How do I even start?! 🤷‍♀️

For these new blog posts, I want to inspire you to draw and paint.

For some of you, that could be something completely new and you won’t feel very brave about starting (hence the title!) and for some of you it could be you are returning to it after years away when life somehow got in the way.

I understand the latter and have empathy with the former!

Starting at any point on your journey (even if you have done art before) can be overwhelming and worrying.

You don’t want to mess up.

You don’t want to get things wrong.

You are without doubt going to be extremely self-critical

Oh, and everyone is going to laugh at what you produce!

Am I right?

Well, I’m here to tell you that I had this same conversation the other day during an art session I was running, so I want you to know this is absolutely normal!

And it’s all true (sort of!)

Yes, you will mess up – you have to.

How will you learn otherwise?! You will also make a lot of mess! Making mistakes is all part of your journey. It’s part of any journey in life, isn’t it? You need to tune into your inner child. Remember the one? The one who was creative until they weren’t. The one who didn’t worry about mistakes and what their work looked like. The one who had fun with pencils, crayons, paints… actually anything they could get their hands one… mud, anyone?!

Art needs to be approached with a child-like curiosity.

Play with paint. Play with pencils. Get it wrong (yes, you can screw it up and throw it away!).

Explore what happens when you mix this with that… not just paint colours. What about different media? What about different types of paint?

Learn what they do. Learn what you can’t do. Break the rules sometimes!

Yes, you will be extremely self-critical. That’s normal.

You will also get criticism. We’ve been past that era when we didn’t care what people think (and some of us are heading towards the next similar era!). Somewhere around puberty, we started caring what people think about everything we do. Some creative people were rebellious (or strong, or talented) enough not to care, but you and me could be the others…

Learn to take feedback and use it for your next project. Ask questions. Keep that curiosity.

Think of your art journey like you would anything you want to learn about. Yes, it is more visible than some things, but it needn’t be. A sketchbook can contain a whole lot of scribbles and no-one would know!

Ok, so we’ve tackled your worries. So where do you start?

Start small. Start messy. Start playing!

Scribble, doodle, draw shapes.

Play with colour. It doesn’t have to be a picture of anything. It could be a whole sheet of colour blocks, each one different. Scribble across your page and fill in each section with a different colour – remember doing that as a child?!

If you do one thing this week, do that - here's mine 👇

Let’s get you started and lets have some fun doing it!