Reframing our creative mindset

Yesterday I spent much of the day painting for my sister and then got to come visit for a quick overnight stay ane meet her cats. It's her birthday next week and was her cats’ birthday a few days ago.

Perfect excuse to spend a day painting.

Most of my commercial work is done digitally, though often with some early ideation and reference studies in a sketchbook. Digitally, I can change colours, I can add texture much more quickly, I can change the position of an arm, or easily add or remove details.

These are all really useful for paid work which, in my personal experience at least, is so often needed quickly. And I am very grateful to the iPad (and the Surface and the Wacom – though, honestly, mostly to the iPad) for all it enables me to do.

However, Morning Ink practice has reminded me that I need to spend more time in a sketchbook and with the limitations of physical media. It's there that you find new ways of looking at things, new patterns and textures, new preferences in line and perspective, new thoughts on composition, and just plain new insights into your creative brain.

The monochrome nature of my Morning Ink practice is really important to me. That limitation makes me more focused on ‘just’ drawing – focused on shape, line, subject and, especially, pattern.

But yesterday spent squeezing paint from tubes and splashing brushes into Bonne Maman jam jars of water showed me there is more to explore on paper (or wood!).

Playing with colours that can't be tweaked by moving HSB sliders, but instead need to be used as is, or adjusted by mixing them together, watering them down, adding white…

Playing with texture using the idiosyncrasies of the brush or the paper, or by adding other media on top.

Fixing the composition from the start – or cutting work up with scissors or knives, or just ripping, and then placing back in other positions.

Not being able to quickly change colours with a fill bucket, clipping layer or blending mode. Not being able to double-tap (or Ctrl + Z) and redo that line that wasn't quite right.

Having to add pattern and symmetry slowly and mindfully and with all the little quirks and unevenness and not exactly matching motifs that brings.

All of this goes to build up amd evolve our style and voice and, while I can do a lot of this digitally, the having to do it when creating analogue feels very different.

It's not stopping me from using the tools that provide efficiency and speed when creating final pieces. Currently, other than cards and wood slices hand-painted for friends and family, traditional media is not really forming part of my final pieces and I'm not looking for it to. But it is, more and more, informing and inspiring those final pieces. Which I feel very good about.

So, I think it shouldn't be about ‘finding an excuse’ to spend a day (or a morning or an evening, or a week) painting, and exploring other physical media. It should be about building time to do that into the rest of my practice, as I have done with the Morning Ink.

Whether that looks like setting aside a full day every week, an evening a few times a week or month, or maybe just ten minutes before or after Morning Ink, is something I will experiment with and may change according to the balance of client work.

I'd love to know whether you set aside regular times for analogue creation or if you get this kind of growth by digital means.