Is creativity only for creative people?

If you’re reading this blog post, you probably know me as “kofiscrib“, and you most probably have seen my digital illustrations and other creative works. What you wouldn’t expect though, is that I am not the most stereotypical “artist“.

Drawing has indeed been one of my hobbies growing up, but it has never been my main interest, and honestly, I was never exceptional at it, only ever drawing inside my comfort zone.

However, a few months ago, in the middle of the quarantine, I had the time (and energy) to get back to drawing more seriously, eventually launching and developing my Instagram account, which started out with a lot less followers than it currently has. Eventually, this progress into me creating this website, drawing a ton of stuff, transitioning to digital painting, and eventually starting up this blog! But back to the main topic, my point was that my workflow, my overall philosophy behind creating art, is rather odd when you consider the first words that come into your mind when you think about “art“ - chaos, spontaneity, sparks of motivation.

I don’t know whether you believe in astrology, personally I am not 100% into it, but there are some perks for the different star signs that I have found to be quite matching, at least for most of the people I know. Me? I’m a Virgo, and if I know one thing about Virgos, is that we are deemed to be very organised, orderly and analytical. And by extension, not that creative.

Now, I’ve never believed that something as trivial as the time I was born was going to make me the person I am right now, but in this particular case, it was quite fitting of a description to the kind of person I am. I study Biomedical Engineering (lots of maths, lots of physics), I organise all my files in folders, I take comfort in cleaning up and I get a stroke every time I see my girlfriend’s email inbox (okay, I exaggerated a bit). All in all, I am far from the typical artistic person, and my friends are always surprised when I tell them about my current endeavour - pursuing digital illustration as a freelancer.

And during the last few months, I myself was really confused as to how to better entwine my creative and my academic/analytical sides. Until very recently, I had no idea, but then I took a step back and observed my creative process. If you replaced the “drawing“, with anything else, be it “product“/”essay”/whatever, it would remain the same - I had created a well-operating production pipeline using various apps, which resulted in numerous artworks and pieces of content, which I would have found incomprehensible to produce in such a short amount of time. Also, the mechanics on which my business currently operates proved to be very useful in my student life as well, especially as I’m writing this post, in the beginning of my first academic week of Year 2. By utilising a number of systems, apps, study methods and habit formation tactics, I had created a steady schedule in which I balanced my social, academic and artistic life, more or less successfully.

So this is, overall, this blog’s origin story. The “Creative Virgo“ will be a series of articles/essays, focusing on my strategies and tips for creating an organised life, and specifically how to implement these tactics in your art projects, or any start-up with a creative nature that you may wish to pursue. The reason to share my insights is rather simple - I have too many friends with incredible artistic potential, whose content I would like to see more and more of. So if you guys (even you, dear reader!) would benefit from this blog series, I would love it if you would spread the word, subscribe to this weekly series (Every Monday at 7 PM GMT!), and keep up the good work! Let’s bring more art in our world, in any way we can! ^^

Next week’s post will be on the topic of inspiration and creative routine! Stay tuned and feel free to comment down here, your opinion means a lot to me!