#creative habit

[exmormondragon]

I love this style of silhouette, and drawing it. Just a little peek into another world.

[kieranczy]

I missed a lot of dailies, so I made up for it by doing one long comic!

[spookysunfish]

for one of my classes last semester, i had to do speedpaints from photos in an hour or less about four to five times a week for a month. they were really tough at first with the time limit, so they improved as i went along. this is the first one!

i finally decided that i should post them here, i was thinking maybe one every day if i can remember.

the photos they’re based off of are not mine, for the purpose of this assignment it was best that i used landscape photos from a variety of photographers. you can find all of these photos in my landscape and aesthetic tags if youre interested in the photographer, or i could try linking them in the descriptions.

[exmormondragon]

Drew this one today! I won’t get a drawing out every day, but today I did.

[kieranczy]

it’s been rough

[kieranczy]

Frankie here was meant to be a therapy animal for me, but he’s just been adding to my stress levels. He’s going to be taken care of by some family o’ mine until next year. I’m going to miss him, but I’m not going to miss waking up at 4am to his meowing.

[kieranczy]

 do you ever come up with something at 5am and think it's the funniest thing?

[cathrynworrell]

How to encourage yourself to draw more

I’m always reluctant to say with any certainty that I’m drawing every day again because it feels like somehow, announcing it will magically cause a downward spiral of my health and energy, and I'll stop drawing for a prolonged period.

Even so, the ups and downs of life with an energy-limiting chronic illness can be extreme. Periods of relatively stable, ‘OK’ energy are interwoven with much more difficult days or weeks and it’s at these times when being creative feels hardest.

Over the past couple of years I’ve felt these extremes much more frequently than I have for a long time. So perhaps it’s understandable that my creative habit has felt quite elusive.

But the problem I find is that if I stop drawing all together, then starting again feels like a huge mountain to climb. If I’m starting from a stationary point it’s more difficult to nudge myself to move the pen across the page than it is if I’m already regularly making marks in my sketchbook.

When I stop drawing all together, I might sometimes feel inspired or excited to draw but I can’t find my sketchbook or the pen I want to use. I can’t decide what to draw and while all this busyness is going on, my energy and enthusiasm wane and at worst, I start to wonder if there’s any point in drawing anyway.

So over the past few months I’ve found a few things that help me maintain a very gentle daily-ish drawing habit:

Make it easy to get started

I make sure that there’s space for me to draw, whether that’s by tidying my desk or putting art materials in other spots around my home. That way, when I come to draw, some of the barriers are removed and everything’s ready.

It doesn't have to be perfect. I might sit on the living room floor or use a corner of the kitchen table while dinner's cooking but I'm creating space for myself to make something.

Drawing instead of scrolling

Rather than picking up my phone and scrolling, which is something I find myself doing in the evenings while watching TV*, I try to make sure there’s a pen and sketchbook next to where I sit so I can reach for them instead.

A wobbly drawing made while I balance my sketchbook precariously on my lap feels much more satisfying than mindlessly staring at my phone.

Remembering why you draw

When I feel my inner voice telling me that drawing is pointless, I remind myself that drawing makes me feel better, not physically but mentally.

It doesn’t really matter what I draw or even for how long, I know that it lifts my mood. So I gently nudge myself to pick up a pen because it feels like a form of self care.

Reward your drawing habit

If you’d asked me a few weeks ago I would have told you that I had maybe 2 or 3 unfinished sketchbooks but when I checked, I kept finding more that I’d forgotten about. So before I allow myself to buy a new sketchbook I’m challenging myself to fill the ones I already have.

It feels like a good thing to use them (that’s what they’re for!) and it encourages me to draw every day, because each drawing brings me one step closer to a brand new sketchbook.

Don’t get precious about your drawings

I often feel very tempted with new sketchbooks to keep them for something specific, or to create only my ‘best’ work in them.

But that’s not what sketchbooks are for. It’s also a huge amount of pressure because following this line of logic would mean that if one drawing's not 'perfect' the whole sketchbook's ruined. That makes no sense and is one of the best ways to stifle any sense of creativity that I might have.

Instead I’m allowing myself to draw anything and everything all in the same sketchbook. It might be a slow drawing that I spend an hour on or a quick scribble that takes a few minutes.

Maybe it’s messy or doesn’t turn out quite how I had hoped but that’s OK because I made a drawing.

Stay curious and learn from each drawing

On a related point, rather than judge my drawings when they don’t look quite how I’d anticipated, I try to stay curious about them instead.

Each drawing's part of a learning process so I ask myself: what do I like about this drawing? How did I feel while I was making that drawing? What might I do differently next time?

Analysing each drawing this way, even for just a minute or two, helps me to avoid judging them harshly and talking myself out of making a drawing in the future.

Would you like more gentle encouragement to draw in your sketchbook? Why not join me on Patreon for regular prompts and a friendly nudge to keep going? You’ll also get to see more of my process, sketchbook pages and favourite art materials.

(* am I really watching TV if I'm scrolling on my phone? That's a whole other conversation!)