Welcome to the Official Page for Cards Against Art Block!
Cards Against Art Block is a mobile card game that helps you battle your inner art block with 40 different tasks and challenges ahead to stimulate your creativity!
But first of all… How are you? How’s your artwork going? Is it an assignment? A freelance-work? Or something else? Have you happened to stumble into the dreaded art block? Well then, give Cards Against Art Block a try! It can’t hurt! (or can it?)
So, How do you play?
The rules are simple!
When you find yourself in an art block, or if you just want a challenge or try something new when you’re drawing, you can use Cards Against Art Block! You get a card from the deck, and if you want to you can even close your eyes and click next and pick a card that way. First you will see a picture and when you tap the picture you will get your challenge. Now the rest is up to you; you have to interpret it, adapt and overcome it! Apply it to your art work, include it in your process and do whatever you can with it. Make it as fun or as challenging as you want, the work is still in your hands, but this will hopefully take your mind out of the deep dark decent of the art block…
The link to try the cards out if below, but first, here are some quotes from the people that have been a part of the developing experience of Cards Against Art Block:
It was so much fun! It’s been a long time since I thought it was this fun to paint.
Eric – Workshop Participant
It was interesting, the challenge on the card was a bit complicated, which made it a bit difficult, but I pretty quickly got pictures in my head that I could work from!
Emilia – Workshop Participant
Visit the links here to try out Cards Against Art Block yourself:
Cards Against Art Block Desktop
Cards Against Art Block Mobile App
Posters
Below are the official posters for Cards Against Art Block. One in English and one in Swedish.
Designprocess
This project have taken its course through many months, with intensive design work, reading research studies, holding workshops, interviews, trial and error and prototype work. It has been a long journey, but a fun one.
In the end, this became sort of a passion project for me.
Three main categories for the cards: Inspiring Arts, Breaks and Open to Interpretations.
A paragraph taken from Sylvester Ebigbagha Zifegha, which inspired me to include other artforms as a inspiration for the user of my prototype in order to spark some creativity. In this case I choose music as the artform that I would include in my card deck.
I was also inspired by my workshop participants to include another artform in the card deck as they mentioned multiple times that they frequently found that others art was a frequent inspiration for their own creativity.
Listen to music that makes you feel things in your body.
Victoria – Workshop Participant
I would have advised them to put on a good song, and if that doesn’t help, I would have said: “Put on a song or genre you would otherwise never listen to!”. I believe that something can happen when you step outside your “comfort zone” and find inspiration in places where you would not otherwise have looked.
Eric – Workshop Participant
Another reoccurring subject was breaks. Every participant mentioned more than once that a quick break from their task could help them regain their focus and creativity.
Try other things, try new techniques and new forms of expression. Take a break, play games for a while, distract yourself.
Emilia – Workshop Participant
Other than inspiring arts and breaks I also wanted to include a more open-ended, loosely-explained and freely interpreted aspect of Cards Against Art Block. What inspired me here is Brian Eno’s own card deck Oblique Strategies, which I used as a prop for my workshops before I had created my own card deck. Brian Eno’s card deck is originally created for musical artists, but actually worked fine for my intended purposes. Oblique strategies has a card deck consisting of over 100 different cards with a variety of prompts. A few prompts can be such as: “Use ‘unqualified’ people”, “Slow preparation.. Fast execution”, “Always first steps”, “Water” and so on. And I personally know this because I actually bought the card deck for around 500 SEK and am currently flipping through the cards. Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies is, to say the least, open for interpretation. But as a prop for my workshops, it still worked fine, and also inspired me to include som open-ended, abstract and different challenges and prompts myself in my own card deck. This was also appreciated by my workshop participants after having discussions with them during and after workshops, since they did think the openness was a fun challenge.
If you want to know more about Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies or buy the card deck yourself, I will include some links below:
The artwork on each card it is solely drawn and created by me using my Cintiq 22 and Clip Studio Paint. When it comes to the artwork and it’s inspiration I myself used what was written on the cards as an inspiration, while I tried to keep every drawing quite open, abstract or such. I wanted the artwork on the cards to serve as an extra inspiration if the user so wishes, but I didn’t want to give the user too much material to use for their own work. I mainly wanted the focus to be on the prompt on the card, which is why some drawings can be very lackluster and simple. But each artwork still has it’s own meaning or relation to the prompt or task.
The designprocess was a lengthy and iterative process which I continuously tried to document to my best ability in a semi-structured field of mind-maps on a Padlet. Therefore you can visit my Padlet for a detailed, and quite overfilled, overview of my work. Please visit my padlet here: Cards Against Art Block Paldet to view every detail of the designprocess, from the very start of it to the very end. The padlet is mostly written in Swedish, but many of the links that can be found in there is in English.
On Another Note;
What Exactly is “Art Block”?
Honestly, it might be hard to exactly pinpoint what creative block is, since every individual is very different. Creative block has many names (creative block, art block, writers block, and so on) but is still well known within the world of creators and artists despite what their chosen form of creative expression is. In my own project, Cards Against Art Block, I’ve chosen the name art block since I mainly focus on the creative form of creating art, but in reality this card deck could be used in other scenarios and creative processes as well. When making Cards Against Art Block I myself used Brian Enos’ card deck called Oblique Strategies which is mainly focused on the art of music. But as an experiment and workshop prop it worked great for my purpose.
Art block, which also can be called creative block as we just mentioned, is a state of mind where the creator can create and wants to create, but have some form of internal obstacle that hinders the creator from creating or thinking creatively. Lillian Hemingway Gallay summarizes creative block as follows:
Creative block has not been decisively defined in the literature; a basic starting point was Rose’s (1984) assertion that it was an inability to work in one’s chosen medium that was not due to a lack of skill or commitment. It has been unclear whether creative block was a unitary concept encompassing all creative mediums, or whether there were unique aspects within each medium that differentiated the experience of, for example, painter’s block from writer’s block.
Understanding and Treating Creative Block in Professional Artists (page 13)
by
Lillian Hemingway Gallay
A few artist from Danielle Krysas book: Creative Block: Get Unstuck, Discover New Ideas. Advice and Project from 50 Successful Artists has this to say about creative block:
There are many reasons for an artist to end up in an art block. As mentioned by Arian Behzadi it can be because of comparison, but it can also be because of a lack of motivation, depression and many other personal reasons. Sometimes it’s har to really pinpoint what really causes the issue, but I believe that there might be a few tools that everyone can use to overcome their creative block despite the reason they ended up in it. That’s also why I dedicated my time to make Cards Against Art Block. I believe that my product can help people overcome their creative block and spark their inner artist again with just this simple tool, even if every single card might not be helpful for everyone, I think there will at least be something in there to spark some inspiration and creative joy.
Prior Research and Other Findings
I am far from the first person to have a interest in creative block and all that comes with it. In order to make my own project and prototype I used a ton of prior research to collect my data and form my own creative process. Therefor I have gathered a few helpful links and articles that I found very interesting and informative on the subject. So here is a collection of what other people have written, found and researched about creative block through the years that I myself found useful or interesting.
Further Reading
Below are a few links for further reading about creative block, how you can help “cure” it and some prior research about it.
About Me
I am a 25 year old digital designer from the outskirts of Gothenburg. I have a personal passion for art and therefor see this as a form of passion-project that I have taken upon me and created. Who knows, in the future I might continue to work on this just for fun or personal gain.
This is written and posted on my personal portfolio, so if you would like to know more about me, you can read about me here: Home.
Sandra's Design 