Saw this advice from Art Prof recently: if youre feeling stuck, pick up a different medium. Like, she's a painter with zero interest in sculpting, but she will pick up some clay and mess around with it to unlock some creativity.

Another bit of advice Ive heard is to "personify the resistance." Whatever feeling is holding you back from creating, turn it into a character and illustrate them.

I know i get excited about trying new things, and I also love the challenge of constraints. So Ive been working off a list of prompts. And I'll watch videos of other people working in their own style and it will make me want to try painting the same way.

And I heavily support what another commenter said about the running shoe method.

Please invest in the book "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, the 4th definitive edition" by Betty Edwards.

Please invest in toothy-paper & charcoals ( I've no idea why she doesn't understand that that makes it WAAAY easier to reach hemisphere-dominance-shift ), & all the things she identifies as required-tools.

Please simply let the learning-process take its time.

It is the most-potent mind-empowerment I know of.

It is worth it.

& the "education" which blotted it out from nearly-all of our lives, is psychic-deformity that is profitable for some parasitic .. industries .. but it isn't beneficial to our world.

That book & charcoals is THE easiest way into the mode-shift I know-of.

Surfing also does it, apparently ( on water, with surfboards ), as you're on a liquid-mountain which is moving & transforming, while having to be chasing its future-optimum, so you're using the same whole-all-at-once mind in surfing that you use in drawing, but drawing is something you can bring around with you, anywhere, unlike Pacific Ocean sandbars & good breezes..

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I was there years ago. For me it was "draw X minutes a day, X days a week" and as I saw progress it helped.

I got the idea from a few artists on videos, and one in person (Jim Lee) say something to the effect professional artists can't wait for motivation. They just have to have a discipline of drawing / painting and the motivation or inspiration will eventually come along.

I advice you to set a routine and show to your canvas for at least 30 min every day. Don't think about it just do it!

And Try to conciously practice something. (Plenty of resources out there) Let go of expectations and do not get too attached to the results ,good or bad.

That said... I've been doing art for a long time and, feelt the same as you. I also feel like my creativity is dying a slow death .. I haven't posted to this comm in months :'( so... Idk

Have you ever taken a class or tried following a tutorial?

But in my opinion the process is more important than the results. Learn to love the process and don't focus so much on making something aestheticly pleasing at first. Just play around and see what you have fun with; you won't progress technically until you get to where you can't wait to do it every day.

Take a look at why you do art and make some achievable goals to strive for. Ask yourself what you like about a piece and see if you can do something similar. A "bad" drawing is not a failure, but instead a chance to examine what worked and what didn't. Try doing 10 or 20 very quick gesture drawings to get an idea of what you want a more polished drawing to look like before you commit to a longer piece.

Above all: have fun with it.

For me the only time I can ever draw is when I have stuff going on in the background

If I'm playing d&d I can draw in my notes. When I was in school I'd draw draw in classes. I can draw while watching YouTube or Netflix.

For whatever reason it helps me take the pressure off myself. Otherwise I'm too self conscious and over thinking what I'm drawing I guess 🤷🏻‍♂️

The more you try, the better you get. If you fear what comes may be bad, turn that part of your mind off, and be proud to fail and to learn from your "failures".

Lack the ideas? Pick them at random, or check somewhere like !inktober@sh.itjust.works which gives weekly ideas.

Also in line of lacking ideas, got some silly situation in mind? Draw it. Xkcd for example has been doing it with stickmen out of all things for years and it works.

Also maybe draw scenaries? You could walk around your area taking photos of cool stuff to draw.

Or maybe fanart if there's some work you really like?

Have a source of inspiration that doesn't really on you yourself. I started taking part in some weekly art "challenge" thing where people share what they do. You can try to closely copy the inspiration, or use it loosely; use any medium and style, etc.

The reason this works well IMO is because:

1. it alleviates you the difficult job of coming up with ideas which excite you
2. you get to share your output with other people, see their ideas, learn from them, and support each other
3. you can judge yourself against specific goals you had for a given week's inspiration/prompt, rather than against how well it lived up to your (probably unrealistic) imagination.

Think about how you learn and like doing things. Try to connect your art time to that. Like if you are visual, read a book or watch some art videos, the try some art. If your auditory try listening to some music while doing art. I agree with the tip to try a different medium. I'm only going at as my personal enjoyment, maybe to get things out of my head onto paper, so no professional. When I have an idea I've used my tablet to sketch that down, save it, and later take that idea into watercolor.

make sure you're getting hedonistic and eudaimonistic time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudaimonia

Spend a little bit off time loosening up and having simple fun, like watching TV or playing a game with a short gameplay loop that makes you feel like you're having fun immediately (eg some rougelike). Then, when you feel like you blew off some steam, give drawing something a go.

The drawing has a skill check before you can feel good about it, so once you have loosened up with the hedonistic fun, you can enjoy the challenge of the more worthwhile/long term skill based activity.

I try to do about 15 min to 30 min of the hedonistic activity, then get into the harder task.

Bread on penguins has a video on how to be productive by just setting up your work environment to get the ball rolling, but I can't find the specific video now

https://www.youtube.com/@BreadOnPenguins/videos