I wrote a post about just this topic: http://joshuaspodek.com/choice-sidcha-isnt-important. It has a bunch of pictures or I'd copy it here, but the upshot is that more value comes from doing something self-imposed healthy and active every day than from the specific activity.

In my experience, a lot of mental mastery comes from discipline, focus, dedication, and such from consistently overcoming challenges.

From how you characterize creating art as drawing "nice pictures", I suspect you might underestimate the value of artistic self-expression, fitness, and other things, but I might be misinterpreting.