Creative play

My style (see previous post about style exploration) is mostly quite flat, with little traditional texture (I do like to add texture with scribbles, mark-making and blocks of colour, though). And I love this style and have settled into it and it (currently – style is something that evolves with you and mine has definitely evolved over the last few years) feels very much like ‘home’.

But it’s so important, I feel, to include creative play in your schedule. And on a regular basis, too, whether that be daily, weekly or setting aside a couple of full days every month, or even a whole week or two each quarter.

Play with new media or tools. Play around with different colour palettes, or limited palettes – or throw in a mass of colour, if you usually use a very limited palette. Explore different subject matter, or go abstract. Try out making patterns if you normally do placement pieces or editorial illustration. Have a go at drawing for the children’s market, if that’s not your usual area…

Play for fun and to grow and learn

At the very least, playing can be fun. It gives you the chance to explore without needing to keep to a brief, or narrow your focus. But often it can give a lot more back than that. Even if it’s not something that ends up directly feeding into your future work, you will have flexed some different creative muscles, you might have gleaned some nuggets of insight about colour that use to tweak something in your next client piece, you might have learnt something about composition from working on an abstract piece that then feeds into a children’s book…

Mindful art practice

I also try to fit in a fair bit of what I feel is mindful art practice. If it’s digital, this often uses the symmetry tools in Photoshop or Procreate. I especially love watching a mandala-style piece grow almost organically!

To share or not to share?

… that is the question.

I love sharing. Possibly a bit too much. I tend to share my sketchbook work and some of my creative play (not all of it, but a lot of it) on Instagram. More recently, I’ve started dabbling in using reels and stories, which are still really quite alien to me, and I never seem to get my process videos the right length to work properly as a reel and it ends up wanting to take some video of my coffee table or the cat (hmm, maybe I should let it video the cat – cats are big on social media, right?). People have advised that stories are a great place to share creative play, especially when you’re not entirely sure you like it, but you want to get it out there to satisfy that urge to share!

I do like the feedback you get from sharing to the main Instagram feed though. Especially when you get new people commenting or finding you because of something different you’re trying. But then it messes with the grid, darnit! I have wondered if it might be an idea to have a separate sketchbook and creative play insta account. (I do already have three instas, though the other two or not specific to art – one is my travel account, which I’m clearly posting to constantly at the moment; and the other is my reading account, where I post a photo and sometimes some actual thoughts on the books I read.)

What about you?

I’d love to hear what you do. Do you post everything to the same Instagram account, or do you have a separate one for sketchbooks and creative play? Or even two for different styles and markets?

And what about having a sketchbook and creative play page on your portfolio? Do art directors like to see this? I’ve certainly heard a lot of anecdotes about art directors asking to see sketchbooks before commissioning an illustrator, though not had that experience myself.