For the past year and a half, I have been hard at work to improve my draftsmanship, as well as my understanding of character design, composition, and perspective. For months, I stuck to a regimented routine for daily art practice. Over time, however, the unthinkable happened: I got bored! At first, I could not understand why, until I came across a book titled The Artist’s Way. To sum up, this book offers a tried and tested means of recovery for those whom the author (Julia Cameron) refers to as “blocked artists.” To be “blocked” is to be driven by fear or resentment, rather than excitement, inspiration, or spontaneity. Even worse, to be a “blocked artist” is to view the creative process as threatening, tedious, or mundane. Let me explain how this relates to my journey as a Storyboard Artist. During my own creative recovery, I made a conscious effort to throw myself into new and thrilling situations: learning how to paint in watercolor, learning to draw animals and humans from life, and (most challenging and daunting of all) enrolling in the Story Artist Mentorship program (offered by StoryboardArt.org). At first, each of these new horizons was daunting rather than fun. To ease into watercolor, I started creating portraits of my dog, Penny. To make drawing live animals more enjoyable, I took myself to local zoos, parks, and life drawing classes. To make art practice more palatable, I created 15-20 min. frame studies, examining the composition and acting of a given shot/scene. Slowly but surely, I fell in love with art again: I became “unblocked.” I actually enjoyed the struggle of polishing my online portfolio for this application, because I now know that I have untapped creative potential, waiting to be unleashed.