Those of us who do creative projects do them because they make us happy. But sometimes we get frustrated instead. In this episode, Janine and Shannon discuss how to stay happily creative.
Discussion topics include:
- Shannon’s unhappily stalled creativity
- The illustrated story-telling event that Shannon is participating in
- How practicing creativity less frequently can make it less enjoyable
- Shannon’s regret that she didn’t keep up her visual diary through the pandemic
- Creating parameters to make a daily creativity practice easy
- Turning off your inner critic while you’re creating
- Janine’s hand-lettered task list
- How an organizational infrastructure can help you stay happily creative
- How adding limits can increase the happiness factor
- The inspiring daily creativity practice of one of Shannon’s friends (check out the show notes to see the images!)
- Pondering letting a daily creativity practice be easy
- How perfectionism can get in the way of happy creativity
- Shannon’s question to herself: What’s the smallest thing I can do every day that would make me happy?
- The wacky way we came up with this topic
A note from Shannon: I did start a new creativity project! I cut up watercolor paper into small, 2″x2″ squares, and I’m sketching a little something on one side, and a short explanation on the reverse. Here’s a peek:
Here’s the first panel of Shannon’s illustrated story:
And here’s a sample of Shannon’s friend’s daily flower-drawing practice:
Hi, Shannon and Janine! Love your conversation, as always. Here are answers to the questions Janine asked about my drawing the same thing over and over practice that is giving me so much comfort right now. I use a variety of things to draw on: Strathmore Watercolor Cards and Watercolor Postcards, 1/4 sheet pieces of watercolor paper (cut on my mom’s old guillotine paper cutter), artist trading cards, and then the ones pictured here are 110-lb white card stock from the office supply store cut in half then folded in half to make small cards (I like to use a bone folder to get a nice sharp crease). I will eventually use them for correspondence— I have lots of pen pals— and I store them in various boxes saved from store-bought cards. The ones pictured here were colored with Prismacolor colored pencils, and for the watercolor ones, I’ve been using a variety of watercolor paints and watercolor pencils. Thank you for letting me participate in your conversation in this small way!
Darcy, thank you so much for supplying this information and satisfying my curiosity! (This is Janine writing.) Your pen pals will be so lucky to receive correspondence on these beautiful cards! We appreciate your allowing us to share your practice.