Right now I´m having some kind of depressive phase at the modelling dept. Call it a building block. I have a diorama with five tanks, ten figures and a theme close to my heart, and I don´t seem to manage cracking the ice with it, start building. I try to tell myself I can build one tank at a time and see how it goes and move on to the landscape later. I just can´t come up with an idea for this dio and it´s making me nuts. I´m not scared of ruining anything, it´s just difficult to decide the starting point of a big project.
I also decided this to be the first diorama build for my book, so I should have some image about how the book is going to be, so that I can get the necessary photos along the way...

Phew. Feel better now.

And now to my question:
When the block comes for You, how do you cope with it? I´m sure every artist in this world suffers from these every once in a while...

Toni

Toni,

I just had my block a few weeks ago. It happens to all of us. What I do when it happens ? I'll dive into Armorama and chat and write responses on posts....

After some days or weeks I walk into a beautiful pic of something and then it's starts to cook again inside. The flame rises and....the feeling comes back into me.

Don't worry about it too much. It'll blow over before you know it. Until then.....well see you around here perhaps ?

When my modeling block comes, I have to get away. I set things aside, I even take some time away from the modeling forums too, a couple of days at a time. When I come back to the modeling table, I usually pick up on a different model than the one that I caught the "block" on - and that helps me get back into the mood. That usually snaps it for me.

Gunnie

When I get a block or even worse, lose interest, I do a project outside my norm. A quick airplane or civilian car will get the juices flowing and make you want to be productive again.

Patrick

Heh...good thing I haven't gotten "webmasters block" yet.

Jim

That could be catastrophic!

Gunnie

Toni,

I just visited Doc Dio's (Keith Forsyth),

he wrote just a couple of days ago "I have been suffering from what i can only describe as burn out, or is it the fact that there has been very little released that has really taken my fancy to build, most likely its been a little bit of both.

you see we're not alone !!

Thanks fellas...this is a familiar feeling from other arts but never modelling before...
I think I´ll take the kit boxes out of sight for a day or two and think other things for a while. You just can´t help it when you see something inspiring... I just saw again the Yugoslavian film "The Savior" with Dennis Quaid and it struck me hard...again. Hard enough to get interested in the Partisan activity and so on. Maybe a small sniper figure vignette could make me dig out those brushes pretty soon...

Gotta go now, I´m gonna get my butt kicked hard in the Day of Defeat...

Toni

When the block comes to me, I drag out my back issues of MMIR or FSM, reference books the internet and surf until the bug bites again.

Also, I took some time off from armor and tried something new for me. A 1/48 WWI Spad. Now that its finished I appreciate 1/35 armor even more.

I have four things i do... and at least one of them always works....

I just whip out some of my war movies... after watching Saving Private Ryan any block I have just disappears....

On a more serious vein, if i find myself just "staring" at the models, molds, bases, and buildings, not wanting to work on any of them - I just start re-arranging them... day after day, until something intersting just appears.

A similar "trick" I play on myself is to clean out the studio and re-arrange things... i always find little treasures that had fallen behin a bookcase, or a certain tube of paint that I bought for a special project that I had forgotten about....

If none of this works, I just go track down my wife and try to catch up on "other distractions"... eventually she get's so tired of me chasing her around the house she forces me to "go outside and build something"....

Either way, I win!

When I get blocked I start working on a 1:1 scale house. That is cutting grass, raking leaves, winterizering the sun porch, etc. The wife usually povides the modelling block.

At least now I know what to call it...

I also play music, and tie flies. If I can't make anything happen with a model, I just pick up the guitar, and blaze away for a while, or tie some salmon flies. It usually works for me. I may also build a model car. (Funny, I came back to building model airplanes because I was trying to cure my "Building Block" on a 1/25 scratchbuilt modified race car.)

Dave

I also change the music playing in the model room. If Grateful Dead isn't getting my juices flowing, I'll try Black Sabbath, or Miles Davis, or Classical... The atmosphere can make a big difference in creativity. I have a wide range of music and the change often snaps me back into action again.