Daily Art Practice

Trying to overcome the pressure of commitment

I honestly don’t know how many times I’ve tried to commit to a daily art goal. I’m always so instantly inspired when I see others do it. I’m obsessed with Carol Marine’s Daily Painting and there’s nothing quite as satisfying as watching someone flip through a completed sketchbook with hundreds of consecutive days of beautiful little drawings and paintings.

But when it comes time for me to do it I end up going hard for a week, burning out and quitting. I did inktober fully through once and felt so fatigued by the end the only thing keeping me going was just checking the box. That feels kind of counterproductive to me, honestly.

I’ve put a lot of thought into why this is. Why can’t I just commit even 20 minutes a day to do a little study or doodle or whatever? I think it comes down to 2 major factors. I put too much pressure on strictly doing this one thing every single day. If I skip one I’ve failed. I also have ADHD which means I simply can’t stay that interested in one specific personal endeavor day to day or week to week. All of my energy and focus has to go into staying invested in work (still very hard sometimes feels impossible, maybe a story for another day) so unfortunately the thing that gets kicked to the curb fastest is personal stuff (for a pretty clear cut example of that note how much time has passed between this blog entry and the last one. lol)

Maybe a week ago I decided I wanted to attempt oils again. (hilarious medium for someone with ADHD as it requires patience and waiting sometimes days for drying time) So I started by doing a little study of an apple on a small panel:

I loved doing it. It was fun and satisfying and I felt I had a little breakthrough by attempting to get it done in as few brush strokes as possible. So I vowed to myself to do another one the next day. and then another one the day after that! Then I told myself I’m going to make it a daily thing! I’m going to do this for a YEAR every single day! I excitedly decided how I was going to do it. I like sketchbooks for seeing progress so I looked into oil painting in a sketchbook and found so many satisfying videos of people flipping through sketchbooks with beautiful jewel-like oil paintings on every page. Brilliant that’s what I’m going to do.

Do you have a kitchen staple that you see at the grocery store and go “hmm I think I might be out of that” then you buy it, bring it home only to find you have like 10 of that item in the cupboard? that’s me with sketchbooks. So I took the shrink wrap off a moleskine and gessoed the first spread, taped it off and began my no doubt fully committed year of painting with oils in a sketchbook every day.

The thing is, I’m building this up as if I failed. I haven’t yet. I did 4 successive oil paintings in that spread, each one satisfyingly felt more accomplished than the last.

I did it! 5 full days in a row of oil paintings. With noted progress! AND the 3rd one took me like an hour because I got so frustrated I wiped the whole thing down and restarted twice. Big accomplishment for me to keep going after that.

But I’m quickly entering the phase of “I know I’m going to get bored with this and quit” phase. The shiny appeal is wearing off and the reality of committing to daily oil paintings is taking hold. What about when I feel sick? What about when work is too busy? What if I sleep in? What if I just don’t feel like it? What happens when I take a trip? I’ll miss a day and that’ll be it. Sketchbook will be shelved. I’ll look at it weeks or months later and think “huh! wish I stuck with that!” and the cycle continues. I’ll be onto something new by then.

All of this was going through my mind while doing that 5th painting this morning and I stopped myself and asked why I do this. Why do I set myself up for failure? Why can’t I just trust myself and follow what feels good to me? I’m not the type to find one medium and stick to it, I never have been. I enjoy the challenge of trying new approaches. So right out of the gate only using ink or oil or digital or whatever for a month simply doesn’t work for me. That’s not rewarding. It feels punishing. Like ticking boxes which is why I bounce off of it so easily.

So I’ve come up with a new plan. This also might not work, and I’m fully prepared to be okay with that. Instead of “daily oil painting” I want to attempt “daily art practice”.

That could be literally anything. I get to define that. Obvious ones are daily oil painting, daily sketch, daily 3D model, daily watercolor. But I also want to give myself room for other things. Things that are very much apart of learning and growth without the pressure of actively producing art every single day. Daily ideation: just writing down ideas for paintings. Daily reading: I’m trying to get through Alla Prima by Richard Schmid right now and holy crap. It’s so big. Daily reference: there’s an art to going out and shooting reference and no matter how often I tell other people that, I still manage to not give myself credit for it. Funny how that works.

The goal here is to do something small every single day that furthers my art goals and personal work. The only rule is my paid work does not count. I am going to be lenient with myself and allow myself space to just not feel like drawing or painting without punishing myself. I firmly believe that art making is not just actively putting marks on a canvas, so why do I hold myself to that when considering my daily practice?

I’m going to try to post about it as often as seems reasonable but you know… commitment and all that :)