The Power of Now (3)
Mindset
You can gain much from seeing how someone creates art. Running online courses gives unique insights into studio practice. I offer that, but where I hope I add value is with insight into my mindset when making art. The feedback I receive for courses, holds this as most beneficial to permission to create and find flow. With a life time of making and nearly 30 years working as a designer and artist, then a tutor and mentor, how do I keep on keeping on? How do I evolve and stay unique? They are the questions to ask fellow makers and artists, and they are the questions I hope to tackle on my online courses as well as in my posts here and those for my paid membership subscribers.
How you think as a creative/maker/artist is your uniqueness.
We are all born thinking outside of the box, building our experience of being human by play and trial and error. Then we learn the boundaries and most often we become less explorative, but it’s a skill that you can re-learn. Play, curiosity, explorative learning, are the key starting points on all of my sketchbook and art courses.
Your approach to making art will be informed by many factors;
life experience
personal development
education
cultural framework
Once you allow for these individualities, and let yourself be you, indeed try to be more you, there is a much easier route to creative output. Instead of trying to fit into a box of perceived ‘good art’ and ‘successful art’, it is necessary to allow your imperfections, your idiosyncratic foibles to shine through to help define your unique, expressive voice.
Can you let yourself live, breathe, do and accept the outcome?
New work can feel challenging to ‘birth’. Accepting that doubt is part of the creative process helps. Art by Helen Hallows helenhallows.com
Can you maintain the will to try, fail and try again without self judgement or criticism? In the moments of ‘now’ that today presents you with, be more curious, more explorative. Choose different. Choose analogue. Choose slow. Silence the noise of social media, television, radio - let yourself still into creative spaciousness.
As a reflective exercise, ask yourself what shaped your unique, creative self? Ask what makes you quirky? What makes you tick? What stops you being more ‘them’ and allows you to be more ‘you’? In the answers to these questions you discover your unique voice. Breathe into this acceptance of self, and be more you.
In a world where old modes are crumbling, there’s scope for rapid change and developing new ways of self-expression, new output beyond the modes we have been fed (or constricting) ourselves with, allows evolution of self, but also I hope, evolution of society. How you interpret the world around you gives meaning and context to others. It forges and inspires connections and gives others permission to play with ideas and forge the new.
How does ‘now’ and all the political threats and upheavals change your practice? How do you develop creativity to find your voice and send out ripples of hope?
Find more courses that connect the dots and help you build a regular practice and keep evolving creatively at helenhallows.com
Join my membership by becoming a paid subscriber here on Substack.
Thank you for reading this. I post three free-to-read posts each month and a subscriber post that I publish on the first of every month. It’s a magazine style post where I share, over a three monthly cycle, inspirations, creative wellbeing advice, how to manage creative block and move to creative flow. I share lessons from my online courses in the form of a ‘dose’ of creativity to kickstart your sketchbook practice (next video mini-lesson in March). Coming in 2025 are interviews with other artists on how they use a sketchbook (February) as well as news from my studio and insights into my creative practice. Join my tribe for £5 a month or £50 a year and get access to all my previous posts too.
