The Planning Stage

Last week I briefly talked about how I thought my poor sleeping might be connected to my lack of creative outlet, and now I can say I am 90% certain it at least contributes to it. I sometimes experience mild bouts of insomnia, and my theory last was that my lack of creating was adding to the severity of the insomnia, and my theory has proved true. Now it’s not the root cause but it adds to the problem. On Monday I did the sketching/ planning for a new gauche painting in my sketch book. Because I needed something low stakes to get back into the swing of painting. It was just something simple and something I knew I could accomplish, it was an attainable goal. That night I slept better than I had in over a week. 

Last week I also discussed what I called the dreaming stage, the beginning to the creative processes, the getting inspired and getting an idea. This week I want to continue and talk about the planning. 

I’m not really a planner by nature, it’s something I’ve had to learn in order to improve my own quality of life. In my less mature years when I was starting a creative process I would have an idea and just dive in head first, would just start without thinking at all about how I would do it. It led to a lot of unfinished paintings and a loss of confidence. By diving in without even a thought of a plan I had set myself up to fail. 

We artist types tend to be romantic and idealistic, we don’t think before we jump. So I’ll have this amazing idea and if I don’t slow down long enough to even scribble a plan on a post-it-note it won’t matter how good my idea was, because the excellence is in the execution. And without the guard rails of a plan I can easily fall of the cliff of overwhelmedness. I get overwhelmed easily, in all honesty, so a plan even the bear bones of one is essential. Because without even an idea of how to get to the end product I’ll just get overwhelmed and give up. 

So with something like a painting I need to sketch out my idea. If I’m working on a canvas, often I’ll do my sketching in a sketch book. Whether I add any sketching to the canvas itself depending on how structured or detailed said painting will be. Often the planning and the dreaming overlap, because I love the dreaming I taught myself to purposely overlap the two stages so I would learn to value the planning. Like I said it didn’t start out being natural to plan, I didn’t have a value for it because I forget things and I thought it better to jump in while I remembered, I didn’t think to write it down for later. Learning to value the planning stages in all aspects of life if part of growing up I guess. 

Ideas are great, and the dreaming is my favourite part, but the planning is essential because it is where you get to fine tune the idea. It is where you take the whimsical fantastical inspiration and mold it to fit your current skill level. And maybe you leave in a challenge or two but the goal of the planning is to make the idea, that doesn’t not yet exist, and forge a walkable path to the end creation. It is good and even necessary to try new things or skills that your not yet good at for growth, but in the interest of creating something excellent you have to know what is attainable. Risk is good for growth and is necessary for it, but you can’t risk 24/7 and not expect that not everything is going to work perfect. 

So go out there and dream the good dream and then forge your path to creation! 

Happy creating!