Dear Wonderful, Creative You:

How long did that take you?

It’s one of the questions I get most often as an artist, but in a way, I think it’s the wrong question. While students are often genuinely curious about the time the work takes, I think there’s often an embedded assumption that they could never make that kind of time for art.

I wanted to chronicle the process of making this page from start to finish. I share some of my tips and tricks for making time for art, so that you can do it too.

Portable Art Kit Supplies

If you are wondering where to find the supplies that I share for my portable art kit, they are here!

Foldable water cup

#0 Round watercolor brush

#10 Round watercolor brush

Cloth for wiping brush

Daniel Smith portable paint set

Lumos Pro fine tip reusable pen – Use code MINDFULARTSTUDIO to save 10%

Handmade 100% cotton watercolor journal – workshop with instructions on demand in my membership

Playful Poppies Art Journal Page workshop – on demand in my membership, The Gathering

Stackable porcelain watercolor dishes

Tips and Tricks for Making Time for Art

• Prep a small portable art kit for travel.
• Be bold and create in public, really everyone is staring at their phone!
• Leave your work out and in process, even the water, with no set up time, you’ll get started quickly.
• Instead of looking at your phone when you need a break, take a few minutes to work on one small part of the page.

Share Your Ideas

How do you make time for art? What’s in your portable art kit? Do you work on your art pieces in bursts over time, or in one or two long sessions?

I can’t wait to hear about your experience.

Creatively Yours,

Amy

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Dear Wonderful, Creative You:

I know you might not share my opinion, but I love winter. I think it’s an incredibly beautiful time. When we are lucky enough to have snow, everything is coated in a white peacefulness, a stillness. And when you bend down and look closely at the leaves, dried flowers, and seed pods, the vibrant colors of spring, summer, and fall have gone away, leaving a subtle beauty that will reveal itself to you if you take the time to look.

I had picked up a dried leaf a few weeks ago, and was looking forward to using layers of watercolor to depict the various tones of ochre, warm brown, and burnt umber.

Facing Artistic Resistance

But when I sat down to paint yesterday, the thought of having to map out an accurate drawing, complete with test drawings and measurements made me feel like not creating at all. (I don’t usually approach drawing quite this technically, but have been reading a wonderful book by Dianne Sutherland on botanical painting and I was wanting to employ her good advice, but also running into artistic resistance because of it.)

I paused to slow down my thoughts and better notice them. I’m well aware that if I ignore my creative frustration and push through anyway, I’m bound to make something I hate. This would only feed the fears of the inner critic who likes to go searching for evidence that we are not as capable as we thought.

I wondered if I should choose a different activity – painting an abstract watercolor landscape? Or drawing a repetitive pattern in my journal? But I wasn’t in the mood for those things. I wanted to paint. I wanted to study the leaf closely, mix my paint colors, and try to mimic what I saw in front of me. I love watching the pigment sink into the paper, and a form begin to appear, it always feels like a magic trick.

So instead of pushing myself, I asked a “What if?” question. What if I had permission to draw the leaf well, but not get hung up on making it 100% accurate? What if it did not have to be perfect, or nearly perfect? In the words of fellow sketchbook enthusiast Helen Wells, would that make it fun?

And voilà – that was the creative block I had put in my own way: if I was going to paint the leaf, I had to make a well studied, highly accurate drawing. While that might appeal to me some days, that day it sounded onerous and not fun at all. That unspoken “rule” was self-imposed and it was stopping me from even starting.

Once I released myself from my self-imposed artistic block, I was able to begin with a sense of fun instead of frustration. With a new sense of looseness, I drew my “close enough” version of my leaf, and quickly began adding in the first layers of paint.

The drawing happened relatively quickly, and I was able to dig into painting. I especially enjoyed creating the little holes in the leaf and the crinkly, jagged edges with the stains around them. These are the “imperfections” that I find really beautiful. After a couple of hours yesterday, I had to move onto other projects.

The first session with this painting had gone well. I was pleased with what had emerged so far. So today, coming back after this promising beginning was scary. This is what I think about as “the tyranny of a good piece.” In this case, a different kind of what if question can sometimes emerge:

What if I mess it up?

What if I can’t pick up where I left off?

What if yesterday was a fluke and I can’t do it as well today?

For me, one of the things that helps me go back into an art piece is telling myself that it’s important to focus on process, and that it’s not yet as good as it could be, so I have nothing to lose. More often than not, I improve the piece, and even if I make a mistake, or push it too far, I haven’t ruined anything, because I will have learned so much that I will apply to the next art piece.

So I pressed on, inviting myself to paint with some loose, intuitive strokes that felt free, and only pulling out a magnifying glass to better understand what I was seeing. I enjoyed finding the dark areas around the veins of the leaf and on the leaf edges, and all the little dots. The last step was the drop shadows. These always scare me a bit, but again, I told myself I could only improve this painting or learn for the next, so I pressed on, enjoying hugging the side of my leaf with my grayish paint mix.

In the end I spent two very enjoyable mornings painting, that would have been lost if I hadn’t paused to examine what was getting in the way of me creating. This is the gift that slow drawing and slow art has given me – an ability to pause and consider what I’m thinking and feeling, to ask what if questions and see if I can find a happier way to live. What else can we ask for from our art process?

Share Your Experience in the Comments

What artistic blocks get in the way for you? How do you clear them? We would love to hear about it in the comments!

Creatively Yours,

Amy

The post Working Through Artistic Resistance appeared first on Mindful Art Studio®.

Dear Wonderful, Creative You,

For me, one of the biggest secrets to overcome creative block is repetition. This might seem counter-intuitive, because I think a lot of people assume repetition feels boring. But I don’t find repetition boring in art, on the contrary, I find it freeing and energizing. Repetition gives me space to play, make mistakes, and explore each technique in a million different ways. It’s a bit like being a scientist and asking a lot of What if? questions, but no one else gets to dictate my line of inquiry – I do.

I want to walk you through how this works, so let’s use my current project with watercolor and watercolor resist techniques as an example.

Current Project: Watercolor Resist Circles

Materials

2 and 3 inch watercolor circles

Masking fluid applied with a brush

Daniel Smith Watercolor: Indigo shade

Water

With watercolor and resist techniques, I’m keeping my work limited to one color. Why? I want to limit the variables that I’m playing with so I can push each technique as far as possible – this allows me to be as creative as I can.

Limitation feeds creativity.

Too many choices pull you in too many directions at once and can feel paralyzing.

Open Creative Doors With One Powerful Question

So much of making art and creativity is about asking one powerful question: What if…

What if I wrote a 5 line poem each day for 1 month? What if I started each poem with a random word from the dictionary? What if I found a thread to connect each day’s poem? See how asking – what if? – can open creative doors?

As you can imagine, you can apply What if? questions to any art form or creative endeavor.

So here’s my current What If? Question:

What if I created simple marks in watercolor resist and then painted washes of indigo paint on top?

Can you see how this one question contains so many more questions? It’s the starting point for potentially hundreds or thousands of questions and creative experiments.

You can join our workshop here.

Look at all the variables in this experiment:

Mark Making Variables

• Shape of the mark
• Size of the mark
• Number of marks on each circle
• Density or sparseness of marks on each circle
• Placement of marks in circle

Watercolor Wash Variables

• Amount of water in washes
• Number of layers of washes
• Order of layers of washes and resist
• Coverage of the wash over the circle

Material Variables

• Use additional resist techniques? On which layers?
• Vary the size of brush?

Variables with Finished Circles

Once the circles are done – I have so many choices about how to use them. I could use them in:

• Art journal page
• Pop-up book page
• Part of a collage
• As the subject of a greeting card
• In a collage that will hang on the wall

Can you see how endless the possibilities are even with this seemingly narrow question? This is why I find myself endlessly inspired: Limitation and repetition are the keys to creative freedom. If you are curious about learning this process with me, you can join our Can’t Resist Watercolor workshop.

Share Your Ideas in the Comments

I’d love to hear what keeps you feeling creatively free and inspired. Tell us about it in the comments.

Creatively Yours,

Amy

The post My #1 Trick to Overcome Creative Block appeared first on Mindful Art Studio®.

Dear Wonderful, Creative You:

Most of us think of the word “artist,” and imagine an apron-clad person, a smear of paint on their face, standing in front of a 3 foot x 4 foot canvas filled with gorgeous, realistic imagery. We imagine their perfect painting will eventually be packed, brought to a gallery, hung on the wall, and purchased for a large sum of money.

While that vision of an artist is indeed a rich and inspiring one, it’s only a fraction of artists. There are many kinds of artists, and many ways in which creativity counts. As an art therapist turned art teacher, I find too many students who feel handcuffed by this image of what a “real” artist is. In truth, real artists make all kinds of art. I believe we are all creative, and there are countless ways that humans express their creative fire – from a beautifully written letter, to a gorgeous vase of wildflowers, to a spreadsheet that makes a complicated set of data easy to understand.

Part of my job as a teacher is to help people see all the ways in which their creativity already shines, and to soften the fears of the inner critic – that part of you that says you aren’t good enough to be an artist, don’t have time, or aren’t worth the money for good supplies. Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Big Magic, suggests allowing the inner critic “in the car,” but not letting her drive. I invite my students to give their inner critic a cup of tea and have her sit on the couch and relax while we play and explore, without fear of the “art police.”

Through working on repeated explorations of one idea or theme, I love leading students through a process that is both creative and mindful at once, freeing us from the dictates of the inner critic. We affirm our artistic selves through deep exploration of what we love. Laying out countless little pieces of paper, we make small adjustments with each piece, discovering the particular colors, shapes, lines, and combinations that bring us the most joy.

As a matter of necessity in this process, there will be many pieces that we don’t love or perhaps even dislike. It’s not our job to edit as we create. It’s our job to create as freely as possible, and open the faucet of creativity. Then later, after you’ve explored all the ideas, you can allow your discerning mind to come back into the room and analyze what pleases you and why.

Many of my students worry at this point that they will have wasted the pieces that went to the cutting room floor. Not so. All of those pieces can have a second life as a background for drawing patterns, or be combined with other drawings and paintings for collage, or cut into strips for texture in your art journal. These are just a few of the endless ways to use the pieces that didn’t feel exciting enough to frame.

What I love most about working small on multiple pieces at once is that its an incredibly engaging and addictive process. I leave a table set up with all my little inchie squares, my watercolors, and I can paint at a moments notice, for a few minutes, or a few hours. I want to invite you into this process too. Your art table is calling.

You can access the recordings of our Daily Inchie Watercolor Workshops in our membership, The Gathering. You don’t need any prior experience, just a few simple supplies and the desire to live your artistic life. I can’t wait to see what emerges for you from this process. You can join the membership and stay, or just join for the month.

Talk to Us in the Comments

Tell us about what lights you up about working small, working in a series, or creating daily. We would love to hear from you.

Creatively Yours,

Amy

The post Creativity Counts: Working Small And Often appeared first on Mindful Art Studio®.