How to Use Doodling to tap into your Creativity

Hi there! Let me ask you a question, When you see a person doodling, do you assume they are just scribbling and wasting their time?

Maybe that’s not the case. What if the purpose of doodling or drawing is discovery? What if drawing helps her or him feel more comfortable with doubt or helps them approach problems with more flexibility? What about doodling to clarify your thoughts?

Here are a few examples where doodling can help you see things in unexpected ways.

To stimulate discussion

A group setting is a natural place for drawing to clarify thinking and messaging.

Whether we’re brainstorming or outlining tasks on a piece of paper, explanatory drawings can help us process and remember information.

To teach ideas and enhance presentations and videos

Instead of developing a series of presentation slides, explain a process by drawing and using clear messaging.

Simply doodled figures can be a great way to illustrate concepts.

To solve a problem

You can tackle any problems by sketching its components and visualizing a range of answers. Often one solution will stand out as the best option.

For the simple joy of freeing your mind

Drawing can tap into a part of our minds that feels like play, particularly when we’re generating ideas that are not constrained.

Blue-sky sketching is a great technique to use. Start with a clear question and goal. Free your mind from factors that would normally be restrictive – things like budget, timing, resources, and technology.

You should gather ideas until no more are forthcoming. When you are done with your sketches, look them over and focus on the ones that have promise.

For personal inspiration

Keep a drawing journal with images, inspirations, and photos. It doesn’t matter if you can draw well or not. Just do it!

Buy a sketch pad or book, color markers or pencils and set aside 15 minutes a day to doodle. Doodles can spark ideas!

These ideas can be a combination of things swirly around in your head (enter here the image of Dumbledore and the pensieve; #potterhead #geek) that could transform into something else entirely. Think of it as your 15-minute creativity warm-up.

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How I´m planning my year as a creative business

Hi there! I hope you had a wonderful break over the festive period but now is time to get back to the day to day routine and work. I have always enjoyed seeing how other creatives plan the year ahead for success. What tools they use and all that is it involves.

So I thought I would share with you what I´ll be using this year to keep myself on track to achieve my goals.

The first thing I did was a brain dump, of all the things I wanted to do, create and be involved with. Get a notebook and a pen, write everything that come to mind down.

I bought myself a planner that would help me with that, the Livvit Planner. I really like that it comes with ¨Instrctutions¨, to guide you and follow to make the best used of the planner.

I thought this will help with the overwhelm of Where do I start? Right?

Also, I bought the book The Bullet Journal Method. But not create those beautiful spreads you see on the internet, you know I´m a bit of minimalist. But to get the behind the scenes of methodology #I´m geeky like that!#.

Being able to organized aspect of your business, as well as your day to day life applying the same principals is a great thing. The focus is on making sure you are targeting the right things based on your life goals.

So far the story behind it is very interesting, I´ll tell you how it goes!

I´ll be doing business coaching as well with my mentor Amanda Creek from Amanda Creek Creative (link to Amanda´s page). I started working with her last year and it was amazing the results that achieved.

I achieved the clarity and direction I much need it. She is amazing and such a sweetheart! 100% recommended!

Amanda recommended Trello an App that can help you organized and plan better all those ideas swirling around your head. So I´m giving it a try with all the ideas I had from my brain dump.

Is not all Work Work over here! I wanted as well to keep my creative learning journey going not only through books but also through courses.

To exercise my creative side and expand my skills I chose two books. The first one is 365 Days of Drawing from Lorna Scobie.

I´m loving all the different section and exercises in the book, color theory, relaxation.

Another book that I´ll be using is one that I bought in Victoria & Albert Museum from Pen and Hu.

The authors made, what I see as watercolor clouds, and you need to doodle things from it. It reminded me of looking at the clouds to tell what shape they are. So I´m pretty sure is going to be fun to draw what I see!

I really enjoy online learning is very convenient and I can learn around my schedule. Skillshare is a great online platform that can help you to do that. They have lots of courses to you choose from a wide range of topics.

Other Apps I use on my that can help you in general as well are:

• Planoly

• Slack

• ColorStory

• A Design Kit

Hopefully, this behind the scene to my planning process can help you in some way to plan your year!

Until next time! Cheers!

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From Illustrations to Christmas Ornaments

Hi There! I thought it would be fun to bring all those doodles and illustrations you are constantly sketching on your sketchbook to life, just in time for the holidays. Also, you can use any drawing from your kids.

With very little supplies you can create adorable Christmas ornaments that will impress the whole family.

For this tutorial you will need:

• Air Dry Clay

• Pencil

• Doodle paper template

• Toothpick

• Palette knife

• Rolling pin

• A fine tip brush

• Watercolor paint in the colors of your choice

For the air dry clay and water paint color, I tried the ones in the Craft section from Flying Tiger. If you don't have a Flying Tiger store nearby. You can always find it in good old Amazon.

I used a rolling pin like the ones you would use for making cookies. Roll the clay evenly flat around 3mm thick.

Make sure fits loosely in the amount of clay you have rolled out. Leave a bit extra to account for shrinkage when dry.

With the palette knife cut around the doodle paper template and with a toothpick punch the hole for the cord to hang the ornament.

The instructions on the package said to wait for 24hrs to dry, but since here in the UK is very humid it took around 48hrs.

Once dried lightly sketch your doodle!

Then grab a fine tip brush and watercolor paint of your choice and go over the light sketch. I choose black since I wanted to go for that Scandinavian feel.

But feel free to use any color you want.

For the final touch add a bit of baker twine to hand you decoration on the tree!

Hope you enjoyed this quick and easy tutorial! I can´t wait to see what you create! This also can be a great afternoon activity with the kids.

Cheers,

Caro