Illustrate a To-Do List (For Your Creative Life)

This week we’re going to create a to-do list for our creative lives. This works well for fighting creative slumps, if you’re trying to build more creative time in your life, or if you’re trying to form a new better-for-you habit. Personally, I decided I wanted to cut back on sweets so I chose to make my to-do list reflect that. Whenever I get those feelings of, “Wouldn’t it be nice to eat ”, I remind myself of that list and try to do something off of it.

Now of course, you could easily write a to-do list in your planner or journal and leave it at that. No harm there. At least those projects will be written down so you won’t be jogging your memory trying to remember what project needs your attention next.

But for today, we want to illustrate our to-do list or create it in such a way that we will want to post it somewhere visible to see throughout the day. Having a to-do list tucked away as a bookmark is fine, but a pretty representation of the list is even better.

Before we get into the how, let’s quickly talk about the what to write on the to-do list part.

• Think about what you want to learn or accomplish.
• Break those ideas into bite-size pieces; ideally things you can do in smaller spaces of time. By doing this, you’ll make these activities more accessible—you’ll be much more apt to do something that doesn’t take a lot of energy.
• Add things that are new to you as well as your regular projects.
• Add ideas that you don’t have time to do at the moment (but want to remember to do in the future.)

How to Illustrate a To-Do List

For the task list below, I used watercolors to paint squares of color, let them dry, and then used a gel pen to write down ideas.

Markers, washi tape, pictures from magazines, and stamps can also be used to create your to-do list. Dig around in your craft supplies and see what elements you could add to yours!

For the simple to-do list below, I used the same watercolor process except I decided to paint circles instead. See where your imagination takes you with this. It’s an art project in itself. (And P.S., don’t be hard on yourself if it doesn’t look “perfect”—just have fun and play with your art supplies!)

For the first image on this post, I used a page out of Make Map Art and filled the girl’s head with all sorts of ideas to do when I’m feeling restless. 🙂 I have it posted in my room so I see it frequently throughout the day.

Have fun with illustrating your to-do list and see how this affects your creative life! I’ve found that having a visual reminder really helps me.

Hope you all have an amazing {and creative} day!