I often end my emails “Keep your brushes and pens wet” as a salutation and an encouragement. If your pens and brushes are wet, you are using them. If you are using them, you are actively discovering and experimenting with your media as well as working on a project or a skill.
Furthering our art is all about ToT – Time over Target. The time we spend doing is more important than the time we spend thinking, watching or reading about what we want to do. The action and activity of doing is the most vital way we have of moving our art practice forward.
The problem is for many of us, our lives are busy. We have priorities that push our art practice down our mental list of important things to do. We are apprehensive about doing as we are learning and we risk disappointing results. We risk failure so we paralyse ourselves and go and watch another class video or read another art book, hoping that that knowledge will help move our art onwards. We do not do. The disconnect is that Doing is what matters.
So doing what? Given our constraints, what to do? Well I don’t care. Do anything. Do big, do small. I am a fan of trading cards – bite sized pieces of magic that we share each month. I will do book marks or make book covers. I will make mini books or notes and doodles to mail to people or glue onto a box or book I made. I just want to use my pens and brushes. The more I play, the more I learn about the tools, methods, and materials. The more comfortable I am with these, the easier it is to let my imagination run wild and the lower by apprehension is about starting something new.
Keep a box or basket of the minimum tools you need to create handy – on the counter, desk, by your chair in the lounge. Pen, paper or lined book, brush, Altoids box of paints and a cup for water. You don’t need a lot and it needs to be accessible and easy to use for 10 or 15 minutes as a quick art fix.
Another resource is to join one of the Art Jams – a monthly get together to work on your own art or join in on a project that we do together in person to have some art fun. We also have a weekly Wednesday night Zoom call where we chat and work on the 2nd and 4th Wednesday of the month.
You do not ever have to do a complete art work – do a set of pen patterns, a flower, a graded wash, splodges…. Just do!