Social media and media in general will have you believe that creative people live, eat,
sleep and breathe their craft. That whatever it is, it’s the one and only thing they want to do at
all times. Even I’ve had comments at times where I’m struggling with motivation where people have
said, ‘well, it doesn’t sound like this is the thing for you. It sounds like more of a chore.’
The thing is, I love painting, I can’t imagine doing anything else with my life, and I’m so
grateful that this is my career. But I don’t always want to do it. Especially if I have to.
It might be the same for you, you might have a school project or GCSE sketchbook to fill, or
something you promised to make for a family member or friend, or you’re working to improve your art
and know that to do that, you need to practice, you need to paint more often and study, paint
and draw things you might not want to to be able to better understand certain creative concepts.
For me, I’m working on a commission at the moment, and it’s great, I love it, but sometimes I just
want to do something else. Anything else. And I sit there with this blank piece of paper in
front of me and I sigh and I think ‘how can I make myself *want* to do this?’ Or, at the very least,
‘how can I make myself do this, whether I want to or not?’ And I am a professional procrastinator,
but over the years, I’ve found some really easy, practical ways to get myself in motion when all I
want to do is anything but what I’m meant to be doing, so write these tips on the front page of
your sketchbook or on a post-it on your desk, and let’s get ourselves back in the mood to make art.
You might want a journal for this or, if nothing else, just a quiet space and five
or ten minutes to sit and think. What is stopping you from doing what you're meant to be doing? And
I don’t want to hear ‘I just don’t want to.’ Delve deep, keep asking yourself the question,
‘Why?’ You might discover that you’re feeling unfocused because you’re
tired, or you don’t feel like you can get this particular thing done with the tools you have.
You might feel like you’re not capable of whatever you have set in front of you and
you’re apprehensive to start something you think you’re going to fail. You might find that you just
don’t really know where to start. Identify the thoughts, beliefs and feelings that are tripping
you up and then write down or think up as many possible solutions to those things as you can.
So, if I think about the paintings I’m working on at the moment,
even though they’re all so different, I’m finding the process a bit repetitive. I have 81
illustrations to finish in tota, they’re all the same size, they’re all gouache paintings
and I’m using the same colour palette for consistency across them all. It’s getting a bit
samey. So how could I shake things up? I could do something completely different between each
painting, like use … I could change up my environment, or stick a podcast or
audiobook on instead of the same playlist I always listen to when I’m painting. I could
even pop a YouTube video on in the background if I think that’ll make the process a bit more
interesting. I could gamify it a little bit, maybe set myself a timer for the next painting,
and then try to beat the timer for the one after that. Or try to complete the painting without ….
See how many solutions you can come up with to your problem
and try them one by one until you land on one that gets you back in the zone.
99.999% of the time, the thing holding us back is not knowing where to start. Or knowing what we
need to do, but not being able to get ourselves into action. Instead of approaching the big,
daunting task of a painting or project all at once, it helps to just do one little thing at a
time. Commit to just getting your supplies out first. That’s easy, you can do that.
You don’t have to paint anything, you’re just getting your supplies out. Then fill up your water
to clean your brushes, or sharpen your pencils, open up your sketchbook. For me, the final step in
this ‘getting ready’ stage is squeezing paint out onto my palette. At that point, I kind of have to
start because I don’t want the paint to dry there and end up being wasted. By approaching the task
slowly, one little bit at a time, you ease yourself into a little momentum that grows
and grows, until the next steps aren’t ones you even need to think about, you just do it.
Also, pro-tip, ne of my Patreon supporters, Kendall, recently commented that she does
this with her entire daily to-do list, just noting down the first small step instead of the larger,
more daunting task, and it’s something I’ve been doing for a couple of days now and it has
transformed my productivity. Instead of sitting, looking at my to-do list, procrastinating,
I think ‘well, yeah, I can at least transfer the video files to my computer’
and once I’ve done that it’s like ‘that only took a second, I might as well
start up premiere pro and load my video files into there…’ and so on.
You might not be able to trick yourself into starting, even with all your supplies laid out,
because you still might not be sure how or where to begin.
How do you take that one small step when you don’t even know what it should be? I find it helps to
just leave my half-finished work or sketch or even blank page in front of me while I do other
things. It’ll be here in front of me at my desk, between my keyboard and my screen, so whatever
else I’m working on, that piece of art I’m meant to be making is always in my line of sight. Every
once in a while, I’ll glance at it and, without choosing to, my mind starts to problem solve
by itself. It starts to try to figure out what I need to do next. The brain responds to being asked
questions, even if you’re not actively searching for answers, your subconscious is primed to find
a way forward. Keeping your artwork- and or your reference- in front of you keeps that question of
‘what next?’ or ‘how do I begin?’ right at the forefront of your thoughts until you find a way.
Another way to get that initial hesitation to start out the way is- with your blank page and
supplies in front of you- to just picture what it is you want to achieve here. What will the
finished piece look like? Then work your way back to the beginning. To get to that finished piece,
where could you begin? Do you need a sketch or a base layer of colour to build on.
Do you need to work out which values go where? Can you simplify the composition into a handful
of the most dominant shapes? Think about how you’ll start, even come up with different ways
you might be able to start. And you don’t need to think beyond the first few steps,
just imagine how you’ll begin, try it, and the rest will follow.
If all that fails, it might mean that your creative batteries need charging. Give yourself
half an hour to seek out inspiration, trawl Instagram and TikTok for art that you love
and take a close look at the details and the process, see if you can take any lessons from
what you see in the art of other people. It might be time for you to get up, move around a little,
shake the cobwebs off. I’m the weird kind of person that actually enjoys cleaning and tidying
so I usually do that when I feel like I need a refresh; it gets me moving and makes me feel
productive and it’s also not mentally demanding so my brain still has room to tick away at how I
might solve the art problem in the background. You might like popping out for a quick walk
or calling a friend and walking around in circles as you chat with them. Meditate,
read, watch YouTube videos, play with your pet, just make sure to set a timer
and come straight back to your work after half an hour at most.
Another way I love to get creative without actually working on the things I’m meant
to be working on is to do some creative art journaling. Cutting and sticking scraps of paper,
doodling and writing… it can be haphazard, messy and unstructured, there are no rules and you can
just go with the flow as you experiment with what works and what doesn't. That kind of free creative
feeling can work just as well with the project you’re struggling to motivate yourself for.
Bring that same sense of fun, curiosity and experimentation
with you as you move back into the ‘hard’ work. Just because you’re
looking for a particular outcome with it, doesn’t mean you can’t get playful with the process.
Trust yourself. Know that you are capable. You just need to try. And if it doesn’t work
out how you wanted it to, at least you did something- that you can learn from
and try again knowing that you’ll do a little bit better next time. If you think of motivation
like a muscle, the more you try, the stronger it gets, and the less you have to try next time. So
every time you think ‘ugh, I can’t be bothered.’ you can also think ‘ooh, this is a great chance
to work on my motivation muscle, so I don’t have to face so much resistance next time.’
I hope you found this video helpful, it’s not the video I was planning on making this week
but it’s been on my mind and whenever I find something that works for me, the first thing
I want to do is share it with as many people as I can. Let us know in the comments if you have
any great ways to get yourself in the mood to make art when you don’t want to. And otherwise,
thank you so much for watching and I’ll see you soon in the next one. Bye!