This week in my art practice

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Monday morning art practice routine. I start each week in my journal with a list of creative intentions for the upcoming week and reflection on the former week’s list. I’ve been doing this for years as a way to navigate my art practice, giving direction and personal accountability. Now, I’m bringing this little practice to the blog. I hope my personal accountability system gets you thinking about how you’d like to approach your art practice, too.

Last WEek

Last WEek

Last Week Review

Wow! I had an amazingly productive week last week. I accomplished almost everything on my creative intentions list:

  • I created a daily sketch every day, all seven days.

  • I finished the piece from Ira Marck’s class on Skillshare.

  • I posted five times to instagram—hitting my goal of 3-5 times a week.

  • I really dug into learning about copic markers, watching several video tutorials. I created my first animal portraits using copics, and I purchased a few more colors because I’’m now officially addicted).

  • And last but not least—I finally gathered my courage and my drafts and published posts to my blog again. Yay!

The only thing I didn’t quite do last week was #5 choose my next art project. I have other contenders in mind for a project, but as I sit here now, I realize that I’ve already begun a project that started with abstracts and turned into animal portraits. Since my “rule” is one project at a time, copic art it is.

This week

This week

My creative intentions list for this week - May 24-30, 2021

I can attribute all these checkmarks on my list last week to finally gaining clarity about what I want to do - at least for now - with my art. I really can’t say I’ve had that clarity for a while as I just followed whatever creative whim I felt at the time. It kind of drove me crazy, so I’m really happy to report I now have more focus.

So what do I do in my art practice?

I am committed to doing quick, imperfect daily sketches in my daily sketchbook (for reasons I explained last week),

I’m focused on learning by taking at least one art class at a time (either via Skillshare online or elsewhere)

I’m working on one art project at a time.

And finally, I’m committing to sharing more (writing here as well as posting on instagram) and engaging with other creative people.

As you can see, everything on this week’s list focuses on these four art practices.