Obey your body and mind, and your body will obey you

We artists are very passionate individuals. Most of us spend hours, if not all our free time in our creative bubble, and we love it. It takes a great deal of discipline and work to make it as an artist, especially if you have other passions or another occupation.

I must say I sometimes overindulge the energy I have because I want to paint. Exhausted because I painted every night, I end up sleeping all week-end when that’s really the time I should be painting. Two full days are often more productive than a set of short creative sessions.

When I’m exhausted, especially mentally, I can’t paint, as many of you, I’m sure.  My personal challenge is to accept my human status and listen to my body. When he says sleep, I should go.  When he says stop and relax, I should go.  I need to accept I sometimes can’t paint.  This had me thinking about what would be the best painting schedule for me. How could I paint a reasonable amount of time per week, at least enough to call it a second career, having a full time job and a life?

To me, Saturday is sacred Nothing-to-do Day. I sleep in, I do my laundry, go out with friends: I live my life.  I love to bike ride, so if the sun is out, so are my wheels! Saturday is my day. No work, just play. When I was in highschool, I had to take a class about time management. It was the most boring thing ever. The only thing I remember from that class is you need to keep one day off in your schedule whatever you do. I wasn’t sure what the reason was at the time. Now I know it’s the only way to keep  your sanity. Besides, working 5 days a week and then going to your studio 2 days is a 7 day work week.  Even if art is fun, it is work. I found myself to be much more productive if I painted only on Sunday; relaxed and refreshed, I can paint for hours. I ususally produce more work than if I had went to the studio the day before as well.  Saturday is the last day of the week.  Waste it.

I’ve tried many other tricks: getting up super early, going to bed later, going to the studio straight after work, going back home for supper after work and then going to the studio, not painting all week but painting all weekend... It is a hassle. Yet, the best schedule is the one my body dictates: if I feel the energy, I go to the studio. Period. I’ve also noticed getting myself physically at the studio is often the hardest part. Just like creating a picture: the hardest part is to start.  As for getting up earlier, it is a battle; my biological clock wakes my mind at a certain time, wether I am physically awake or not. To feel good, I need at least 6 or 7 hours of sleep.  And still, not painting all week is just too hard!

I read somewhere that if you are an artist, you should go to the studio everyday, even if it means you’ll just sit around for 20 minutes. This works to an extent. That’s how you get yourself physically to work; going to the studio, and then telling yourself: ‘ Hey, I’m here, so why not do this little thing.’. That usually gets me going for hours.

It all comes down to knowing yourself and your body. The more you do, the better your art schedule will be. However, you need to be disciplined enough to stick to it. I’ve had those hassles, but it’s worth finding the one method that works for you, and finding your creative ritual ( which I will discuss in another post).

Got to let go of my computer. I’m leaving for the studio. 

Sketching, Thinking, Imagining

I used to hate to sketch. I can't say I love it now ( the act of applying paint is much more satisfying), but  I know the value it has, and I love the outcome.  I never sketched when I started painting; something in doing the same image twice didn't feel right. Then, in university, one of my teachers forced us into a thumbnail sketching exercise, from which I was able to use 2 or 3 images to paint some of my best works.

For some reason, I came back to my bad habit of not sketching before starting a painting. Today, I went to the studio and started on finishing a painting which I hadn't thought through. It is extremely dull at this point. I realized I was wasting my time and my paint. I didn't know where I was going, and even though that's sometimes a blessing in a creative process, too much in my case leads to an epic search for THE thing that will make the picture work.  Nothing I did worked out for this dull painting.

After an hour, I decided to put everything away.  I sat down at my new work desk ( which I found in the hallway of my building; some other studio was giving it away), and started on sketching thumbnails. It's the only solution I could come up with. My head was messy and so was my painting.

All these ideas came out of my head, into little scribbles. I browsed my family pictures at hand, and colored really elementary reproductions. I never spend more than 5 minutes on a sketch. To me, it's a sketch, not the work; I also need to place the colors and define composition more than decide exactly how the picture will look at the end. And the great thing about sketches is you don't care what they look like at the end, so you can draw over them as much as you want.

I was aligning my thought into a weird mind map, chaotic but organised, into these little images. I remembered some concepts I'd forgotten, motifs I don't use anymore, symbols and patterns I put aside. I realized I had ticks I had to get rid of, for the sake of originality.

 I decided to go back to the thumbnails.Yeah, this 2 hours of sketching was an amazing experience. I'm adding it to my weekly to do list.

The Perfect Book

My little brother bought this great little book of the internet, entitled The Perfect Bait. He’s studying animation, and loves to draw comics. He recommended I read it because he thought it was the best he’s read so far. In fact, this book is the ‘you can make it’ guide book and is so much more interesting than the ‘how will you pay the bills’ serenade. I thank my lil’bro for being so great to me by sharing his new found knowledge, which, in turn, I want to share with you. I strongly recommend you read this little jewel of a book, if you are a painter, a writer, a musician or any kind of artist.

The author of The Perfect Bait, Bobby Chiu, is a reknowned artist who has worked on many films and has initiated many artistic initiatives. His 75 page book is a no brainer. It comes with a little pep talk and a simple plan elaboration: 1) practice and hard work, 2) motivation, 3) get your art out there, 4) financial security and 5) finding and keeping your clients.

And how important are those 5 steps Chiu states !  You might want to catch on to his version of financial security and how to keep collectors interested (obviously the two last chapters of the book). These really had me thinking. His ideas are simple, yet clear, and to an extent obvious to anyone slighty interested in commerce and marketing of art. However, to be reassured I was on the right track and to see that the process is this simple is a great push to my motivation.  It got me officially started on the third step: getting my art out there.  

The great thing about animators and other ‘commercial’ ( this has no discriminating undertone to it, by the way, but for the sake of clarity, we need to use ‘the C word’ here – why is ‘commercial’ such a bad word in the field of  fine arts, anyway?) artists such as designers is their trade implies a business aspect  whereas fine art painters are often thought of as the clichéed excentric individual and indifferent to making money. At least, as I’ve said before, this romantic idea of art for art’s sake has followed me a long time until I realized we are not different from designers, but just have a different audience. Designers always made beautiful things too, there is no question about it. Therefore, their experience is often the best tool to adapt to our practice. This is as if you wanted to sell trucks, but learned the trade with a car salesman. This seems logical, doesn’t it?