How to pick up where you left off in your art practice

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How to pick up where you left off in your art practice

Yesterday I talked about the challenge of keeping up with my art practice while traveling. Today, I want to say a few words about returning.

At home, I commit to creating every day. I try to draw every day in my sketchbook at a minimum, and on good days I also work on art projects in the works—and recently, I’ve added blogging to the mix.

It feels great! It took years to find my way to both the commitment (i.e., this is important to me so I’m going to make it a daily practice in my life) and to the systems (intentions, goals and routines) that keep me creating and moving forward.

And then, I go away on a trip and not only do I struggle to create on the road—which I know requires doubling down on commitment—but I completely lose momentum when I get back home to my art practice.

No, not just momentum. I can’t even remember what I was working on! I look around

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Routine, momentum and art practice interruptions

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Routine, momentum and art practice interruptions

I do love a vacation—I do—but I can’t quite resolve the pain of breaking away from my art practice. It doesn’t matter for how long I go away, it might be a quick four day weekend like last week to southern California or several weeks to a destination further away, there’s this huge disruption not just to my time, but to my attention.

I lose my focus and momentum stalls. Both on the road—where I struggle to take time for art—and when I get back and forget what I was working on before I left.

Every vacation.

If you have an art practice, do you struggle with this? It’s really frustrating!

I’ve been working on solutions.

Today I will focus on the problem of taking time for art while on the road. I enjoy

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This collage grid makes my heart sing

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This collage grid makes my heart sing

This was one of the warm-ups that I completely lost myself in last week. The work is rough and the paper in this sketchbook is thin so you can see marks coming through from behind. It’s not by any means complete. It’s just a drafty warm-up grid of collage sketches.

But. I love it so.

Part of every art journey is discovering who you are as an artist. That’s part of the fun. Trying new subjects and mediums in different ways, different contexts and slowly learning your own preferences. Learning what it is you like to make—no, have to make—and how.

This is the creative journey. And I believe this is how we find our natural, innate style.

So this little grid of collages

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Weekly Warm-ups - Abstract Collage

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Weekly Warm-ups - Abstract Collage

Last week I decided [daily warm ups) to restructure daily warm ups in my art practice to see if I can overcome the obstacle of, well, not doing it. While I know intellectually that warming up with simple practice exercises primes the well and adds important play and practice time, I avoided warm ups more often than not.

So last week I tried my new approach, which is to

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Cat Shots

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Cat Shots

This is a fun exercise I did for Este MacLeod’s video on Sketchbook Revivial 2022. You can’t see them now, but every cat started out as a number, 1-9. Este was one of thirty teachers for this free annual online event hosted by Karen Abend—and this demo was one of my favorites. It’s an exercise in pure creativity where possibilities start to roll onto the page. My mind is still thinking about what else I can do.

I can’t say enough about Sketchbook Revival. It’s kind of like an intensive two-week sampler course where every day for two weeks registrants receive two new instructional videos featuring two different artists by email. The two weeks ended Monday but they are available (you can still sign up) until April 18th (and did I mention its free?)

Videos focus on different ways to fill a sketchbook and introduce a variety of people to follow more online, and all kinds of mediums and techniques.

It can be overwhelming for sure—Each video is about an hour long and trying to keep up with two every day is too time consuming. This year, though, I found a way to keep on top of it. First,

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Drawing practice

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Drawing practice

One thing I like to do when I feel like drawing is to practice drawing people while watching “talking head” art videos on YouTube. I can’t remember who this Youtuber is now, but I liked her clothes so I started in with my polychromos colored pencils in my art journal. While her mouth looks a bit odd here, at the time I thought it actually caught the sense of it. Mouths are hard to draw—especially when showing teeth.

I think her blouse is about the same color—but then I went rogue with the colors of her hair and the background.

I used to watch more art videos YouTube, but

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Character Sketches Part 2

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Character Sketches Part 2

Following up on the character sketches I was working on last week for a Skillshare class, I now have my character drawn in four poses: neutral (although she looks a little arrogant), surprised, sad and disgusted. The 3/4 pose is going to be more difficult—and then to finish the exercise I’m going to paint one of them in a final piece.

Like I said about this little class project, I am focused right now on

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