Remaining arty when you don't have time (EMG Zine September)

Time is a precious commodity when you are a busy person. The more crazy you life, the less time you seem to have. And even when you get time, sometimes the last thing you feel like doing is painting, paperwork or marketing. There will be times when you have to choose, have to cut back, have to be realistic about how much you can do.

Stop Giving Yourself A Guilt Trip! (EMG Zine February)

Thou shalt paint whenever one is not:

a) At the day job

b) Making the house liveable by cleaning, cooking, ironing or fumigating

c) Laid off sick with 2 broken arms or completely incapacitated

The consequences of ignoring these commandments shall be eternal guilt...

Um... When did I agree to this?

Most artists have gotten themselves in the situation where they feel they *should* be painting if they have free time. (I'm not talking about blowing off your responsibilities, I'm talking about feeling under pressure to create stuff just because you are an artist and you have spare time.)

You try and be a superhero, putting unrealistic and often unhealthy expectations on yourself. And if you don't meet these expectations you get miserable. Or if you're like me, you start to feel a big, fat case of the guilts. After the guilts start, martyrdom sets in and you paint because you *should*, not because it's fun or rewarding, but because you've made these silly rules that you can't have any semblance of a life.

I'm guilty of it. In fact, I worked myself into the ground trying to have two careers, and somewhere along the way forgot to have fun. I got so caught up in having to paint because I was an artist and it's what I should be doing, that all painting felt like 'work.' Commission work, personal work, portfolio work -- it felt like I was churning through it, but the heart wasn't in it in the way it should be. Oh don't get me wrong, I gave 150% on each piece; it was more the way I felt inside as I painted. It got into a nasty cycle of working, coming home, doing necessary chores, painting because I had free time (not because I had a drive to paint), and all the while thinking I’d rather be doing something else. And heaven forbid I did something else; I'd be thinking about the fact I should be painting when I wasn't. While I had guilted myself into painting and was producing stuff, I wasn't enjoying the process.

It's kind of like being allowed dessert. You really want a chocolate sundae covered in gooey hot chocolate fudge sauce. And then being sensible or being bullied into getting the fruit salad. While the fruit salad is healthier and tastes great, what you really wanted was the ice-cream. The whole time you're having your pineapple you're thinking about the ice-cream. In the end, you got dessert, you're down a couple of dollars, you've eaten something you really didn't feel like, and you haven't really got rid of the craving for the sundae.So what can you do when you start feeling guilty about NOT painting?

• Slap yourself in the back of the head and stop thinking that way! Nobody likes a martyr and no one but yourself is putting expectations on you. If a company wants you to do 50 paintings in a week, they're only doing it because you allowed yourself to be put into that situation. Be realistic about what you can do and recognise your limitations. Also recognise that you are entitled to a life!


• Relax! The painting will still be there tomorrow, a week from now, even six months later. It's like riding a bike. The skills may get rusty, but they don't disappear.
  You don't have to spend all your free time on one thing. You are allowed to have more than one artistic pursuit or hobby (actually, this should be expanded to be 'you are allowed to have a life!'). I have several (hobbies, not lives :) ) -- I play music, I do medieval recreation, I dance, I play computer games… It may help to balance you out or inspire you in different ways. It also helps to reenergise you when you are having an artist block.


• Don't think about what you think you should be doing when you are doing something else enjoyable. Again it's like the chocolate sundae. Your free time is just that -- free! Free to do what you want, not free to only do painting and nothing else or you shall be struck down by some omnipotent being. A little bit of guilt helps you get through the things you have to.

You don't need it in your free time. So go forth, paint because you want to, not because you feel guilty about NOT painting.

Why I hate the term 'New Year resolution'

It's that time of year again. New Year's Resolution time. I absolutely hate the term 'resolution'. It sounds like a death sentence. I like terms like 'possibility' or 'potential happening' - much less frightening. But, they wouldn't be so important if resolutions were so wishy-washy.

The point of a resolution is to kick your butt into gear, get you to stick to a plan and make a change to your life. So how do you make a resolution and actually keep it?

Set a deadline - otherwise you're making a list of procrastination
If you really want to achieve something, set a deadline. Mark a date in your calendar, set milestones to check progress against and stick to them. The minute you slip, you have to pull yourself up again or you've already failed. I'm terrible at this. I'll admit that I hate deadlines, because they are tangible things. They don't need to be so scary. They may be something simple like 'by the end of the year I will have attempted to do something'. It's actually about incentive.

Make the tasks reasonable - or the don't shoot for planet 47xb489 in the Orion Nebula
Don't be silly and say you will become an Olympic champion if you are a couch potato. Last year I made a list of things I'd 'like' to achieve, and ones that I 'wanted' to achieve. Some of the tasks were almost pipe dreams, while the majority were achievable with dedication and time. Make the tasks small so you can tick them off and feel like you've achieved something. Tasks may be buying a personal domain, painting at least one painting using oils, joining a forum you've been too intimidated to join. The grand plan may be to improve your painting to a level where you can enter a competition, but to get there, it will help if you have small tasks to achieve your large, long term goal.

Be willing to adjust your resolutions - they should be bendy, breakable and useful
Unfortunately (or fortunately) for me my life changed after I made my resolutions for the last year, and this in turn had a large impact on my ability to meet those artistic resolutions I'd set for myself. Life is very fluid, and you have to be prepared to change your resolutions if your circumstances change. I could not have prepared for the change in work conditions, nor could I have truly prepared for buying a house (when that was in the 'pipe dream' list). Basically you have to be flexible about some of your resolutions. If you break your leg, that resolution about being able to run a 20km marathon may have to change.


So what happens if you get to the end of the year and you fail?
Don't worry! Seriously. Failure is all part of the life experience. If you fail, you need to look at why you failed. Was it too complex? Did you try to achieve too much? Did you *really* want to achieve the task (i.e. not eating as much chocolate, hmmm???).

And anyway, if you fail, there's always the next year!

Or the next...

or the....

Fighting Artist block 1: Experimentation

Everyone goes through periods where things just don't go right. When you're an artist, it's called artist block. Some artists say their 'muse has flown'. I call it a pain in the neck!

There is nothing more frustrating than needing to paint, and not being able to draw a stick figure, let alone finishing that painting that's half finished. One tool I've found for avoiding the frustration of artist block is experimentation. It's a chance for you to create something that you don't care about, something that doesn't matter if you screw up, and who knows - you may find a technique that works brilliantly.

Have a list of things you'd like to try. Keep them near your art space so that if you feel like doing art, but have the inspiration or technique of a brick on that day, you've got something to try:

• Speedpainting: it's a technique mainly for digital artists, where you force yourself to spend a limited painting time on a single topic. This can be great if you don't have a lot of spare time. Join up with a forum like http://www.conceptart.org/, http://www.cgtalk.com/, or anywhere that has daily/ weekly or monthly challenges if you want a topic. Set a stop watch, and start laying colour.
  

• taking a tool you've never used before and attempting to make as many different lines as possible. Some media you may like to try:
• Conté chalk,
  
• charcoal,
  
• impasto medium,
  
• metallic paint,
  
• ink & nib,
  
• egg tempera (try http://www.alessandrakelley.com/whyegg.html for more information)
• watercolour pencils,
• oil pastels
  
  
• Follow a tutorial. It's even better if they've done all the line work or preparatory files so you don't have to think beyond what the tutorial is teaching you. It doesn't matter what the tutorial is on, sometimes the easier ones are more fun! Try lightning effects in Photoshop, or 'Sepia toning photographs', or tin foil hats. Anything creative is better than nothing at all!
  
  
• Digital artists - trawl through many of the free brush sites and download a whole stack of photoshop brushes, textures, shapes and patterns. Then go wild! Do some photo manipulations, just bring together everything and anything.
  
  
• Make avatars or icons of you art. Follow tutorials, hunt for icon 'stock', and have fun with them. Try and come up with silly slogans, make them gloriously tacky, add sparkles and frames and neon lighting! No one is going to see them but you so it doesn't matter how gorgeous or hideous they turn out.

Hopefully I've given you a few ideas so that the next time you feel stuck, you can still get rid of some of that creative energy.