Creative Growth Challenge

When you are looking for ways to improve your creative skills, one of the best solutions is to give yourself a challenge. This can be as simple as drawing 100 circles. You’re bound to get better as drawing circles if you repeat the task over and over. This also removes the anxiety of needing to “get it right”. 

Creative expression is personal and each of us will create things in our own way. Even in a classroom full of students learning to draw a figure, each drawing will look unique. Each line drawn belongs to the artist and holds the ideas and history of that person. However, sometimes to learn a new technique we look to another artist for direction. 

It’s not uncommon to copy the art style of another artist as part of the process of learning a technique. Even the masters copied artwork in order to learn how it was done. If you see a painting technique that inspires you and you want to learn how it’s done, you can practice by trying to mimic what you see. 

This isn’t about making art that looks like someone else’s work. This is about challenging yourself to try something new and stretch your creative muscle. This is about learning a technique that is new to you and that you might want to incorporate into your personal style. This might even work as a warm up to your regularly scheduled creative practice.

Try This

1. Find a simple line drawing that you admire that has been created by another artist. 
2. Get a clean piece of paper and a pencil
3. While looking at the reference drawing, try drawing the same thing on your piece of paper. 
4. Repeat this exercise with different materials: crayons, pens, highlighters, watercolor paint… 
5. Try repeating the exercise with your non-dominant hand
6. Share your thoughts on our Facebook page!