Staying productive when time is short
Musings of a self-taught artist about opportunities that never really pass you by.
There’s never enough time. Yet my phone tells me I spent 7 hours on Instagram last week. (More like 14!) If I can find these pockets of time to doom scroll and marvel at the ideas of other people, how do I turn that into useful productive time which serves my own ambitions?
Here’s a more interesting set of questions: Do I benefit from being productive in every available pocket of time? How do I define being productive? And despite a list of outputs that I want to create, what is the outcome I am seeking?
I find it tough to get myself into the creative mindset. There are a lot of voices out there offering various exercises to short-cut getting into the flow experience; building a daily habit and raising your vibration levels to fever pitch until the Universe is battered into giving in and delivering your dream. But that motivation has to come from deep within and for me; it travels in seasons and cycles. The Spring and Autumn are my favourite seasons - lovely light and cool temperatures. Winter is for reflective work and sensory textiles and as it draws to a close I am excited to clear the clutter. Summer is for family time and making the most of being outdoors but I tend to wake early and alert and find it easier to collect my thoughts and make master plans.
Usually, this would be my pattern but this past 12 months I had to be a little gentler on myself and accept that productivity for me didn’t look like a brand new portfolio, reformatted website or dummy book that will change the world view on spirited kids.
I tore up my list of goals at the beginning of 2023 and instead wrote a list of OUTCOMES. (If you are interested to know what they were for last year and for this year and what I actually accomplished, that is covered in another newsletter!) These were centred around family relationships, health, knowledge, connections and environment. I wrote them using SMART language - specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timebound. No targets for my 3 draft books were in sight. Why? Too many areas of my life needed a mini overhaul to facilitate head-space.
It’s important to remember that you are still a creative if life circumstances have currently presented you with priorities which don’t allow for hours at a time with paintbrush or Apple pen in hand. I’m in one of the periods and it’s OK. My day job is extremely intense. My kids are heading into puberty and extremely intense. I’m entering menopause and my hormones are …intense. My Dad was really sick for 6 months and my nails may never recover.
So am I being productive at all?
YES! What’s more, I’m happier than I ever was because I’m not desperately forcing my square foot into a round hole and for a little while, I just muted all those social media voices who were force-feeding me yet more ways I could squeeze in more activities.
There are 3 key ingredients that have held my focus, in preparation for the BIG BANG of productivity, which I’m pretty sure is on its way. I’m going to summarise them in case, you too, have a child calling for attention and don’t have time to read any further:
Organised all my materials into our garage conversion and set up my finances to allow for the summer off work
Studied new courses with Domestika and listened to fascinating podcasts, digging deep into what excites me about sketching from life on a regular basis
Signed up to in-person events to make connections and expand my creative friendship group and completed a UK based course to explore my visual language
All of these changes were accomplished whilst still scrolling Instagram in bed, in the school car park; waiting in train stations or having a coffee by myself. It’s not a crime and you don’t need to feel disappointed in yourself for seeking out some beautiful click bait and laughing at silly videos of cats! This doesn’t have to delay your intended outcome and it might just preserve your sanity on the long haul journey of creative freedom.
So here’s the deep dive:
PHYSICAL SPACE
The biggest barrier to my productivity is mess. I’m a messy person, a chaotic creative and a lover of clutter. BUT. I can’t start a project until everything is in order and then the ideas flow. For the longest time, I have been spreading my art supplies and hobbies around the house. Since I could never find what I wanted when motivation struck, I have spent a HUGE amount of time searching for things, giving up and getting cross and instead: doom scrolling on my phone.
We made a big decision last summer - to finally instruct a builder to convert our garage before the planning permission ran out. I have been working (my day job) in the lounge for 3 years since Covid and it doesn’t work well for anyone. My husband also needed an office in 2020 and so my art materials (of which there are many) moved from the box room, to the utility room, to a cold shed, to my office desk in the lounge, to a laundry cupboard and now, finally, into the new garage room. Today, I feel like the richest woman alive! To have a room all to myself away from toys; laundry; bikes; cobwebs and cold blue fingers is actually a miracle to me.
Pinterest has seen an uptick in my searching: ‘studio’; ‘art room’; ‘shelves for artists’; ‘flooring that is easy to clean when you spill a pot of acrylic’ …and so on. My beautiful neuro-spicy mind works best in projects:- little piles of work, in plastic sheets and wallets, which have their own in-tray ready to be worked upon. Object permanence affects our whole family - if you can’t see it, it doesn’t exist. Except, this Mama Bear needs the memory recall of a hungry squirrel looking for nuts in a snow-covered meadow that was recently ploughed. After finding possessions for the whole family for 6 days straight, it is going to be bliss to walk into my studio on a Monday morning and have organised piles to start work on.
Those piles will most likely sit at workstations:
Electronics: Laptop, Wacom, Printer, Cricut (also my day job station)
Fine art: Brushes; Tubes; too many drawing tools to list (tressle table)
Textiles: Sewing machines; Knitting; fabrics and patterns (bay window)
Print making: Linocut; Silkscreen (pop up station)
Will it sometimes become a mess? Probably. But today, my desk and my mind are clear!
SKILL LEVEL
Taking classes has kept my creative flame alive for the past 5 years, starting with modular, live courses by zoom; followed by annual memberships to platforms which offer a wide variety of short courses and more recently signing up for lifetime access with a reputable design school. For me, this was a better alternative than studying for a formal qualification since I have been able to fit in snippets of learning at regular intervals.
It’s a liberating realisation that you weren’t cheated out of your dream career through bad advice or lack of support. The educational path I took was perfectly sensible and it brought me to a destination where I can now afford to learn illustrative techniques alongside my career and family. That’s an amazing privilege that I’ve been working hard for since I was 15 years old. Art school passed me by once but I packed envelopes, sold bread, cleaned aeroplanes and cold-called my way to Uni and built a career that now allows me plenty of flexibility.
This means I’m lacking some of the basic art knowledge: use of light and shadow; tonal values; composition; colour theory etc. Skills and taste level need to find synergy. Each of the 15 courses I have taken so far with Domestika, has brought my creative practice forward, or offered me a new approach to try. Have you tried any of these?? :-
Ema Malyauka, Sketchbook Techniques for Children's Illustration
Magdalina Dianova, Drawing Appealing Characters with Personality
Cecilia Varela, Children's Narrative Illustration with Mixed Techniques
Adolfo Serra, Illustration Techniques to Unlock your Creativity
Julie Mellan, Animal Characters in Watercolor for Children’s Books
Karishma Chugani, Paper Playground: Create a Papercut Picturebook
Sarah van Dongen, Exploratory Sketchbook: Find Your Drawing Style
Melissa Castrillón, Picturebook Illustration: Explore Color and Composition
Daniel Roldan, Illustration for Beginners: Find Your Own Method
Melissa Castrillón, Picturebook Illustration: Explore Color and Composition
Jessica Roux, Illustrated Stationery: A Guide to Sell and Market Your Art
Sarah van Dongen, Character Creation from Observational Drawings
CONNECTIONS
By the end of 2023 I had met so many interesting people at in-person events and they listened generously and attentively to my creative ideas for books. Some of those turned into more regular social meet-ups, which is very exciting.
Alongside a second set of Domestika courses to study in 2024, I have also committed to a live course with The Goodship Illustration. Mainly, this was for the community because I was missing the camaraderie of shared assignments and deadlines. Thankfully, the course material comes with lifetime access and therefore, when life gets in the way (as it always does) I can happily rewatch the videos and catch up without panicking. A real bonus is that a handful of illustrators live in my local area and we have committed to meet and sketch together. To me this is golden.
My favourite revelation to come out of The Goodship Illustration course is a genuine adoption of their advice: “Don’t panic. There’s no such thing as behind. You are right where you need to be.” This permission has created enough space for me to try out some new colour palettes. I’m loving the results!
If you are looking at the next few months and already telling yourself ‘I must be productive'; my portfolio needs x; I must research y and I’m never going to reach z - pause and ask yourself: What outcome are you seeking? What are the outputs that will get me closer to that outcome? Can I define my success in a way that suits my season of life?
This might look like: listening to a regular podcast on the school run; learning to cook fast and nutritious meals with a delivery box; organising the photos from your phone into backed up storage; keeping a mini sketchbook in your bag and having a monthly meeting in person with other artists. Set those wheels in motion and who knows what it might lead to!
Wishing you a productive season, in whatever form that takes.
Stay creative
x Tabs x