My 5 favourite ways to stay creative and kickstart your creativity in 2020

​Here are my tops tips to kickstart your creativity in 2020
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The biggest thing that usually stops me hitting the canvas is bookkeeping.  A mundane but necessary chore. Invoicing galleries and clients. Ordering prints. Photographing work.
​Then there's updating the website and hitting social media. My latest focus on the internet has been having fun with some christmas gifs and beautifying my artwork with spangles and baubles. Its a bit of fun for December.
 I have a few creative mantras that have served me very well over the years.
Creativity isn't magic, it doesn't fall from the sky like a thunderbolt.
Creativity is a habit.
Here are my five favourite ways of getting the creative habit.  ​
1. Go outside.
Ideally you'll go outside and sketch, but actually just going outside for a a bit of a walk can get your creative juices flowing again. Take the time to look, to really notice. The skies,  the changing light,  the changing seasons, nature in all its glory. Alternatively notice the mundane, the everyday, the manmade. Have a good look round.

2. Go inside.
Draw a coffee shop scene. Draw a close up of your coffee cup then draw the whole room. Accept the changes. Jot down ideas as they occur you, snippets of conversations. Find the spark to create an idea.

3. Go to a gallery.
Whether its a huge, internationally famous gallery or a little local museum. You can get inspiration from the artwork itself. The story behind it. The way the exhibition has been curated. The "feel" of the place. 
I absolutely love drawing in galleries. Standing up in front of the work, using a little hardback sketchbook. It's wonderful. and it never fails to inspire me.
I've just returned from the Leonardo exhibition at the National and you get to play with lights and see how lighting can affect the same subject and create mode an atmosphere.

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4. Create every day.
Forge a new habit of creating something everyday - a drawing,- passage of writing, a painting..but do it everyday. Draw your breakfast in the morning, draw your shoes when you take them off in the evening. 
​Little and often is key!

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5. Be prepared to fail.
Make a mess. Take yourself out of your comfort zone. Work in a medium unfamiliar or on a subject you've never tackled before.
This is the underpainting of a herd of wildebeast. . It in response to seeing a river crossing on the Masai mara and it is going to be a painting in my new solo show "Into Africa". It's a mammoth task. This painting is a battle ground. . But I have to be brave first to make the piece work.
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Make a promise that you will do something without showing it to anyone or posting on the internet. It's a way of giving yourself permission to explore something new without having make it perfect. If you experiment often enough, you might just discover something wonderful!

Do all of the above and I'm positive you'll banish artist's block and  be ready to move towards a bigger project.
Enjoy.

​If you want to discover more about drawing and sketching I still have a few place left in some of my 2020 workshops. Click on the button below to find out more.

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