Sometimes, you just get stuck.
It doesn’t matter what you’re doing, there’s just a mental block. Yesterday, I was working on a picture of Michelangelo’s David at the Academia and found I couldn’t draw. No matter what I did, the lines didn’t look right, the pencil felt wrong in my hands. Eventually, I managed to work through it (ish). Now I have to go back to the Academia and finish my homework, but no complaints here.
Tomorrow, I’m making a presentation about the historical Virgil versus the literary Virgil in Inferno. I’ve done tons of research, but I’m still stuck. I find myself procrastinating, reading far ahead in Vita Nuova and dawdling about Inferno. Ah, such is life. At least I’m stuck in an interesting read.
Ned Wolfe 
Even though I detested the technique when I was younger, I have to admit that drawing perfect circles (or, at the very least attempting to) works its’ magic in freeing up some hidden recess of the brain. If that fails, you can fall back on the “see the shapes beneath the shapes”, and try to work out the generality of the object through deconstruction.
…by which point, all non-artists will be scratching their heads and wondering wtf I’m rambling on about.
See, I do remember some of the basic teaching methods, even though I wasn’t really paying attention when I was taught them.
Drawing “blanks” (where you concentrate on the outlines and main construction of the image) seems to work for me when my brain goes all ‘Sam from Quantum Leap‘ – but I can get lost in the finer details for hours at a stretch if I am given the free time to do so.
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I was completely lost in the finer details (aka, David’s knee caps) when I returned to finish my drawing!
Thanks for the advice! It helped. 🙂
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Wow. You draw. *is impressed*
At least when you suffer, you suffer magnificently. 🙂
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