Making progress during the slumps
Each month Illoguild answer a question together and this month we discuss 'How to be productive in Downtime'
My family are over half way through the summer holidays - the kids get 8 weeks off school. Perhaps you already broke into a cold sweat just thinking about 2 months at home; juggling work and chores whilst dropping off at various summer clubs with decreasingly healthy packed lunches.
This summer feels very UNproductive
I wasn’t sure that I had much to offer on this topic. The art shed has remained locked. My wider family suffered a plethora of health issues and we had to rally round. I pulled a muscle in my back during an invigorating swimming lesson which meant that even holding a pencil was excruciating. Above all, the boys worked really hard all year at their new school and needed/deserved my undivided attention. But I started thinking about what practices help during a slower period - to recharge; refuel and advance your art practices whilst not actually being able to finish anything.
The realisation: all the activities we have enjoyed over the past 5 weeks have sparked my imagination and given my mind a peaceful moment to unwind.
If you are feeling anxious about time and summer light slipping out of grasp, here are some ideas.
Sketching: We had our family week away in the woods and one afternoon I sat with my paints and pencils, determined to capture the view. I prepared the pages with tape and gouache underlay before we left home and it offered me an altered view, less frightening than a blank new notebook. My current favourite sketchbook is by Dingbats - smooth matte white paper in 160gsm which lies flat. This work has a similar feel to my gouache work of Scottish Highland Landscapes, which remains WIP.
Photographs: The kids and I visited my sister for some fossil hunting in Dorset. As well as finding lots of lovely ammonite specimens from a recent cliff slippage, the children made great poses throwing stones in the sea; body boarding and climbing. Copying stills is great practice for getting bodies moving across a page. Procreate and I had date night together, using a pencil and watercolour brush from True Grit. On the next layer I made some clipping masks and then filled them in with a bright, limited palette. The next step will be to exaggerate some of these body shapes and get my neurons firing and wiring together to recreate without reference material.
Reading: It has been an age, but during 2 weeks away from the office I found myself in a small independent book shop and picked up an example of my favourite literature - neuroscience - “7 and a half lessons about the brain”. It reminded me that many months ago I planned to research scientific editorial art and spend a day sketching at the local botanical gardens. Long drives in the car offered the opportunity to catch up on podcasts and audio books. I’m enjoying Figuring (recommended by Illoguild), which gave me some more ideas for a book in which I use collage to represent female scientists.
Recycling: A lengthy hyperfocus on drawing a specific set of characters in a number of different media has left me with pages upon pages of drawings. One of my development areas is combining characters and environments into a pleasing composition. So I listened to Andy J Pizza, talking on his podcast about his new book “Invisible Things” and cut my characters out, chopping some of them up and adding pins to move the limbs around. He talks with his wife Sophie Miller, about the processes from your creative practice which can be transposed into writing. It had me thinking about my own picture book on neurodiversity, drafted last year and reviewed at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair BCBF23, which is patiently awaiting some thumbnails and sketches. Perhaps September will be the month?
The result during the last few weeks has been an eclectic mix of media and styles in different sketchbooks. Maybe I have accomplished more than it seems. The best part - I have just started a new role with one day off a week. Naturally I have agreed with my husband that there will be some diligent sorting of the garage and fervent gardening of the waist-high weeds. But you and I both know that I’ll be finishing all those half-started projects down in my shed…!
NEWS
In June I was selected by Words and Pictures in the sketchbook challenge for my collage work. It is exciting to have won a portfolio review with SCBWI and gave me a little boost to carry on making my bespoke papers!
Thanks for reading! Pop back next month to see how I have used those 4 day weeks to progress my art practice.