(SM)ART Goals: Starting and Developing Your Creative Goals

As today is the last day of 2021, many of us are thinking about our goals for the coming year. When choosing goals, many of us don’t include our creative goals. We may see it as something fun and frivolous to be slotted in between the practical demands of our lives. Today I wanted to share with you how I set my creative goals for the year and how we can use SMART goals for starting and developing our creative practice.

What are SMART Goals?

If you haven’t heard about SMART goals, it is an acronym to help you set goals in a way that makes them achievable to reach.

S – SPECIFIC

M – MEASURABLE

A– ACHIEVABLE

R – REALISTIC

T – TIME BOUND

Smart Goals are helpful when setting any type of goal. Instead of being vague, like “I want to lose 30 pounds” or “I want to learn how to paint” this forces our goals to be more specific.

An example of this is “I would like to learn how to paint with acrylics in the next 6 months. I will do this by taking a beginner course in painting from my local art store and by completing 4 more paintings following the class that will be completed by June of this year.

This is a way of setting realistic and timely goals that will make them easier to achieve over the coming months.

Why Set Creative Goals?

So why should we set creative goals for ourselves? You may believe that you need your artistic muse come visit you before you can be creative. It may work that way for some people, but definitely not me. I love the idea of looking at the canvas and have something brilliant come to me. But that is usually not how the artistic process works for me.  Every painting and project I do has some level of planning involved.

For my acrylic paintings, the process often starts with choosing a reference photo and coming up with a composition that is pleasing. When creating in my art journal, I may choose a particular product or quote to start a page on. When I’m testing products, it’s choosing criteria in which to test each product.

There are so many days where I sit down to create and feel so uninspired. It happens to all of us. But by making creativity a priority, and setting a creative goal, this helps to move me forward. Usually once I motivate myself to start creating, the hours pass very quickly.

Why Set a Creative Goal?

I am a strong believer that creativity is important to our mental health and personal fulfillment. Creativity and art for me is an outlet. It is a chance to process, to work through things and learn new skills. It uses different skills than many of the other things I do throughout my day. Creativity is the key to finding wholeness and self-care in our lives. I believe that everyone should have some sort of creative goal.

The hard thing with creativity is that we don’t always consider it a priority. It comes after everything else. I see it being just as important as exercise, eating well, and many other things we consider essential in our lives.

Choosing Creative Goals for 2022

When choosing our creative goals for 2022, think about the one thing that you would like to learn the most this year. Or perhaps it’s just the goal of starting. Sometimes creating your first journal page can be the biggest challenge. It could also be improving skills that you already have. For each of us, it is different.

For me, I have a variety of goals for this year. One of these goals is to do a series of canvas paintings that I will make available for sale. As most of my paintings take me several days to do, this is a creative goal that will take some planning to accomplish. I also have a list of different techniques and mediums that I would like to explore and improve my proficiency on in the coming year.  If you are looking for a template to help you set SMART goals for the year, I have one available for you. Click on the button below to receive your free copy of my SMART goal planning sheet.  

Art Ideas for 2022

I’ve taken a little bit of time off the last few weeks to do some planning for 2022. I want my weekly videos and articles to be inspiring for you and help you to reach your creative goals.

To help you find the right products for your projects, I plan to do some more product comparisons. I will also share a variety of how-to videos to help you with creative techniques that you can apply to your projects.

Along with a variety of art journal projects using a variety of mixed media materials, I wanted to share with you some “off the page” projects. Canvases and boards are a great way to use mediums and dimensional objects in your work. I have resin and clay that I’m so excited to play with this year to make dimensional elements for my projects.

As I’m focusing on acrylic painting this year, I hope to share some of the techniques I’m learning as I explore the acrylic medium. I hope that you will join me as we explore creativity together!

What Would You Like to Learn?

With the ideas that I have presented above, is there a specific technique, product or medium you would like to see a tutorial on?  Please comment below or send me an email. I would love to start a conversation with you and discover what you would like to learn.

Have a Happy New Year and I will see you in 2022!