CHALLENGE 19

Having fun

YOUR LEARNING PHASE WILL SOMETIMES FEEL DISCOURAGING AND REPETITIVE. NO MATTER WHAT STAGE YOU’RE IN, IN ORDER TO GET THROUGH DIFFICULT PERIODS MORE EASILY, KEEP YOUR CREATIVE FLAME ALIVE BY LOOKING AT YOUR ART AS PLAY. DON’T TAKE YOURSELF TOO SERIOUSLY, AND JUST BE WILLING TO HAVE FUN. THE MORE YOU ENJOY YOUR ACTIVITY, THE MORE YOU WILL WANT TO PRACTICE IT, AND THE MORE YOU WILL STIMULATE YOUR IMAGINATION. THE GOAL OF THIS CHALLENGE IS TO MAKE YOUR PRACTICE MORE FUN BY TRYING ONE OF THE THREE ACTIVITIES SUGGESTED HERE.

Playing

When you are feeling a lull in your creativity, you feel overwhelmed, or you just can’t manage to find inspiration anywhere, think of your art as play. Don’t have any goal in mind. Express yourself without judgment and without thinking about the end result. Make circles, symbols, mandalas, doodles, dots, graffiti, patterns, close your eyes, and so on. Just put colors on paper and let yourself be guided by what you find fascinating. Surrender to this form of meditation. Reconnect with your sense of childlike joy and put your imagination to work. Just play with your material, according to whatever whim strikes you in the moment, with no particular constraint except for the goal of finding pleasure in creating. Play is a good way to warm up at the beginning of a creative session.

Vary your artistic practices

In order to stimulate your creativity, feel free to change up your modes of expression. Try out different techniques, media, styles, or even a new artistic practice (challenge 5). Give yourself the possibility to change your habits and to remake yourself by following your curiosity. By having fun with these new techniques, you will also be improving your main practice and stimulating your imagination.

Setting yourself a challenge

If you find it boring to try to develop your technical skills, why not work on them in the form of a challenge? This has the advantage of connecting play with a structure (in terms of time, rules, space, etc.). It will give you the chance to experiment without too many expectations for your final result.

For example, the American artist, illustrator, and writer Lisa Congdon proposes a simple challenge in Danielle Krysa’s book Creative Block: Get Unstuck, Discover New Ideas. Congdon’s idea is that you should choose a theme or an object to paint every day for thirty days in a different way (changing up media, colors, angles, etc.).

You will also find different ways to push yourself through play in challenge 29.