Hi I'm Byron from Canada and I draw zombies.

Sometimes it's easy and the art flows just right. Other days it's a struggle and some days it just doesn't happen. You know what I'm talking about. The artistic RUT. The dreaded artist block. We've all been there and some of us have ways of dealing with it and getting back into the groove, but some of us don't.

Whenever I find myself in a small artistic rut, or really unmotivated to create, I do something different.

For example, one time I was in a huge mental rut so I took my kids box of crayons and started to make zombie portraits. Working with crayons presented a new challenge, and that challenge is what my brain needed. It was different, it was tricky, but it turned out to be a lot of fun.
I first started with portraits, trying to not only make the art, but also interact with the people that follow me. 
They loved it, which also boosted my mental health and encouraged me to keep going. 

Was i out of the rut? Pretty much because all I wanted to do was make more art with crayons.

And then I started to get a bit into the mixed media and from there just kept going.

That's just one way that I get myself out of the mental ruts
My high school art teacher used to tell his students that if they get stuck in a rut, they should go back to the basics. Draw circles, squares, scribble or anything else that just lets you relax and let loose.

The main point of all these exercises is to get out of your comfort zone and force your brain to start thinking differently.

Doodle, sketch, scribble. It doesn't need to make sense or look good. The point is to just do it and jump start the creative process again. Don't worry about what other people might think. You are doing this for you, and who knows, you might find that your doodle sketch scribble looks pretty good or inspires a new idea.

So that's what I do. Does it always work? 

No, not always, but more often than not, it does help motivate me to start creating art again.

Do you have a method to get out of artistic ruts? Let me know in the comments.
Cheers!
Byron