It’s that time of year again. January first always seems to bring out the best intentions in people, and us creative types are no different.

Some may choose to lose weight, get in shape or quit a bad habit. But Go Media is curious what you the design community wants to change, improve or quit in regards to your creative life.

I’ll kick things off by sharing what art-related resolutions I’ve made in 2011.

Most of my plans for the coming year are less on the creative side and more on the business side of my art. In general the theme for me is to expand the reach and availability of my art and creative services.

In particular, I’ve come to the realization that I’ve been offering a pretty narrow slice of my illustration talents — for the most part it’s been targeted to those seeking custom work. I had a bit of an “aha!” moment in late 2010 (which of course in hindsight seems obvious) that there are many more potential clients, customers and fans out there who don’t need to hire me for custom work, but would like to have some for themselves.

This will also help achieve the other goal I have for 2011 and beyond, which is to create more artwork for myself. I pretty much had a laser focus for the past 5+ years to grow my illustration business to something that was self-sustaining, and by doing so I focused completely on the illustration work I created for clients.

Of course the past years were not all about art, since in order to achieve the goal of running your own business you need to do, well, business. But it all revolved around commercial art. I’d like to get more into creating art I want to create, and being able to make it self-sustaining from a business standpoint.

I’ve actually spent most of the Christmas/New Year’s “holiday” working on putting these goals into motion. To paraphrase Newton’s laws of motion, it’s much easier to keep something going once it’s in motion that it is to get it started.

Part of this process also involves my third resolution, which is to get more involved with others in the creative community. Some of the other projects I’ve begun are being worked on in conjunction with other like-minded illustrators. I find it makes the process not only more enjoyable, but it helps keep you on point when others are working towards (or bugging you to complete) the goals you’ve taken on.

So that’s my 2011. Go Media wants to hear from our readers: what’s your creative resolution for 2011?

Go!

Dragon photo by Rollan Budi