Challenge Yourself

The moment your art stagnates, it is instantly half as effect. Whether you are a writer, painter, or fighter, this is true. Art itself, regardless of its form, is about growing, living, experiencing new things. When you are a beginner in an art, these things are happening constantly and in large quantities. The higher you go, the better you get in your art, the harder it becomes to reach a new level.

If you feel yourself bored or on a plateau or some other form of stagnant, it is because you aren't being challenged. Even if you are doing good work, even if you are putting in hard work, if you aren't growing, that work is only half as effective. So start growing. Start challenging yourself. If you don't know how, then recreate the circumstances you were in when you were a growing beginner.

Beginners either have a teacher or they teach themselves. If you had a teacher, then find a new one. It doesn't need to be somebody who sits over your shoulder and holds your hand, but it does need to be somebody you can learn from. Ask them for advice on where you can go from where you are. If they know more than you do, they should be able to at least guide you in the right direction and give you an idea what to look for.

If you are self-taught, then you either stole your knowledge from others or you experimented until you got it right. When I say stealing, I don't mean it in a malicious way. I just mean that you can see somebody's style and copy it in order to understand through reverse engineering. Experimenting (A.K.A. fake it 'til you make it) is like throwing stuff in a pot until they turn into something edible.

If you stole your knowledge from other people, then find a new person to steal it from. Find somebody better than you, somebody who can do something that you can't do. Find somebody to look up to and try to reach their level. If you experimented, then keep on experimenting. Why stop just because you found one recipe that worked? Find another one, now with the added knowledge of your past experiments.

The most difficult place to be in art is the middle. You either think you know everything or you just don't know what the next thing is. If you cared enough about your art to pursue it this far and care enough about it to get bothered when you're bored of it, then care enough to get past these problems and push yourself above the middle tier.