When you are stagnating: stepping out of your comfort zone as a creative

The power of goal-setting

I’m warmly inviting you to read through this article if you’ve been missing some creative motivation lately, or if you’ve been feeling that you’re “stagnating” and not moving forward with your creative career. This post is also dedicated to all the artists out there, who create art on a regular basis that just “sits” on their iPad or some other storage 👀

Today I read this beautiful class review from one of my Affinity courses on Skillshare (thank you Michelle for taking the time to write it!):

“Coming from Procreate, I had a lot of apprehension about how different Affinity would be, but Weronika made it easy to understand. I was delighted to find that Affinity automatically creates a new layer for each element. I can’t tell you how often I forget to create a new layer in Procreate and find myself having to sort it out. Thanks so much for this wonderful class!”

This review made me really stop, take another sip of my coffee, stop for a moment and reflect. Immediately, I travelled back to the time when I was trying to learn Affinity Designer from scratch, as if on a whim, not entirely sure where this would lead me. At that moment in time, I had bought the program over 1 year before and that was my final attempt to dive into this vector-raster software, without abandoning it for the X-th time :)

Nearly 2 years later:

• I can’t imagine not designing in Affinity, and yeah, it is different from Procreate - that’s why I’m grateful I learned it ^^(hellooooo Assets Studio! hihi)

• I have released 5 popular pattern design courses tailored for this software

• I re-started my YouTube channel - inspired to share more free Affinity-related content

• I got featured by the official Affinity Spotlight blog exactly 3 times in this short period of time

• I hosted a fun Creative Session on the official Affinity Designer YouTube channel

• and I built a wonderful Facebook community in a dedicated Affinity Designer for surface design group, which at the moment of writing of this article has more than 2900 active members (more than my newsletter hihi).

So what? You might ask… The thing is, I’m pretty sure that with the Procreate landscape being so saturated, I would never be noticed enough, or I would never feel that I’m growing that much. I’d just drown in the sea of Procreate content, and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have as much satisfaction from my teaching work. But I took the plunge, I set the goal to master Affinity by the end of 2022, and it happened!

Try new things out to grow

Thanks for reading so far :) The point is - I’m not against Procreate or anything like that. As a matter of fact, they might be introducing some very exciting updates to their software in November 2023, and I’ll be very keen to try it out, along with their new animation app, Procreate Dreams.

I’m against getting stuck in the old ways of working and not stepping out of your comfort zone to explore a new way of working.

We all have different levels of focus, time capacity, design experience - so what really matters is every effort, however small. The ultimate mastery of a given software or a given design technique doesn’t exist. In reality, our creative paths are a life-long learning experience and I want to encourage you to celebrate every one of those learning milestones, big or small.

Don’t just learn Procreate, and STOP. Don’t just master creating repeat patterns, and STOP. Keep exploring new software, new ways of working - which have a potential to expand your creative portfolio and which in turn could become your new sources on income and client work!

Growth in practice - how to tackle this?

So here is my suggestion for you (there will be homework): what is key here is setting your creative GOALS in the following matrix:

• SCOPE: personal goals (for your own fun projects) vs. professional goals (to possibly generate more income)

• TIME: annual, quarterly and monthly goals (for the 2 dimensions above)

Please note: every “private project” goal has a potential to turn into a potential source of income, but it can originate as a non-income related personal project idea.

The importance of goal-setting deserves a separate article, but today all you need to take into account is the following:

1. your goals need to be WRITTEN DOWN! - doesn’t matter where, Notion, notebook, Google Drive, sticky notes

2. where possible, your goals should have a numerical value - for example my goal for this year 2023 was to grow my Newsletter list to more than 2000 subscribers, so that me switching from Mailchimp to Flodesk justifies my cost :)

3. your goals should be REALISTIC - it is everyone’s dream to land amazing client projects, however, I don’t formulate my goals like:”in 2023 I want to do a client project for X and Y company”; what I write down instead is: “in 2023 I will send out at least 5 cold pitch applications to at least 5 different companies from the X and Y industry” (I can’t influence getting the project, but I can certainly influence sitting my a** and sending out my applications hihi)

4. ideally your goals should have a deadline - that is why I love working with monthly, quarterly and annual goals; do I reach all of my goals - naaah! but it certainly does make me do the work when I write down those goals. In the end life happens, kids get sick, circumstances change. But go back and read point number 1 above! if it’s NOT written down, it DOESN’T exist :)

5. you should practice knowing (and writing down) your WHY - I cannot stress this enough, and this is usually what people forget about; knowing your “why” breaths in life into your goal (have a look at my examples below)

Your homework

Please complete this matrix by the end of this week (depending when you’re reading) and write down at least 1 goal per each bullet point. I like to take this homework to a cafe or to a bench in a park, get some fresh air, take a break. My monthly goals usually come to life spontaneously, and the quarterly and the annual ones need more deliberate throught.

1. PROFESSIONAL GOALS

• your goal for this year (example: I want to learn Affinity Publisher in 2023 because (the WHY) it will streamline preparing my professional design pitches for prospective clients and help me design my PDF workbooks faster.)

• your goal for this quarter (example: I want to refresh my website portfolio by the new categories “vector cities” and “vector kids art” because (the WHY) more quality landing pages that belong to my website domain will increase my SEO visibility and drive more traffic to my website, and possibly catch the attention of potential clients)

• your goal for this month (example: I want to send out a client pitch for a design competition I found from the X and Y company because (the WHY) I have so much great vector work on my iPad and I really want to send it out and literally put it in front of the client’s nose if I feel that my artwork fits their design pitch.)

Would you like to share your goal for the YEAR with us? 👀

2. PRIVATE GOALS

• your goal for this year (example: I want to go on a 2-3 day vacation alone by the end of 2023 because (the WHY) I’m a pretty tired mom of a 2-year-old and I need a break from overstimulation - this will increase my well-being)

• your goal for this quarter (example: I want to work out at least 1-2 per week at the gym because (the WHY) it will help me shed my postpartum excess weight)

• your goal for this month (example: I want to go to Ikea with a friend this month to have a look at some cozy lamps for the living room because (the WHY) winter is coming LOL and I’ll get depressed from the lack of sunlight in Berlin :D)

Set your goals yo! 👀

Giving you creative goals a thought is really worth your time and it will pay off, I promise. Don’t be afraid to step out of your comfort zone, you can do this!

PS: Do you have a website already? 😏

Hi! I’m Weronika Salach, a freelance illustrator specializing in children’s books, toy design and surface pattern design. Internationally I’m represented by Advocate Art. Over 35,000 happy students have taken my digital illustration courses and watched my YouTube videos. Let’s connect :)

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