My top 5 Mindset Values for learning to be a Travel Sketchers
Observe
Observation is the most useful way to open the world to us, and this is often a skill under-developed in people who are just not used to it. Seeing is a fundamental skill in sketching and when we’re on location, a keen observation is what will make your creativity flourish and feel inspiring. The more we observe the world around us, big or small things, moving or static, mood, colour and light, atmosphere, vibes. While all these observations are best developed using our eyes, noticing the world and observing it zooms us out into the bigger picture, and we observe with all our senses too.
How to we train our observation skills? We use drawing and sketching as a tool. John Muir Law’s nature journaling is an example where he uses the three words prompts ‘ I noticed, I wonder, It reminds me of’. And even if you know nothing about nature, and what it is you’re drawing, your attention will focus, your sense will open up and you will start to see more, and nature is fascinating.
How to train our brain to record moving subjects? We use our voice, we talk to ourselves, loudly or whispers, but the key to talking out loud while we try to capture moving people, animals or scenes with moving things, is that speech helps us plant the seeds of ‘reminders’ of the shapes and line we observe. Try it, and more things will stick, I promise!
Purposeful Play
Play is another under-rated skill that we as adults have forgotten how to do. When you look at children under the age of 6, you can see how free, curious and very open and interested in everything they are. We might not have their innocence anymore but we certainly can incorporate more play in our lives. I like purposeful play the most when it comes to growing my techniques and skills because I also like to observe like a scientist the data that comes out from my play. Watercolour mastery comes from a lot of playing, and playing means there will be some failures, falling down and crashing our work to the ground, but without failures, we don’t learn. Play also encourages confidence in the process, and play keeps the mind active.
How do we learn purposeful play? I run a coaching program called the Sketch School, and 133 is the one where you will learn the art of play to grow your thirst for technique. Otherwise, read Julia Cameron’s The Artist way and the Artist Date is basically purposeful play where we take ourselves out on a solo date, doing fun things we never thought we could enjoy.
Momentum
What I love about starting something new, a new artwork, a new workshop, learning from a new teacher or traveling, are the sense of movement that it comes with, momentum is what I feel when I am curious, and I want to understand. I am hungry for more, I am thriving to get better, I am determined to improve something, to find something, are all feeling of possibilities, and while it can be a little bit scary or overwhelming, we are more excited than we are scared. This is what I consider momentum, and it’s when you harness this, and go with this flow of momentum, you will come to a breakthrough, a new discovery, a new sense of awe, or learning. Momentum in sketching is marked by repetition and therefor you do the same thing over and over, and each time there’s a slight change, you notice something different, all that little shifts or very subtle changes are actually very important in keeping our motivation and interest.
How do we find momentum? When you start learning something new and there’s a burst of energy from that activity, I recommend not to stop and resume your old habits, but follow the momentum through, and go a bit further, a little deeper, take that extra step, momentum can feel quite uncertain, but that’s what the discomfort of growth feels like.
Willingness to try
This one’s very simple for those with a growth mindset. People with a growth mindset has an innate believe that they can do more than they think, that are not static beings, but moving and changing all the time. We are an ever changing energy and the more we can listen to that ebb and flow, the more we discover about ourselves. Willingness to try can be quite difficult for people with a fixed mindset because they believe that creativity is an innate talent, and either you have it or you don’t, therefore when one doesn’t feel like they can do something, they stop and don’t bother trying.
What kind of mindset do you have? Changing your mindset is not an impossible thing. Often people change from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset when there’s a big change in their life that they have no control over, and it forces them to adapt. We human beings are very resilient and that’s what we are good at, we adapt. And I am sure you’ve seen it in nature, if we don’t adapt, we die. With the willingness to try, we improve our overall confidence, whether we do anything well or not.
Community
This is a crucial part of learning, having a community. No one can exist in a vacuum. Learning is easier when we do it together. Doing something new feels less scary when we aren’t doing it alone. When we go in groups, we feel stronger and more confident.
What are your communities? What are the values of your communities? How do you feel when you’re amongst them? Sometimes we have a little bit of control in what kinds of community we want to be in.