A quick doodle…
I think I may have reached the slightly less romantic part of a creative pause.
The part nobody really talks about.
The part where you have spent weeks noticing, gathering ideas, walking, writing and allowing things to quietly develop… and then you look at your sketchbook and think:
Why am I still not making?
Because the truth is, I have loved this slower season. I have enjoyed having time to pay attention. I have enjoyed writing, reflecting and noticing the small things that might otherwise have passed me by.
It has been a good place to be.
But it isn't always an easy place to be.
There is a difference between choosing to pause and finding yourself waiting for something that hasn't quite arrived yet.
And lately, I have been feeling that difference.
My sketchbooks are there, my paints and inks are there, and I know what I want to do. But the spark — that little pull that makes you want to clear the table, pick up a brush and see what happens — hasn't quite appeared.
And if I'm honest, that has been frustrating.
The pressure of what we think we should be doing
I think many creatives know this feeling.
You have an idea of how your creative practice should look.
You should be filling sketchbooks. You should be experimenting. You should be producing new work. You should have something to show for your time.
And when that doesn't happen, it is surprisingly easy to start questioning yourself.
Am I doing enough?
Am I wasting time?
Should I be pushing harder?
Should I be further along by now?
The strange thing is that I know better.
I know creativity doesn't work in a straight line. I know there are seasons for gathering as well as seasons for making. I know ideas need time to form.
But knowing something and feeling it are not always the same thing.
The work beneath the surface
Because the truth is, I haven't been doing nothing.
I've been walking, noticing, writing and thinking. I've been collecting fragments of ideas and allowing connections to form.
A photograph taken because the light caught my eye.
A sentence written in a notebook.
A colour combination remembered.
A shape noticed on a walk.
Small things that seem insignificant at the time, but quietly stay with you.
Perhaps this is part of the work too.
Not every creative moment produces something we can immediately share. Not every idea arrives as a finished image waiting to be captured.
Sometimes creativity happens long before there is anything finished to show.
Beginning without knowing
Perhaps the reason I have been hesitant to open the sketchbook is not because I don't want to create.
Perhaps it is because beginning again means accepting uncertainty.
The blank page asks questions.
Where do I start?
What am I making?
Will this lead anywhere?
And the temptation is to wait until we have the answer before we begin.
But I find creativity rarely works that way.
More often the answer comes through the making.
A mark leads to another mark.
A colour suggests another.
A page begins to reveal something we couldn't have planned.
Perhaps the artist's job is not always to know what comes next. Perhaps it is simply to keep looking closely enough that something eventually reveals itself.
A small beginning
So I am trying to be a little kinder to this slower pace.
To stop measuring creativity only by what has been produced.
To remember that noticing is part of making.
But also to recognise that, at some point, the sketchbook needs opening.
Not with the pressure of creating the next body of work.
Not with the expectation that every page needs to become something.
Just with curiosity.
A pencil mark.
A quick doodle.
A wash of colour.
A few moments of seeing what happens.
And perhaps that is where I am now.
Not suddenly full of ideas.
Not magically knowing what comes next.
But beginning again in a much smaller way.
An open sketchbook.
Brushes waiting in the water pot.
A small mark on a page.
A feeling that something is beginning.
Perhaps that is enough.