Making Time to Draw

I realised recently that I haven't written a Weekly Doodle since June. I didn't make a conscious decision to stop writing them and there wasn't a point where I decided I needed a break. Life and work simply got busy, other things took priority and something I had been doing regularly gradually disappeared from my routine.

I suspect this is exactly what happens to a lot of people with drawing. Very few people actually decide that they are going to stop being creative, but when work needs doing, emails need answering and there are a hundred other things competing for your attention, sitting down with a sketchbook can suddenly feel like something that can wait until tomorrow. Do that often enough and a few days can quite easily become a few months.

The problem is that we tend to think of creative time as something we should fit into our spare time, rather than something worth making time for in its own right. If everything else on the list has to be finished before you allow yourself to draw, there is a pretty good chance you are never going to get around to it because there will always be another job waiting.

I have become increasingly convinced that creative time needs to be treated with some of the same importance as the other things we put into our diaries. That doesn't mean finding three hours every day to work on a masterpiece or feeling guilty because you haven't filled six pages of a sketchbook this week. It could simply mean deciding that twenty minutes, ten minutes or even five minutes of your day belongs to drawing and protecting that time in the same way you would any other commitment.

There is value in doing that even if you have absolutely no ambition to become a better artist. Spending a little time making something gives your brain a chance to switch away from everything else demanding your attention. More importantly, I don't think every bit of creative time needs to produce something finished or even particularly good. Sometimes the value is simply in starting something.

I decided to test this myself. I grabbed a small wire-bound A6 sketchbook and two Sakura Pigma Micron pens, an 08 and an 01, and opened the Droids prompt cards in DoodleDeck. The generator combines one of eight droid bodies with one of sixteen kawaii faces, giving me enough information to get started without telling me exactly what the finished character should look like.

I spent about five minutes drawing the two droids above. I added a few details of my own as I went along, particularly the linework on the arms, but I deliberately didn't put any pressure on myself to finish them. In fact, I think both characters are still missing something. I haven't quite put my finger on what that something is yet, and I'm perfectly happy to leave them sitting in the sketchbook until an idea comes along.

What I found interesting was what happened after I stopped drawing. I kept looking back at them and my brain started whirring away, thinking about what I could add, how I could develop them and what else I might do with the idea. The drawing itself took five minutes, but it switched my creative brain on for much longer than that.

I think that's something we can easily overlook when we tell ourselves we don't have enough time to be creative. We assume there isn't much point starting if we don't have enough time to finish, when perhaps finishing doesn't need to be the goal at all. Five minutes with a small sketchbook and a couple of pens can be enough to start an idea that you come back to later.

This is also a big part of the thinking behind Decktober, which I'll be running throughout October. I'll be sharing a simple list of prompts that you can use with DoodleDeck to help get you drawing again, but I don't want it to become another challenge where missing a day feels like you've failed or where everyone feels they need to produce 31 finished pieces of artwork.

The idea is much simpler than that. I want to give you a reason to open a sketchbook and start something.

If you've fallen out of the habit of drawing, don't wait for a free afternoon to magically appear. Grab a small sketchbook, pick a couple of pens and give yourself five minutes. Pull a prompt from DoodleDeck if you don't know what to draw and don't worry about whether you finish it.

You can always come back to it.

After accidentally taking nearly four months off from writing the Weekly Doodle, that seems like advice I should probably be following myself as well.

So this is me starting again.

- Korp