January Blog Post: The Art of Sketchbooking and leaning into the imperfectly perfect act of playing when you create

What took me by surprise this month, in the wake of choosing not to make any grand promises in the form of new years resolutions, led me down a path of intentionality that landed me square back into my old sketchbooking practice. It all began with an Instagram drawing challenge centred around birds, one of my favourite subjects to paint, and by aiming to participate in the daily challenge, somehow breathed new life into my art routine. 

Over the last two years I had fallen into a routine where I had highs of pure creative spark, madly painting many peices at once and then going through lulls,  buying into the idea that my creative process was  like an ocean wave that ebbs and flows, needing the down time to balance out the highs. 

But with that mentality and in those lulls, I was unintentionally losing my dexterity to work with my creative spark. 

By rediscovering the art of daily practice, even just a few minutes a day helped expand my creative energy. From the start of the month, to now the end, I can track the opening up of my creativity that happened only because I committed to a daily art practice. Some days I would only have time to do a quick pen drawing, throwing down some quick watercolour or gouache to add colour. Other days I could languish and delve deeper into the art idea I had for the day. As the #birbfest challenge hosted by the lovely @monkeymintaka comes to a close, I have found that through this process, I have freed myself of any prior constructs of what I could and couldn’t do with my art. 

The art of daily sketching has opened  up my  mind to the possibilities and places where inspiration can be found. Suddenly everything around  me is a possible sketch and a joyful moment waiting to be experienced. 

Definitely not trying to make any grand gestures here but I want to keep exploring this practice of daily sketching throughout the rest of the year, and I would love to have you join me in this very idea.

Take away all the intentions of wanting to create G-R-E-A-T art and just allow yourself to PLAY. 

Freedom comes from small creative moments every single day. After all, creativity is a muscle and the more we use it the closer we get to that free playful state that is the mother of invention. It’s what breathes life into an artist’s soul.

As we head into February, I will continue to join in on art challenges, because I am finding them to be absolutely incredible tools to help work that creative muscle. I believe in them so much that I offer you a small prompt list of my very own, one for each week to help with joyfinding through creativity. And since we are going through a winter of polar vortex temps, I have focused the themes on the indoors.