2021 reflections and my 2022 creative goals
This is a slightly edited transcription of my YouTube video, reflecting on my 2021 and sharing my art goals for 2022. If you’d like to listen rather than read, you can watch it right here.
I can’t quite believe we’re a week through January already, just like I don’t understand where the last seven months of being freelance have gone either. Time has felt like a bit of a blurry concept these past two years, hasn’t it? Things have gone really quickly but dragged on like nobody’s business, and lots of events in the past year have merged into one. Positive things get drowned out with the bad ones very easily which is why I like to reflect each year to find the good in amongst the blurry.
I’ve always been very open about sharing my resolutions online, but this time I’m going to keep my personal ones to myself and share my art ones. In the past year, since going freelance and my painting and illustration has become my full time job, I’ve been very aware of what I share. Creativity is my identity and I love it, but my mental health and personal battles and wins feel like they need to be a bit more private.
A lot of the time I think my creative goals can often reflect my personal goals anyway because the two are so intertwined, in my life at least. So here we go, here are my reflections on my art practice in 2021 and my art goals for 2022.
Let’s start with my (almost) daily art challenge. If you’ve watched my YouTube videos, you’ll know that every two weeks I do a recap of my art, and if you follow me on Instagram, you’ll also know that I post every day, except for Saturdays, on my grid. Everything over there is posted real time, and I started back in August. At the time of this video going live, I’m on day 132.
I started the challenge because I wanted some focus for my day as a freelance illustrator, and I wanted something that would push me. I also wanted something that really meant I was creative everyday. I can’t imagine not doing it now but before, I didn’t paint very often. It didn’t make me less of an illustrator, of course, but I wanted to do it more, especially because now I had the time. I just didn’t make time for it, so I wanted to see if it was possible to become a habit.
I’d seen a lot of people do the 365 challenge on Instagram and had a lot of success with it. I’ve seen their audiences grow and this was a factor in me starting mine too, to see growth with my social media audience. It hasn’t catapulted my growth and compared to others it has been extremely slow, but I’ve no doubt it wouldn’t be in the same place either, had I not started posting a lot more regularly.
Lastly, and most importantly, I started the challenge because I wanted to see growth in my own creativity. I’ve always felt like I’ve lacked an art style, and what better way to find the style I like, than to experiment and create, create, create. They say to find a style you just try lots of things and see what sticks, so that's what I set out to do.
I’m very proud of my instagram grid, of the piles of artwork and the sketchbooks that have been filled. It took me yeeeears to finish a sketchbook before this, and I feel a real sense of pride now seeing these sketchbooks fill up with colour and drawings.
But, I need to make some changes to the challenge, because despite the one hundred and thirty three paintings I have created so far, I do not see growth.
I feel like I can create the same painting I do now on day 133 of the challenge as I could on day 1, and vice versa. I feel like the approach is the exact same, as would be the result. I know some people will disagree and of course I know that by doing it for so long there will, inevitably, be some subtle changes and growth, especially in myself. But I am disappointed in not being able to see big strides and changes in my artwork, in the way I approach it and the way that it comes together.
I know I hold myself to a very high standard, and people often say I am too harsh on myself. I’m a perfectionist and I do take things seriously. But this is also my full time job! You know when you’ve been at a workplace for a few years working the same job, and you feel like you’ve settled? That you don’t want to get out and find a new job that pushes you because your current one is easy and safe and comfortable? I feel like, at the end of 2021 and as I was struggling with the start of burnout in December, I realised this is exactly where I found myself.
And thankfully, I think I’ve caught it in time to nip it in the bud and find my creative excitement again. I’m grateful I started this challenge because to have found this out after this many days means I can go about changing my approach. If I hadn’t been creating so regularly, I would have kept on with the same practice for years before coming to this conclusion, because I was painting so infrequently.
This all sounds super serious doesn’t it? Sorry if it’s a bit heavy, but I am happy to say that I think I’m on my way to finding the fun with it all.
Although it didn’t start this way, it felt like towards the latter few months, I did lose my passion for painting and having to do it each day felt like a chore. I subconsciously told myself that nothing less than a finished painting was good enough. That I had to get it done before I lost the light because a poorly lit, unstyled photo was not good enough.
There were quite a few paintings, like the little plant series, the birds I did recently, that were only created because they were quick. Because I thought, oh heck I need to do my daily painting and I don’t have time to do anything that’s good but I have absolutely no idea what to draw. A few times I drew a few things and scrapped them all before settling on one that I thought was ‘OK’ to post on social media.
And that’s not what I want! This year, I have no doubt at all that there will be countless days where I lose my motivation and don’t want to pick up a paintbrush. And on those days, it will be the most important time to not give in and just create something quickly for the gram or find something that will be good enough for the algorithm.
On those days, I’ll need to look for inspiration. Maybe it’s just a colour combination, and I’ll draw two marks in a messy sketchbook and it will be enough. Two tiny swatches that I can come back to another time and say, hey, those are cool colours, let’s do something with that. Not a quick painting of a bird that I did because I had to (obviously I love painting birds but it’s one example I can think of specifically that I did because I needed something to post).
I’d also like to do more studies. Drawing and copying and learning. Trying new styles by imitating the way the old masters did it, or seeing a shape or a colour palette and trying it for my own work in my sketchbooks.
And of course the fact that the world doesn’t end if I miss a day. Being a perfectionist I want everything to go right, and I hate starting projects that don’t finish where I think they should be. But if I really have a bad day, it’s ok not to post. Social media is both good and bad for me. It helps give me accountability and I for sure wouldn’t have gotten this far if it wasn’t for such a lovely community, and I’m really grateful for that. But I also have to be careful that I’m not creating for it. That I’m creating for me.
So I’m hopeful in 2022 that everything I create will be a little bit selfish. That I will follow my motivation and passion in that moment I want to paint. That maybe I’ll paint for a few hours straight and fill up lots of pages that are just scribbles and marks, and that is enough. That I won’t feel like I need something neat and finished to photograph in my hands for instagram.
It excites me. The idea of using my hands in paint, and exploring some tactile messiness. The idea of getting a canvas and trying something abstract, no matter how strange. To do some master studies and not feel like a bad artist because it isn’t wholly mine, and it wasn’t from my imagination.
By following my spark of creativity to where it wants to go, I hope I will see the creative growth I want to achieve in this year. But with no pressure, and just pure fun. I don’t want to be following that tiny voice in my head that I didn’t really realise was controlling me, that said ‘this isn’t good enough’. As long as there’s a spark behind it, then that is exactly what I want to share.
With this, I’m also hoping to switch off from likes and algorithms and follower counts, which is something I’ve battled with forever thanks to being a classic people pleaser. I don’t like that I notice when something is doing badly. I don’t want to post something I am unhappy with but I know will catch people’s interest.
And my biggest hope with this, of doing art that the algorithm probably won’t like, is that I will grow anyway. I’ve always said that people can see the fun in a painting, and I think that’s true for the opposite too. I don't want my page to be serious and curated and neat. I want it to be messy and painty and fun! I want people to come to my page and think they can do this too! This artist is having fun and doing what she loves! That excites me and that’s how I know I am moving in the right direction.
And that is what my resolutions and goals for 2022 will be centered on. Happiness, fun and enjoyment. I think the pandemic and my anxiety has definitely numbed my creativity but I’m excited at the prospect of that coming back as I push out of my comfort zone. Maybe by the end of the challenge, I still won’t have a clue on what my style is, but at least I’ll have had fun. Fingers crossed by then that I’ll have realised a style isn’t needed anyway.
And now that I’ve written all of that, but hopefully ignited that little spark of interest and excitement in you too, here are some smaller, more tangible art goals of mine.
Paint more plein air.
I did some plein air drawings in 2021 and I loved it. The drawings weren’t my best but I loved the challenge of being outside and creating in nature. I have a good feeling when I look at them, that I know I don’t have when I look at other pieces. And, I’ve only ever drawn outside with pens and pencils. This year I want to take my paints with me and really explore painting outside. I don’t want a neat watercolour set to take with me. I want to take tubs of acrylic paint and smear it on the page, I want to take my inks and draw with a stick that I find on the ground next to me. I want to explore.
Shop my stash.
April (who goes by MonkeyMintaka on YouTube) is doing a no spend challenge at the moment and I thought that I’d try it too. I got a bit carried away with my art supply buying last year so this year I’m attempting to refrain from buying any new art materials at all. Instead, I’ll look through the supplies I already have. Obviously I’m used to using my golden trio of materials; the gouache, the coloured pencils and the neocolours, but I have so many other supplies I never use! It comes with the territory of being into art since I was young, so I have paints and markers and pencils I’ve not touched in a long time. I want to use them, push out my comfort zone and try new things. I was lucky enough to receive some new art supplies for Christmas too, so I really should be all set. No buying art supplies for at least three months, but I’m aiming for six.
Grow my Patreon
This last goal isn’t as easy as the other two, but I am aiming to grow my Patreon. If you’ve not heard of Patreon, it’s a platform you can join to support your favourite creators and get exclusive rewards, like videos, behind the scenes posts and physical goods like paintings and prints. That’s how I use mine anyway, and it was a goal of mine to start it up last year. It’s been one of the best choices I’ve made in terms of my freelance journey so far and I really want to invest more into it this year and grow the incredible community I already have there even further. If you want to see more about my practice with extra videos, things like painting process videos, blogs about my client work and where I get my references, as well as exclusive live streams where we can hang out and paint together, here’s a link to my Patreon page. The start of each month is the best time to join because Patreon will charge you the monthly fee when you join and then again on the first of each month. There are different tiers that give you different rewards depending on your pledge, but all the info will be in that link down below. Obviously, now I’ve set off on a new creative journey, I’ll be sharing more about my adventures and learnings with my Patreon community this year than I will on Instagram and my other social media platforms.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on my new direction and I’m always interested in hearing your creative goals too. Thank you so much for reading.
