Cherry Jeffs is a name that many of you are probably familiar with if you have read her User Story shared a few months ago. Cherry, a UK-born digital nomad graphic designer and mixed media artist, is a longtime NoteLedge user. She has generously agreed to do a guest post to share with everyone “how you can use NoteLedge to make it a vibrant, integral part of your creative practice”. Let’s be inspired by her ideas!
Trying to establish a successful creative practice?
Regardless of your medium or discipline, you need to do more than focus exclusively on the creative act. A healthy and successful creative practice is made up of eight different components! If we neglect to incorporate all of these different aspects into our lives, our creative output suffers. If we’re trying to make a living out of our art, our business struggles.
Power-up with NoteLedge + 8 Habits Framework
Using NoteLedge for the 8 Habits of Creative Success is a powerful formula to balance all the crucial components of our artistic practice and make sure we don’t drop any of our creative balls.
I use NoteLedge constantly in my own artistic practice. Its varied features such as customizable notebooks, Web Clipper, NoteTube and stylus support make it an ideal tool for implementing the 8 Habits.
How to Use NoteLedge for the 8 Habits of Creative Success
1. Develop Your Skills with NoteLedge
Your skills are the cornerstone of your creative discipline, regardless of the medium you work in.
NoteLedge is a great environment for perfecting drawing and digital art skills. Create a notebook just for practicing and experimenting. Customize it by using your own artwork for the cover and choosing the kind of paper you like.
Commit to 15 minutes every day experimenting with NoteLedge’s different drawing and painting tools in this sketchbook. If you’ve got an Adonit Jot or Pogo Connect 2 stylus, you can hook that up for fine control.
2. Follow Your Fascinations in NoteLedge
How you weave your different areas of interest into your work, is what make you unique as a creative person.
NoteLedge provides great ways to gather ideas:
– Record audio
– Import or record video
– Import photos
– Use Web Clipper to grab images of things you love directly from the web
Create a notebook for each subject and use them as specialized scrapbooks.
3. NoteLedge for Visualization
As creative people, we need to visualize: Not only how our work will look, but how we want our career to progress.
As well as using NoteLedge to develop your project visuals, why not create a series of Vision Boards?
Gather powerful imagery of what you want to achieve and how you want to go about it. Then let visualization weave its subtle magic on your life.
4. Express Yourself with NoteLedge
Our most important expression often takes place in private.
NoteLedge is a great journaling tool. Use the visualization technique together with typed or hand-scribbled notes to create a unique daily journal. Or record your thoughts directly using the audio or video record functions.
Then hide your most private thoughts from prying eyes by using NoteLedge’s lock function.
(To lock any notebook, select it on the home screen and a series of options will appear. Click the three dots for the password lock.)
5. NoteLedge as a Tool for Observation
What you pay attention has a huge impact on your creative work.
NoteLedge makes a great digital sketchbook. Throw your tablet into your bag and you’ll have a portable sketchbook and painting kit with your wherever you go!
6. Using NoteLedge to Reflect and Evaluate
Spending regular time analyzing the progress of our work is a crucial for a healthy creative life.
Use a dedicated NoteLedge notebook for a monthly review of your projects. Import photos of work done elsewhere. Scribble notes about your progress together with ideas for improvements or modifications.
You could even attach a note to a date in your Apple or Google calendar to motivate yourself to do the review.
7. Get Out of Your Comfort Zone with NoteLedge
To grow as creatives we have to reach beyond our perceived limitations.
Use NoteLedge for bold, fearless experiments, safe in the knowledge that you can always undo or redo what you’ve done. Again, use the lock function to make sure no-one sees your work unless you want them to!
8. Interact with your Creative Sphere from within NoteLedge
We love creating our work, right? But soon or later the day comes when it’s time to get it out of our work space and out into the world at large.
NoteLedge makes it possible to do this from right within the app using NoteTube:
By making your notes public, tagging and uploading them to NoteTube you can let other users discover your amazing work. They can also use, improve or thank you for your creations.
NoteLedge notebooks also make a great portfolio or marketing tool. Simply export a notebook as a PDF and share with prospective clients or share your best pages as images on social media.
Free Workbook: 8 Habit Plan for Creative Growth
So that’s just a few ways you can use NoteLedge for these pivotal habits – keeping you inspired and fulfilled as well as improving the effectiveness and success of your creative output and your career.
If you’d like know more about this amazing framework, I’m offering my 8 Habit Plan for Creative Growth Workbook (worth $7.99) free to download for Noteledge users!