab sangria (mentioned it as a sort of teaser. Always works.) I grabbed a little sketchbook and started doodling weird abstract versions of her sink (which was fucking weird, now that I think about it, it had like two faucets but one knob, I still don’t understand it) and in the middle of drawing one that looked like Porygon (if you remember Pokemon at all, not sure of your age) and it reminded me that I’d wanted to paint a paper crane one day that looked as if it were made out of lined notebook paper. I idly chatted fifteen minutes before ‘I have to get home to get a roast out of the oven’ and scurrying back to my easel and unleashing hell on a few paints.

Sometimes you have to do weird stuff to spark your own creativity. Do weird stuff.