Building a Bridge to Your Creativity

Sometimes there’s a little devil on my shoulder who goes by the name of Procrastination, and he tries his darndest to get me to do everything BUT sit down and work on my art.  And some days, on the opposite shoulder, is a well intentioned angel who as much as she would love to work on her art, she’s been so drained by the stresses of a corporate job that she simply cannot muster the creative energy needed to do what she loves… oh wait… that’s me… haha!  I’ve been battling with both as of late.  And I’ll be honest, it really sucks, and it’s really frustrating and hard.  So, whats a girl to do when these blocks come up, preventing her from being as open and creative as she wishes?

If you’ve ever gone (or are currently going) through this I hope that what I’m about to tell you will give you that wonderful ‘lightbulb moment’ like it did with me, and will help banish that little devil/angel so you can get on with your artistic creations.

My very wise Fairy Godmother (yes, I actually have one) once told me during a particularly difficult talk about this very topic… “You must build a bridge to your creativity.  Like your yoga practice, you cannot jump immediately into Grasshopper without first warming up your hips, otherwise you could really hurt yourself.

In yoga you must warm up (build your bridge) toward doing the more difficult poses so when you get there you can do it with more ease and grace.  So with your art, you must do the same.  You have to build your bridge to get to where your creativity lies so that you can be in a place of contentment and artistic inspiration.  Quiet peaceful mind = space to CREATE.”  This is when the lightbulb went off in my head… It resonated with me because in the past when the devil/angel would appear, it was usually when I was trying to deep dive directly into one of the intense pages for my book, Planet Harmonium, usually after a stressful day.  The sheer terror of messing up something that I had already put so many hours into, and needed to be perfect made the devil/angel come up even more. So, I took my Fairy Godmother’s advice and first built the bridge… warming up to sit down and at long last work on my intense piece, unaffected by the pestering devil/angel.  What I did was to get out a piece of paper and just roughly sketch anything that came to mind.  The key word here is ‘rough sketch’ because you just want to start the flow of creativity and be loose with it… nothing serious just yet, just get really silly and messy!  The same goes for coloring.  I play with my many different colored pencils and do rough color comps to see what colors work well together.  You have no idea how much this gets the creative juices flowing.  Before you know it, your mind will be calm and focused and nothing will be able to prevent you from starting on your official piece.  There ain’t no stopping ya!!

I hope this helps you as much as its helped me.  Bring forth that creative energy from deep inside and let it burst onto the page with kaleidoscope colors abound!!

Have fun CREATING!

xoxo,

Jen

(Grasshopper photo found on Tumblr)

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