Creative confidence tips
End of January bonus - Tips and ticks that help me!
Hello! Happy January the 31st!
Tomorrow is February - a new month! The long January is over, and it is a fresh month, and one step closer to Spring. To celebrate, here is a list of tips and tricks that I have collected over the years. I often say to the students on the MA in tutorials or add them at the end of talks I give. They are the things I have found the most useful in this crazy journey I have been on, leaving my full-time job, to become a children’s book illustrator, back in 2019.
As a bonus for my new and treasured paid subscribers, I am adding a bonus three extra tips, that are my personal favourites and the ones I see as closest to my own heart!
These are tips I developed and learned as I moved through my journey back into art as an adult and on the MA, and I want to start with one for those of you who are on a learning journey (we all are, of course) but for those of you beginning something that still feels relatively challenging:
TIP 1: when you begin a creative journey, you will feel exposed and vulnerable, and it makes you feel pretty crappy. Don’t run away from that bad feeling, it means you are learning, stretching yourself and changing. Let it happen. This is so important. If you feel too good, you might be staying too much in your comfort zone. By stretching yourself, you learn and get better. Instead, focus on finding ways to support yourself through the challenge of learning. Take breaks when you need to, walks, comfort telly, music (this always lifts my mood). And of course, switch back and forth with nice comfort zone stuff too.
TIP 2: Look back as well as forward. It's easy to keep moving onward and always be in the making zone, but remember to stop and take stock periodically, and reflect on what you have done. I also find this useful to do when I am drawing. Stop, put it down and look at what you're doing, assess what you think is working, and what isn't. Set some intentions, and then keep going. This is not so much about confidence as a short hack, but over time, you get to know yourself and will learn to trust your own judgement more, which is a much deeper level of self-confidence.
TIP 3: Just do it! When you feel stuck and have creative block, my best tip is to just make. a. start. Do anything. Once you start your fear will dissolve a little bit, and you'll find you can carry on. This works really well for me. If I am feeling resistant to doing work, and can feel procrastination knocking on the door, I tell myself: right, time to set a timer, and just do “one hour”. It ALWAYS gets me going, and then I often can’t stop. This was a game changer for me when I began doing this.
TIP 4: Your "bad" drawings, are generally "bad" because you are trying something new. This is EXCELLENT and should not be judged as “bad”. I often will cheer a student for making a drawing they say is “bad” because it means they are stretching themselves. This is related to, but not the same as TIP 1.
TIP 5: Draw "blind" (don’t look at the paper as you draw something in front of you) and do continuous line drawing (don’t take the pen off the paper as you draw) to help loosen you up, and remind you to look. The more you do this, the more fluent you feel, and that really does help with confidence. I promise. Try it!
TIP 6: If you get stuck, do something different. Give yourself permission to procrastinate creatively. I think of it as taking a side step. If you're stuck on a screen print, do a monoprint. If you're stuck on watercolour, do something in gouache. I find that moving away from something and then coming back to it, gives you the perspective you need, and sometimes you make a discovery using a different but similar medium.
And for my lovely paid subscribers, three extra tips…
This is your last chance to get 20% off for a whole year - the offer ends at the end of January. I won’t do any more offers for a while after this, so if you are considering upgrading, now is an ideal time. And it means you can join me right at the beginning of a fresh new year, which is always nice isn’t it?