Meditation and the part time painter (EMG Zine)

I’m the first to admit being a stress bunny. Some days I thrive on it, other days it near wrecks me. In my everyday life there came a point where I needed to sit back and start learning how to relax. One of the relaxation tools I learnt was meditation. I’m not great at it, I get distracted easily, and I don’t do it anywhere near as regularly as I should. However I did find that a nice side effect of relaxation and meditation was the improvement to my creativity.

Links Shout out - Pattern Tap

"Pattern Tap is here to satisfy and encourage the inspiration needs of my interface design peers and peeps. We aspire to be the one stop pattern shop for your next inspiration need." (from the website)

Split by functionality, this is like a scrap book of design elements. Navigation, backgrounds, buttons, lists, icons, headers, tables etc, there are about 45 categories to browse through. Great for when you are trawling for inpiration, trends, or just really awesome designs to ooh and ahhh over! 

http://patterntap.com/

Links Shout out - Phoenix online graphics editor

Anyway, always the hoarder of cool links, there has been an increase in the number of online image editors available and this is one of them. It can be integrated to some online image galleries like Flickr, Facebook and Picasa, plus there are a stack of tutorials. It has a number of advanced features like layers and cloning tools. Of course it's no Photoshop, but if you're on the road and don't have access to anything but the internet, this kind of tool could be invaluable.

Phoenix online graphics editor

As always, make sure you read the terms and conditions on the site.

Links Shout out - The Beautiful Necessity

I like pretty sites. I like sites that have variety around their focus. The Beautiful Necessity is a site that looks at The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and features links to everything from sales of the original paintings, products and artwork inspired by the movement, costume design, films and tv, artists and a whole series of articles that may inspire, or just move you to drool :)

http://thebeautifulnecessity.blogspot.com/

How to prioritise competing tasks

In a previous column, I briefly mentioned working smarter, not harder. One of the things that I find difficult to manage at times is what to do first. You get so many things on your plate, you only have so many hours in the day, yet you are expected to complete everything NOW! When you have conflicting commitments and you can’t really drop them, how do you work out what to do first, and what to push to the bottom of the list?

First and foremost, have some way of keeping track of everything you have to do. There’s nothing worse than finding an email you forgot to answer... a year or two later. I’m guilty of that, in fact I know I’ve got a couple of way overdue tasks on my list! This is my way of working things out.

• Paid work should always come first! If you are a professional, you need to treat your paying customers like gold. They are your bread and butter. Being slow is ok, as long as you keep communications open and tell them you’re going to be slow. But never take money and renege on your contract or sale. It’s going to be hell on your reputation, and nothing travels faster than bad news!
• If you have two tasks of equal importance and one’s been in your in-tray longer, that’s the one that probably deserves your attention first. However, if it’s hanging around for ages – like months - maybe you should reconsider doing that task at all.
• The job that pays more bills is the one with the highest priority. Being an artist is important to me, but my day job pays all the niggly things like my mortgage and for food– so I’m not going to screw up that because I was up all hours painting! (Says the girl up til midnight painting on a ‘school night’ *ahem*).
• If a task seems too hard or you know that you are never going to get to it, you are entitled to boot it out the door. Don’t keep it on the list, there is seriously no point.
• If a task looks like it’s going to suck the life out of you and take forever, see if you can break it down into smaller tasks. An hour of sketching is a little more manageable than having to draw 50 line art pieces.
• Stuff you’ve bartered for should be treated the same as paid work. No one hates another artist who receives a trade and reneges on their promise. It’s just not cool. Don’t do it.
• Do fun tasks after you’ve done the ‘work’ stuff. Use it as a proverbial carrot (or in my case chocolate). If you do all the fun stuff first, you’re only left with boring, tedious things that will seem to take forever and ever and ever and.... so try and organise your tasks using this theory.
• Do 5 minute jobs NOW! Don’t procrastinate. Knock them over and get them out of the way.
• Be able to live with your decisions. Recognise that in order to do things well, you have to focus on one thing at a time!

And above all, learn to live with the fact that there are only so many hours in the day, only so much work one poor little trooper can do before they keel over, and that you are not in fact a superhero that can do 12 things at the one time. It just isn’t possible! As much as we would like it to be!

If you are interested in tools to help organise yourself a bit better, here’s a previous post I made on creating and using todo lists
http://parttimepainter.blogspot.com/2008/03/organisation-1-todo-lists-and-part-time.html

Link shout-out - I Draw Girls

Links shout-out! A great collection of digital tutorials/ walk throughs that don't just focus on drawing women (despite the name). Even though this is mostly centred around fantasy & games art, there's plenty for any digital painter. There are zombies, ninjas, mecha, life drawing sessions, studies of old masters, free brushes, backgrounds and architecture. Worth losing yourself for a couple of hours. Check it out!

http://idrawgirls.blogspot.com/

5 online photo editors

Digital editing doesn't require expensive software. You don't even need to be home to access you desktop editor. Simply hook into the Internet and have a look at the 5 best online image editors (according to Lifehacker readers)

http://lifehacker.com/5307419/five-best-online-image-editors