One Colour Challenge: A 10-Minute Exercise to Overcome Creative Overwhelm

1. Welcome!: If you've been feeling creatively stuck, unsure where to begin or like you've lost your spark, You're in the right place. This video is part of my jump start your art series, a collection of short, playful exercises designed to help you get unstuck and take that first step again. You can download the full list of 25 exercises in the free guide linked below. Ready for whenever you need a creative reset. These exercises are about creating something small, fun, and doable, getting your hands moving and building momentum from there. Each exercise takes under 10 minutes, removes pressure and acts as a bridge to something more. Every exercise comes with ideas to take it further, so you can experiment and shape the exercises in a way that feels uniquely yours. Most creative stuck moments fall into one of five common categories. Today, we're exploring an exercise for when you feel overwhelmed by too many choices. This is ideal if decision fatigue or overwhelm are holding you back. We'll use simple limits to focus your creativity, giving you structure while keeping things playful. Reducing options helps you move past indecision, get unstuck, and start creating again. We're going to explore an exercise I call the one color challenge. So for this, all you need is some paper and any art supplies you have in the same or a very similar color. So, for example, I'm going to choose deep blue. And I have some colored paper. I've got some paint, colored pencil, and a few pens. Now, you don't need lots of materials. One or two is absolutely enough, and black totally counts, too. So grab your materials and let's jump in. 2. One Colour Challenge: What I'd like you to do. We're going to limit ourselves to just one color and see how many different textures, marks, and effects that we can create. Now, you can think of this as visual brainstorming. So it's very low pressure. We're not trying to create a finished artwork here. Instead, think of it more like swatching, just a space to explore and play. So just a tip as we begin to get started, you may find it helpful to divide your page into sections. You could either draw certain shapes like circles or squares or other shapes. Or as I'm going to do, you could just fold your paper up into smaller rectangles that give you sort of natural sections that you can fill. So one more tip just before we get started. If you're somebody who has a lot of art materials, so you're coming to this exercise, then you think, Well, I have so many art materials that I could literally spend a whole day just playing with one color. Then I would recommend that you set yourself an additional limitation by using a timer. So I'm going to just give myself 10 minutes. I have quite a few different art materials here, not tons, but I feel as if I wanted to, I could make this activity fill up actually quite a lot of time. So adding that additional layer of a time limit is just going to help to keep the overwhelm at bay. So to begin, I'm going to start by seeing what I can do by creating solid areas of color with my blue. So I might start by using some paint. And then perhaps I'll see how else I can create solid color with my blue, all the different textures that I might be making. Now, from here, I might start to experiment with varying the tone and texture. Now, there's a couple of ways you can do this. If you are using a blendable material like pencil or paint, you could experiment with pressure or the amount of water that you're using. So for example, if I go with my colored pencil, I could press much more lightly and see what kind of tone and texture that creates. And again, with my paint, I might create a much more watery version of my paint, and let's just see how that might be different from the first experiment. Now, if your material isn't blendb, you could explore mark making. So building up texture through lines, dots, layering or repetition. And this is great if you're using pen, for example. So for example, you can see, it was a challenge for me to make a solid area of color with this pen because it's so fine. So I could really lean into that and think about, well, the more space that I have between my lines is going to make that tone much lighter, so I can experiment with cross hatching. Or it could be that I just make other kinds of marks to build up tone, texture and marks. As I'm working on these experiments, one of the things that I'm noticing is that I keep finding myself wishing that I had one more color because it would give me so many more options. But then I'm also feeling grateful that I don't have any more colors because I feel as though if I had another color, it's going to give me so many more options that I would maybe find it a little bit overwhelming. So having this limitation of just being able to use the dark blue and variations of that tone and mark making, and the white of the paper is giving me enough limitations that I'm finding it a challenge, which makes it more interesting, which is making me want to keep pushing these marks and textures further. So actually seeing that limitation as a real strength in terms of just keeping me going, getting me started, and keeping me going. Once you've tried a few variations, you might also begin combining some of your materials together to see what kind of new effects emerge. I'm going to pop a list of prompts on the screen to help you explore different textures and effects, so feel free to pause the video here and use those prompts as inspiration as you experiment. 3. Ideas To Develop Further: So I've been playing with all my blue materials for a little over 10 minutes. My timer went off, and I just carried on for a couple more minutes because I was quite enjoying layering over my experiments. And this is what I have come up with. Now, one of the reasons exercises like this can really jump start your art is that as you're exploring, something often appears on the page that feels interesting, something worth following. So here are four ways that you could take this exercise further. If you discovered lots of interesting marks with one material, you could create an artwork using just that one material, really pushing how far it can go. So for example, I really quite enjoyed all the different textures and variations that I found within my just one colored pencil. And I feel as though having the limitation of it just being a pencil really pushed me to find new ways that I could extend what it can do. So that could be an interesting experiment. You might also explore a mixed media piece still using just one color. And use this experiment page as a reference for combining different textures and effects. It may be that you're drawn to one particular pattern or texture that you've created on this page. For example, I really love this kind of crisscrossi texture where I created loose paint as a background, and then once the paint was dry, worked into that with a fine liner. If you've got something like that on your page, you could isolate that and develop that into a full page exploration. Another way that you could push this exercise further is you could start to introduce a second color, and then you could see how your textures begin to shift and interact. This is a gentle way to expand your palette without it becoming overwhelming. So I think starting with one color is a great idea. And then when you feel like you've really exhausted that one color, only then introduce a second. Take a moment to really look at your page and have a look to see what you've created. Notice what's caught your attention, what feels interesting or satisfying or even surprising. Is there something here that you'd like to explore further? Follow that thread. Now, that is often where the most interesting work begins. 4. Final Thoughts: Take a breath and notice what just happened, even if it felt small or messy or you're not sure if you even like it yet. You made something, and we need to take a moment to celebrate that. Remember, these exercises are not about creating finished pieces. They're about creating movement. If this sparks something like a texture you enjoyed, a color combination you're curious about, or a mark you want to explore further, follow that thread. It's there that you'll find the beginnings of the art that really lights you up. If you'd like the full collection of all 25 jump start your art exercises, don't forget you can grab those in the free guide linked below. And if you are realizing that you want more than quick ideas, if you want structure, support, and a joyful, sustainable art practice that's unmistakably yours, that's exactly what I work with you to create inside nurture my signature program. To find out more about Nurture, tap the link below. Until then, keep going. Keep playing, and I'll see you next time. Bye for now.