3 Tips to Give Yourself a Kick-in-the-pants

As I am still slowly moving out of my sabbatical by starting interesting projects and teaching in-person workshops, I am contemplating what other steps I will take in terms of fulfilling my  mission to guide people on their creative journey. Of course there are my weekly Draw Tip Tuesdays and a stack of work to do to self-publish my book about drawing (!), so those are going to need attention for sure. I have tons of ideas for next steps, maybe I’ll add more tiers to my Patreon Pagepatreon.com/koosjekoene, for example. But you can only do so much at the same time. So I’ll take it step by step, and the answers will come. That’s how it has always worked for me when making big life changes or career decisions.

It was so good to be guiding an in-person workshop again in Amsterdam for 20 people together with my friend Sabine Wisman a month ago, and we have lots of plans brewing, so there will be more!

But anyway, I am often reminded by online followers as well as workshop participants, of the struggles many of us have when it comes to making time to draw. 

These are struggles that may be very familiar to you as well:

‘I really want to make art, but I don’t have time’,
‘I procrastinate, even though I know I feel happy when I make art’,
‘I think of sitting down to draw, but then I don’t’.

Trust me, I’ve been there too. But after years of keeping a sketchbook habit, I found my ways.

Here are 3 tips to give yourself that extra push to take action

1. Take responsibility

You can wait for some opportunity to miraculously pop up, or wait for the moment that finally the week turns into 8 days, life gets less busy, or an hour consists of 80 instead of 60 minutes. But let’s be honest… who are you fooling anyway?
I can think about going to the gym, but that’s not going to make me burn any calories, is it?
I can think about sitting down with a drink and doing a drawing, but if I don’t follow up on that thought, that next page of my sketchbook remains empty.

Create your own opportunity for your creativity time.
The only person who can make it happen is you. Nobody else is going to tell you regularly to open your sketchbook and just have some fun. It’s no use to blame circumstances or make excuses. There is always a way if you put your mind to it.
Even a five minute doodle is better than no drawing at all. Allow yourself to have that fun and feel better for it!

2. Stop being scared

When it comes to creativity, you decide what the rules are. Your sketchbook is your playground. Try new things, take risks that might lead to doing a ‘bad drawing’ (but you might surprise yourself if you do it anyway!). Your inner critic may object by saying something like ‘if you spend your precious time on doing a drawing, it better be a good one’, or: ‘you’re bad at drawing perspective, why even try?’

Step out of that comfort zone and go for it. You need to follow new paths to learn and grow. You need to make drawings with wonky perspectives to learn and do it a little bit better next time.

After all: what can really go wrong? Your life doesn’t depend on it. It’s just pen and paper. If you don’t like the drawing that you made, turn the page and there’s a new canvas for more playtime.

3. Just Do it.

With every step you take, you will get such a great feeling of accomplishment. Not only that, you are treating yourself! I love treating myself to a nice cup of coffee (at home or outside), and drawing time.
And how about this: you don’t need to beat yourself up for making excuses. You simply don’t make them anymore and give yourself permission to play and have fun with your art tools. It's a win-win!