I can't draw, now what?!

Ever heard of creative confidence? 

I had, but did not really know what it meant. Creative confidence was coined by Tom and David Kelly in their book of the same name. They talk about the need to unleash creativity in every professional. For years, people have associated creativity with the arts (performance and visual). However, creativity is not action but a mindset. I remember reading the book, but I don't think I really got the full essence of it...until I wrote my own book.

If it’s not my illustration, it's not my book! I was stuck!

I experienced creative confidence first-hand when writing my book ‘I AM’. It’s a simple book with under 100 words. This meant that the illustrations would need to do a lot of talking and were integral to the story. I knew how I wanted every illustration to be, but I could not draw. However I hard I tried to articulate it to my illustrator, it didn't help. I knew that if I did not own the illustrations then I could barely claim this to be my book. I was stuck! I kept thinking (thanks to years of conditioning ) – I am not creative!

Not doing, but being creative!

Hey, wait! This is exactly what my book is about… It's about creativity as more than 'doing', but about 'being'. With my book, I was aiming to bust the stereotype that not knowing how to draw is not a reflection of your creativity. It was my moment of truth. I knew that I had to find my creative confidence if I truly believed in what I had written. This is when I started to look around me for the resources that were available to me, to bring the illustrations in my book to life.

My boys, my inspiration.

My book, then, was the story of a boy and a girl discovering creativity together. I really had no reason to have a girl and a boy as the main characters… The more I thought about it I realized that if I changed the characters to two boys and then got my two sons to pose for pictures for the various scenes, I could trace them out on my iPad! AHA! Thanks to apps like Procreate, this was going to be easy.

For me to get my boys to enact the story and trace them out meant I had to simplify the storyboards:

1. Get rid of the noise from the pages like showing background visuals, or too many props around them
2. Imagine the story without different setups – there was really no reason for me to show what room / or house the characters were in
3. Not have a pre-conceived notion of their expressions and instead narrate the scene to them and see how they react

As I started this entire process, I experienced creative confidence. My focus had shifted from I cannot draw to recreating my vision of the pages.

The best part was that getting my boys to do the scenes actually gave me the exact emotions I was looking for in my characters. I wanted the book to be about two kids who were discovering their creativity but were not jealous of each other. I wanted to show them being playful and yet supportive of each other. My boys managed to give me those exact emotions. 

This process also helped me simplify the illustrations, making them more powerful. 

This was my discovery of “I AM CREATIVE”.

This illustrated book is highly recommended for professionals. It will be a keepsake, reminding them that they are creative.

Find the book here >>