Dealing With Overwhelm as a Creative Person

I'm a highly sensitive person, HSP for short. It's estimated that 15-20% of the world population are HSPs. I would guess most are creative and introverted. It's a curse and a blessing. I remember being told by well meaning people to not be so sensitive. Ugh! The plus side is we're intuitive and compassionate. The down side is that sometimes life can be very overwhelming. But you don't have to be highly sensitive to experience overwhelm especially if you're an artist. I have a friend who refers to this as Artist's ADD. Yup.

I've been learning to deal with overwhelm through journaling, spending time in my garden, breathing exercises to focus before I start working, working in half hour increments with a timer and planning time to work on projects on my calendar rather than just entering the due date. These things are starting to help. I'm not doing them perfectly but what I am doing is reaping benefits. Eat the elephant one bite at a time. (I'm writing this to remind myself.)

When I start thinking about my art when I'm relaxed and not creating, I start having a million ideas, but then I don't know which one to start on first. Hello procrastination. The positive outcome of the practices I'm trying to do to manage myself is that they're starting to silence the annoying voices inside my head that say "you're not working hard enough" which I'm all for.

Another very important part of my dealing with overwhelm as a creative person is to be nice to oneself. I'm learning to ignore those annoying voices in my head and speak to myself in an encouraging voice as I would to a teenager. I have lots of practice at this with two in my house... And there's a better chance I'll listen.

Garden Flag Samples

I was excited for the mail on Monday because I got my garden flag samples! These are the five designs I did for Premier Kites. I shared some of the work in progress on Facebook but the designs were embellished a bit more before printing. They look really nice on these flags. It's encouraging to see my work on real products. ;)

Kodi, Watercolor Dog Portrait

This is Kodi and she lives next door. I was out gardening on Saturday and she was looking all fluffy and cute so I grabbed a couple of quick pictures. I'm so glad I did, too, because when I was outside today, she yipped at me from the deck and I really don't blame her because she got scalped since we last met!

Amidst the Mustard Flowers Child's Watercolor Portrait

This is a little painting I did today for fun with my friends on Wetcanvas. It measures 7 x 11 and took two hours to paint. Watercolor on Arches 140 lb cold press. This is the third portrait I've done in the last couple of months where I feel my watercolor portrait style is really becoming comfortably me.