One of my biggest influences that I have come across is the book by James Clear called “Atomic Habits”. This has changed parts of my life, including my artistic endeavours. I started doing my daily doodles for the visual journal based on the principles he extolls. It started off with just one day, and grew into five hundred. plus. But the basic concept is making little change makes a big difference. I am struggling at the moment to get started with some physical artworks and although I am trying to employ these habits, I have not been able to tie it down yet. I think this is partly due to the fact that I don’t have a lot of confidence. When I see all the myriad of really talented artists online, I think to myself I have no ability.
However, flipping that on its head and attempting to do a little bit each day, changes that ideology. I do believe I can improve through effort. One is born with natural talent, but competency can be taught. I do think that we are in some way told to believe that talent can be trained as well, but for me you I either have it, or you don’t. But that should certainly not restrict ones enjoyment out of effort.
All the great artists seemingly ground out their art. And in a lot of respect, that’s what made them better than everybody else because they just kept on doing it. No one remembers the might have beens. We only remember the people who did it. So therefore my goal is to set aside 30 minutes a day to do a sketch or piece of physical art. The fact that I am limiting myself to this time will help me focus on what I want to do. Having an open ended timeframe I would likely lead to me not continuing as the majority of this will be done in the evening.
But again, using the techniques of things like habit stacking, I should be able to fill a routine around getting the pens et cetera out and concentrating my mind for 30 minutes.
I’m really trying to get my space sorted out. I am longing for a standing desk as when I was in work, I was introduced to them. It was a real change to how I thought about being more productive. The fact that I could get quick jobs done, standing up, and spend more time on the complex ones seated, completely changed how I worked. I never realise how different working standing up and sitting down was. These little changes to my workflow will bring back focus to my art creation. Added to all this is the plan to put the different materials for different projects into boxes that I can quickly get out and carry on where I left off.
I know this post is primarily seemingly about productivity, but I think that is a major part of any artistic endeavours. Ultimately to get better at things. One has to practice. Friction in starting at practice. Is what dissipates the energy to do it. Or at least for me it does. So if I have my gear to hand I’m way more likely to attempt practising. As I have very limited space just becomes even more important. I don’t have a rambling studio where I can just leave everything lying around and waltz in and continue my current masterpiece. I do actually like the fact that I have a limited space as that concentrates my mind. But for the time being, I’m going to have to make do with my current set up until I can achieve the goal of getting a standing desk.
I’m continuing the theme of small change. I have now set up my convertkit newsletter machine? I think… I have been playing around with it and really like the way it can be configured. I kind of feel that it allows for more information and I put here. The blog is really a space of my thoughts about what I’m doing and will be doing. I am a little confused as to the process behind convert kit as it seems they want to take over the role of the blog. But for the moment I’m going to keep playing around with it and see whether it brings benefit.
And finally, with October approaching I am minded that inktober is not far away. And so I’m considering whether I will take part in it as that is reliant on the prompt words creating a story in my mind. But I’ll probably write a blog post about that after the event. Stay tuned for further info ha ha.
I’ll see how successful my plan is to sit myself down in the evening and enjoy half an hour scribbling on bits of paper.
Until the next time…