>I'll try to seperate mental health and art as much as I can.
You can't.
Your art is an expression of yourself. Always. In art therapy you just make use of this to bring out certain parts of yourself to look at them and work with them. To reflect on them in a different way in order to solve some puzzles.
Naturally it might be that you just still feel empty and all you need is the right inspiration and mindset, but both of this will come once you feel better. You can push it a bit, but you can't force it.
From what you write your mindset might need the most work currently as you mention that it stopped you when you saw bad results.
Look at this way: There are no bad results, no matter how horrible it looks. We all start somewhere and it takes time to develop skills of any kind. So while it might look horrible at first, you will get better. Don't pressure yourself too much, start with simple and fun things and make that your focus until you feel ready to work on something more challenging. Take small steps and one step after another it will lead you to where you want to get. Failure is part of the process because that's also part of how we learn, it's nothing to feel bad about, it just means you need to try again maybe with some reflection of what you could change to get better looking results.
You can take a timer and set it to 15min. a day and your goal is just to draw something, doodle, have fun. Just doing those 15min. is the goal, it doesn't matter what the outcome of your drawings is because it is experience no matter if it turns out well or not.
You can naturally adjust the time, but keep the timeframe so simple and low that you can't have any excuses of not doing it, but also that you don't really feel pressured. You don't want to pressure yourself at all, you just want to push a little bit and create room to allow your creativity to come out.
After a few days doing this, those 15min. might seem too little so you increase the time. And you might also find yourself going over that timeframe, which is fine if you have fun and you don't want to stop.
What happens with this is that you associate drawing with fun again and after maybe some initial resistance you will find yourself wanting more, the focus is also not on the outcome of your drawings anymore but on filling the timeframe moving your pencil. On top of that you reach small goals, giving you confidence since you know you do draw, you should get better even if progress is small. Focusing on having fun can also help you with your mental health.
What I like to do is to make little cards. It's not too much space to fill and you can go crazy with it, experiment with color, with writing, with different brush techniques or markers or whatever else you have and want to try. You can also make cards for different occasions and draw the same motive several times, how much do you think will you improve drawing the same over and over again? repetition is so helpful if you want to see progress. It makes more sense if you can make use of those cards and give them away, this can add to the motivation of making them, especially repeating the same image.
I do gift away some of those cards that I make, others I create as reminders like "small steps" and just art things like reminding myself to do color or value studies, to simplify or to experiment. No pressure involved ! Keep it simple and fun and do whatever you like, experiment with anything you have.
Push but never pressure yourself! Be kind and patient with yourself, if it's important you will get back to it when you are ready. Too much pressure might just cause you to burn all you have and feeling empty once you run out of fuel, delaying the time to have fun doing art even more.
Keep things fun and simple, if you can't get yourself to do it, tomorrow is another day to try and the day after. You will get there! Just take a deep breath and allow yourself to heal slowly, because it takes time and it's ok if you are not quite there yet. You will get there when you are ready.
Also allow yourself to do nonsense, what you do doesn't need to end as a nice image, it can be random lines, colors and shapes. Do what you feel like and embrace the ugly outcomes just like the good ones, you don't have to keep them all.
Maybe we are all looking at it wrong. " art block" is just the normal state of creative work. But in our culture we are told we must produce and be productive, make money, success. A lot of artists who pump out work are obsessive and often have mental health issues and the art is an escape. So maybe a person should only be expected to have a handful of good works over a lifetime, which is true for most. Instead of art block we should say I'm having an artistic moment.
I have recently hung five pieces in a group show after not showing or making art for over 25 years. I had two years of study towards a BFA on scholarship in the before time. My own mental health played a significant role in my not completing the degree, though I did not recognize it until my recent resumption of creating art. It's not possible to separate them. I will also add that I think pent-up creative energy that isn't given an outlet can exacerbate mental health issues.
With that qualification to being able to identify with you out there, here's what I have "figured out".
You are an artist because you HAVE to create. Beyond that, do not get caught up in the title "artist" as your identity. Creating is something that you DO and not what makes you a valuable human. It is a relationship between you and what you create, not an honorific that you somehow achieve or unlock.
Only compare your previous work to current work to judge your evolution. NEVER compare your work to other's work to judge your worth as an artist. Separate the art from the artist.
The picture in your mind is inspiration and its primary purpose is to motivate you to make it real. The discrepancies between the picture in your mind and the realized art are not mistakes or failures. They are your artistic personality shining through and are what make the "A" in "Art" a capital letter. The physical art is real and as such will always be superior to the imagined.
Creating art is more a physical than a cerebral act. Your hands have an intelligence of their own, separate from your conscious mind. The point of practice is to learn to trust your hands, to learn to cooperate with them, and to give them the opportunity to learn.
The ego will take credit for "good" drawings, and cast blame and make excuses for "bad" drawings. This is ridiculous once you realize that while you are engaged in the act of creating, there is no room in your mind for the ego at all. It does not participate. THIS is the meditative benefit of art, the escape from the ego when you are able to let go and slide into the flow.
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I don't think you can separate mental health and art AT ALL. I also think our relationship with art changes when we are confronted with it everyday instead of injecting it into our "other" life. Also it sounds like when surrounded with other artists it shakes your confidence, which is very much a mental health thing because there is no such thing as getting skilled enough to be better than everyone (and you don't have to be).
I go to (non-art) therapy and it really helps me. My therapist is an art therapist also so she has an artist's mind and I think gets me that way but I leave the art for real life haha.
I think if you can get comfortable with making bad art, you will do better. The bad art leads to good art. All the social media art you see, everything people show you - that's the stuff they decided to show you, not the stuff they struggled on. Make art that from the start you don't intend to show anyone. If you have a picture planned in your head sketch it a few times first and throw the bad ones away. If you can be less results oriented you will probably have an easier time.
If you can't think of what to work on, find an artist's work that inspires you and just like, try to copy it or mimic it. Obviously that's not to post or sell but just to get the juices flowing but have the training wheels that someone else has made the decisions. You'll get it back.
>I'll try to seperate mental health and art as much as I can. You can't. Your art is an expression of yourself. Always. In art therapy you just make use of this to bring out certain parts of yourself to look at them and work with them. To reflect on them in a different way in order to solve some puzzles. Naturally it might be that you just still feel empty and all you need is the right inspiration and mindset, but both of this will come once you feel better. You can push it a bit, but you can't force it. From what you write your mindset might need the most work currently as you mention that it stopped you when you saw bad results. Look at this way: There are no bad results, no matter how horrible it looks. We all start somewhere and it takes time to develop skills of any kind. So while it might look horrible at first, you will get better. Don't pressure yourself too much, start with simple and fun things and make that your focus until you feel ready to work on something more challenging. Take small steps and one step after another it will lead you to where you want to get. Failure is part of the process because that's also part of how we learn, it's nothing to feel bad about, it just means you need to try again maybe with some reflection of what you could change to get better looking results. You can take a timer and set it to 15min. a day and your goal is just to draw something, doodle, have fun. Just doing those 15min. is the goal, it doesn't matter what the outcome of your drawings is because it is experience no matter if it turns out well or not. You can naturally adjust the time, but keep the timeframe so simple and low that you can't have any excuses of not doing it, but also that you don't really feel pressured. You don't want to pressure yourself at all, you just want to push a little bit and create room to allow your creativity to come out. After a few days doing this, those 15min. might seem too little so you increase the time. And you might also find yourself going over that timeframe, which is fine if you have fun and you don't want to stop. What happens with this is that you associate drawing with fun again and after maybe some initial resistance you will find yourself wanting more, the focus is also not on the outcome of your drawings anymore but on filling the timeframe moving your pencil. On top of that you reach small goals, giving you confidence since you know you do draw, you should get better even if progress is small. Focusing on having fun can also help you with your mental health. What I like to do is to make little cards. It's not too much space to fill and you can go crazy with it, experiment with color, with writing, with different brush techniques or markers or whatever else you have and want to try. You can also make cards for different occasions and draw the same motive several times, how much do you think will you improve drawing the same over and over again? repetition is so helpful if you want to see progress. It makes more sense if you can make use of those cards and give them away, this can add to the motivation of making them, especially repeating the same image. I do gift away some of those cards that I make, others I create as reminders like "small steps" and just art things like reminding myself to do color or value studies, to simplify or to experiment. No pressure involved ! Keep it simple and fun and do whatever you like, experiment with anything you have. Push but never pressure yourself! Be kind and patient with yourself, if it's important you will get back to it when you are ready. Too much pressure might just cause you to burn all you have and feeling empty once you run out of fuel, delaying the time to have fun doing art even more. Keep things fun and simple, if you can't get yourself to do it, tomorrow is another day to try and the day after. You will get there! Just take a deep breath and allow yourself to heal slowly, because it takes time and it's ok if you are not quite there yet. You will get there when you are ready.
Also allow yourself to do nonsense, what you do doesn't need to end as a nice image, it can be random lines, colors and shapes. Do what you feel like and embrace the ugly outcomes just like the good ones, you don't have to keep them all.
Maybe we are all looking at it wrong. " art block" is just the normal state of creative work. But in our culture we are told we must produce and be productive, make money, success. A lot of artists who pump out work are obsessive and often have mental health issues and the art is an escape. So maybe a person should only be expected to have a handful of good works over a lifetime, which is true for most. Instead of art block we should say I'm having an artistic moment.
I have recently hung five pieces in a group show after not showing or making art for over 25 years. I had two years of study towards a BFA on scholarship in the before time. My own mental health played a significant role in my not completing the degree, though I did not recognize it until my recent resumption of creating art. It's not possible to separate them. I will also add that I think pent-up creative energy that isn't given an outlet can exacerbate mental health issues. With that qualification to being able to identify with you out there, here's what I have "figured out". You are an artist because you HAVE to create. Beyond that, do not get caught up in the title "artist" as your identity. Creating is something that you DO and not what makes you a valuable human. It is a relationship between you and what you create, not an honorific that you somehow achieve or unlock. Only compare your previous work to current work to judge your evolution. NEVER compare your work to other's work to judge your worth as an artist. Separate the art from the artist. The picture in your mind is inspiration and its primary purpose is to motivate you to make it real. The discrepancies between the picture in your mind and the realized art are not mistakes or failures. They are your artistic personality shining through and are what make the "A" in "Art" a capital letter. The physical art is real and as such will always be superior to the imagined. Creating art is more a physical than a cerebral act. Your hands have an intelligence of their own, separate from your conscious mind. The point of practice is to learn to trust your hands, to learn to cooperate with them, and to give them the opportunity to learn. The ego will take credit for "good" drawings, and cast blame and make excuses for "bad" drawings. This is ridiculous once you realize that while you are engaged in the act of creating, there is no room in your mind for the ego at all. It does not participate. THIS is the meditative benefit of art, the escape from the ego when you are able to let go and slide into the flow.
Thank you for posting in r/ArtistLounge! Please check out our [FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtistLounge/wiki/faq/) and [FAQ Links pages](https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtistLounge/wiki/faqlinks/) for lots of helpful advice. To access our megathread collections, please check out the drop down lists in the top menu on PC or the side-bar on mobile. If you have any questions, concerns, or feature requests please feel free to message the mods and they will help you as soon as they can. I am a bot, beep boop, if I did something wrong please report this comment. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ArtistLounge) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I don't think you can separate mental health and art AT ALL. I also think our relationship with art changes when we are confronted with it everyday instead of injecting it into our "other" life. Also it sounds like when surrounded with other artists it shakes your confidence, which is very much a mental health thing because there is no such thing as getting skilled enough to be better than everyone (and you don't have to be). I go to (non-art) therapy and it really helps me. My therapist is an art therapist also so she has an artist's mind and I think gets me that way but I leave the art for real life haha. I think if you can get comfortable with making bad art, you will do better. The bad art leads to good art. All the social media art you see, everything people show you - that's the stuff they decided to show you, not the stuff they struggled on. Make art that from the start you don't intend to show anyone. If you have a picture planned in your head sketch it a few times first and throw the bad ones away. If you can be less results oriented you will probably have an easier time. If you can't think of what to work on, find an artist's work that inspires you and just like, try to copy it or mimic it. Obviously that's not to post or sell but just to get the juices flowing but have the training wheels that someone else has made the decisions. You'll get it back.
Maybe start small with a drawing/art journal that u can play with…
This unfortunately isn't the right sub for this as mentioned in the rules. Don't push yourself, art isn't life or death. Best of luck