This year, I was lucky enough to finally have a studio space all to myself for the first time.
Before, I would only ever have a desk in my room, in a dark and cold basement, shared studio spaces, a kitchen table, or my legs, when I didn’t have the time to draw at home.
Not having a lot of space or time, needing to set-up and clean-up before and after every session, and dealing with the lack of barriers between work and spare time, can make maintaining a regular art practice truly challenging, but it did teach me how to become more adaptable, resilient, and turn challenges into creative outlets.
Today, I’m sharing what years of maintaining a regular art practice have taught me.
Preparation is key
In my eagerness to start painting or drawing, I’d often get frustrated by any time that wasn’t spent creating, but soon found that getting organized wasn’t just helpful, it was crucial – being well-prepared not only saves time, but makes a regular art practice way less stressful, and easier to sustain on the long-term.
“Any time you spend preparing at the start, is time you gain twofold later on”
This may mean spending some time sorting out all your supplies, making sure they’re all in working order, and easy to reach.
It may also mean preparing a handy kit for your next session.
Handy watercolor kit for plein air
For instance, if you want to spend sometime painting soon, aside from getting your supplies in order, you can also put them in a case, or box, aside from all your other supplies – something portable that you can carry and set near your workspace when you’re about to get started.
Making artwork is not just about what you use, but also what you’re about to make, so before you start working, set some time aside to sort out your references, or choose a subject to study. That way, the moment you sit down and say “I’m starting”, there will be nothing in your way – it’ll be just you, and your time to create.
Keep your goals in mind
What is it you want to get out of your art practice right now? ******Are you looking to learn how to draw in general? Do you need to practice human figure, or learn how to use color? Are you trying to learn a new art medium, or technique? Do you just want to spend some time drawing your favorite characters, or subjects?
Regardless of the goal, your practice should reflect what you want do to with the time you have.
If you feel like you need to improve the way you draw hands, gather some photo references, grab a sketchbook, and set up a challenge – draw using only a ballpoint pen, or without an eraser, draw 5 hands in 10 minutes, draw the most realistic hand you can using your off-hand, etc.
On the other hand (pun intended), if like myself, you’re making the switch from one medium to another, you may want start be selecting easy references, or some that look like they’d be fun and engaging, so you don’t neglect enjoying yourself, while you inevitably stumble along the road of learning.
Or you may just want to use your art session as a creative escape – which is a goal in itself, and your practice and preparation can reflect that too. You’ll still benefit from choosing what you’ll be doing in your next session, what materials you want to use, and what references you’ll need, before you start working.
Like in baking or cooking, sometimes half the fun is in the planning.
Make time and space
Life doesn’t always make it easy pursue creative endeavors. We don’t always have the time we’d like, the space we’d like, the supplies we’d like, or the skills we’d like to be where we want to be. Frustrating and demotivating are only a few words for it, so this is the part that takes the most commitment.
Making time and space for art, to me, has always felt more of a mental than a physical challenge. Whether all I had was my commute to work, or a full day at the studio, every time, I had do very consciously choose to put pen to paper, accept it wouldn’t be perfect, and still choose to do it.
Sounds tiresome, but it can be eased by being well prepared, knowing what you’d like do to, and choosing a dedicated time and space.
Knowing that you’ll have time every day sitting on the train means that even if today’s sketch was terrible, you can try again tomorrow. If you can take every Saturday morning to paint, you know, and you make the whole world know, that this is your time, and you won’t be interrupted – laundry can wait.
Working in shifts, and other life events, can make keeping a routine tricky, but committing to one hour a week, wherever you can slide it, is more than enough. And you don’t need to make any promises to yourself, just show up, as prepared as you can be, and take the time you made for yourself.
Adapt your practice
Limitations can be your friends. It doesn’t often feel this way, but being limited in time, space, and medium, can actually force you out of your comfort zone, and into some really fun and interesting places.
It may require some investment – for instance, if you’d like to work on your digital illustration skills, but don’t have much time, space, or privacy at home, you may need to invest in a portable tablet that suits your needs.
It may require some concessions – you may want to paint large canvases, but don’t have the space to work in very big formats, or store bulky frames, so you may have to start smaller, create your large paintings as diptychs, triptychs, and use a sturdy paper or thin plywood as your base, rather than the traditional canvas.
It may require some creative solutions – but that’s what we’re best at right? And we’re lucky to have a pretty insane amount of access to knowledge and supplies, more than ever before in the history of mankind, so if there’s a specific practice you want to start, but don’t have the optimal conditions to do so, some online research, or reaching out to your local art store and community, can help circumvent some challenges – like using acrylic pens instead of acrylic paint, if you can’t use brushes, using books or a rolling pin to print your linocuts onto paper, oil pastels instead of oil paint, a window to trace your drawings instead of a light-table.
It may not be ideal, but it can be a way to keep going, and who knows, stumble upon something you’ll love.
Tell that voice in your head to sod it
So you’re ready – you prepared all you needed to start your practice, you know what you want to do, you’ve allocated the time and space you could manage, and adapted to your circumstances.
Yet there can be a nagging voice in the back of your head that loves to tell you “it’s not good enough”.
Tell it to sod it.
That’s it. Sod it!
It won’t be perfect, it may not be what you dreamed of, or what you wanted to do in an ideal world, it may not yield the results you hoped for, or it may feel like a step back from where you were before, but sod it.
If there’s anything I’ve found in keeping a regular art practice for 15 years, is that in order to make that practice a marathon, rather than a sprint, it takes a lot of gentleness, especially with yourself.
It may take withdrawing from social media, to avoid comparisons that may be bringing you down, it may take setting up easier challenges, so you can feel motivated and confident again, it may take drawing only what you feel like and ignoring whatever the world may have to say about it, it might mean taking a break, and it will, without the shadow of a doubt, take time.
So whatever you set out to do next, I hope you can do it kindly, and with a sense of fun, even when life throws you a curve-ball, and especially when it gets tricky.
Excelente trabalho