Your creativity. Your time. Your responsibility.

Have you made any New Years resolutions? I sure hope that they have to do with creativity and drawing. Because those things matter. They make you happy!

I think of my creative habit not just at the beginning of a new year, but all year round. Below are my thoughts about it and I hope they are useful for you.

1. Take responsibility and commit

We can wait for some opportunity (or worse: “inspiration”!) 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 we kidding anyway?

I can think about going to the gym, but that’s not going to make me build any muscles, 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!

Make that commitment to yourself and take it seriously. Your time for drawing matters. In fact, it makes all the difference in how you’ll feel.

2. Become fearless

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? Nobody’s life depends 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. Yay!

3. Just Do it.

With every step you take, you will get such a great feeling of accomplishment. More importantly: you are treating yourself! I love treating myself to a nice cup of coffee (at home or outside), and combining it with 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!