Tag: habits

100 Faces in 100 Days: Drawing Challenge

Back in June of this year, I had started a drawing challenge with celebrity portraits. In this challenge, I drew one celebrity portrait a day, using photo references of actors, actresses, and entertainers from the 1980s. I was inspired to start this series by a drawing challenge which I read about in a blog by Julie Fan Fei Balzer, called Balzer Designs. She called her challenge a 100-day

Harrison Ford as “Indiana Jones”
Michael J. Fox in his Iconic role as “Marty McFly”
Cyndi Lauper as herself
Vincent d Onofrio as “Dawson”
George Newbern and Elizabeth Shue as Dan and Chris

challenge and she created 100 faces in 100 days using a variety of media including acrylic monoprint, screen prints, ink on paper, ball point pen on paper, etc. I modified this challenge by using just paper and pencil to simplify it and instead of making up imaginary faces; I attempted to capture celebrity likenesses. I was also motivated to do this challenge because I had recently completed a portrait commission in May, and I truly struggled to get the likenesses of the people in the photo.

To make this challenge a daily habit, I collected photos of celebrities from the internet that I found inspiring and saved them to a file labeled, portraits, on my computer, so I had a ready supply of faces to draw. I also did a few other things to keep me on track, since I struggle with discipline and finishing art projects that I complete, especially ones without a definite deadline. So, I coupled setting the timer for 25 minutes and making the drink, usually coffee or diet coke, of my choice to go along with it. I also tried to start my drawing mid-morning, before other activities intruded. For the most part, the challenge has been going really well, and most days with a few exceptions, I have set aside time consistently to draw.  On the days when I can’t get to my sketch pad, I don’t beat myself up and I just start again the next day. And I feel I am learning so much about how to draw better portraits, for one, taking the time to really scrutinize the subject’s face and other features.

Also, just stepping back frequently has given me a fresh perspective on how closely the sketch resembles the photo reference.   On the other hand, there have been some days when I have felt really discouraged about whether I have what it takes to be an artist, when I have to do a drawing two or three times over, maybe even selecting a different photo to draw from if I get desperate.  On days like that, it’s hard to keep going with this challenge and I start to get discouraged. Lately, it has just been the dedication to push through and get it right. Last week though, I felt encouraged about the necessity of making art because, without a studio practice, I can’t have anything to share with my friends, family, and fans.  Nor can I grow in my skills as an artist, if I don’t practice. And not only that, I feel I would be losing a big part of myself and my identity as a person if I stopped showing up to make art.  I would lose that joy of creating something or seeing my internal visions come to life in sketches and paintings.  In the words of art business coach, Allyson Stanfield, “Without your art, you have nothing to promote, you have nothing to market, you have nothing to take out of the studio and share with the world.”  Source: Ecstatic Encounters Lesson 1: Devote Yourself to Studio Practice, from https://artbizcoach.com/ee-1/.

So despite the difficulties I sometimes encounter with making art, I am not giving up, not on this challenge or any other art project. As it stands, I still have quite a few more days to go before this challenge is complete…By my calculations based on my Instagram posts, I have 63 more days to go. After that, who knows what new challenge I will take on… If you would like to watch my progress, you can view my Instagram profile at jsjschmidt2 on Instagram. I attached a few photos of this drawing challenge from my Instagram account. I hope the challenge to draw every day or almost every day, challenges you as much as it has challenged me. Thanks for stopping by!

Making art a Habit

Well, here I am a week after I said that I was going to start a daily sketchbook…It ended up being very difficult to make time for it, and unfortunately, I only got to work on it one day out of seven.

 

Emily Dickinson, "Hope"
Emily Dickinson, “Hope”
Sarah, After Mary Cassatt
Sarah, After Mary Cassatt

I also started thinking that perhaps my topic for last week’s blog about doing what you love and making it a habit, may not necessarily correspond to the prompts in the sketchbook I was thinking of using for this project. The sketch prompts in this book tends to focus more on still life and architecture, and less on portraits, which is something I really want to get better at doing. So I have decided to make a slight topic change. I am going to be posting photos of my oil and acrylic portraits in the process.  Here’s a youtube video that inspired me to finish my work and to make this topic change: Finished Not Perfect, by Jake Parker, at https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=finished+not+perfect+. I felt that the speaker hit the nail right on the head with his mantra of “Finished not Perfect.” I tend to struggle with perfectionism and find it hard to bring projects to a close because of my high expectations for the work.

I’d also like to alternate my own work with master copies to try and push my art making abilities forward and try to break some old habits in my painting practice, such as putting everything in the center of the page. This is an idea I got from the artist, Noah Bradley’s, article: 21 days to be a Better Artist at https://medium.com/@noahbradley/21-days-to-be-a-better-artist-48087576f0dd#.bzzgdsrp6, mentioned in last week’s post. Bonus, Noah Bradley includes a link to a youtube video where he teaches you how to make master copies of artwork!

So once again, my change of topic will be posting weekly portrait paintings and sketches, alternated with master artwork copies. My goals will be improving the level of my artwork with regards to drawing accuracy, composition, and harmonious color choices. And another important goal will be making sure to complete each work and post the results before moving onto other projects. Time management will be a crucial part of reaching this goal. Here’s an article that I have read about time management, which I plan to re-read. It’s called: Five Ways to Make Time for Art by Julie-Fei Fan Balzer, http://balzerdesigns.typepad.com/balzer_designs/2012/12/five-ways-to-make-time-for-art.html. She lists five ways to make art more of a priority in your schedule, and I am going to try the first two to help me in this quest of making more time for art, and getting really good at portraits, being sure to complete each piece.  The first two suggestions Balzer mentions are using a crockpot for cooking and limiting computer time. Let me know if you have any time management tips for making art that you’d like to share! Here are some portrait paintings that I have been working on this week…An acrylic painting of Emily Dickinson, which illustrates the poem,  Hope is the Thing with Feathers and a master copy of a Mary Cassatt oil portrait, Sara in a Green Bonnet, c. 1901.

 

Do What You Love, and Make it a Habit

I started this blog late this week for a variety of reasons. One of which was that I wasn’t sure what to write about this week and how to connect that theme to last week’s theme. In the meantime, I have been taking my own advice from last week and doing what I love to do most, which for me is to draw and paint portraits. This week I have been working on a mixed media portrait of Emily Dickinson, to illustrate her poem, Hope is the Thing with Feathers. Here are a few lines to give you an idea of what this poem is about:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –
And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm – (Source: Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/42889.
The two main themes of this poem are the personification of hope ( as a bird), which lives in the soul and a metaphor for life challenges, which is the storm  (Source:http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/dickinson/section2.rhtml . In my portrait, I painted a stormy sky with a rainbow shining through the break in the clouds. The former symbolized hardships, while the later symbolizes hope. Other symbols of hope I included in this portrait are the soaring doves in the upper left clouds, and the author herself, Emily Dickinson, who has written about what it means to hope. I am planning to submit this painting to a juried art show at the Crestwood Women’s Center this April. If all turns out well, I will post about the opening night and art exhibition details.
Okay, so back to my main statement of Do What you Love…It sounds good, right? Kind of like the phrase, Follow Your Bliss. Let’s say you really enjoy, cooking every day, but want to get better, or you enjoy painting, but find it difficult to make time to finish your artwork. And lastly, how do you maintain the motivation to do that thing you love most in the world to do? I got curious and started doing some research about how to be a better artist, and that led me to an article by artist, Noah Bradley. The article is called:   21 Days to be a Better Artist (even if you’re terrible), by Noah Bradley and is available on https://medium.com/@noahbradley/21-days-to-be-a-better-artist-48087576f0dd#.fj77c5nel.
According to the artist, Noah Bradley (2015), if you want to get better at something you have to practice it on a daily basis (Source:https://medium.com/@noahbradley/21-days-to-be-a-better-artist-48087576f0dd#.fj77c5nel.)  Bradley (2015) recommends that if you want to get better at drawing that you should draw 1 hour for 21 days with no excuses, (ibid). And finally, he references a Ted Talks youtube video that explains the power of habit, which is based on “cue, behavior, and reward” (ibid) and  (The Power of Habit: Charles  Duhigg at TEDx Teachers College, http://www.youtube.com). Charles Duhigg, an author and Pulitzer prize winner, states that a cue is anything that makes you ready to start the behavior, while the behavior is the habit you engage in, and the reward is any action that you take after you complete the behavior which reinforces the habit (Source: ibid). For me, to start off my day of painting or drawing, I will play my favorite music by Coldplay or listen to a book on cd on youtube, set up my art supplies and set up the coffee maker to brew. Then I set my timer for 30 minutes and get to work setting up my supplies, photo references and start painting. When the timer goes off, I do something relaxing like reading a book to reward myself and reinforce the habit. Most important, I pencil in studio days on my calendar and try to do artwork before all the other to-dos on my list compete for my attention. So here’s my challenge, I want to start working in my sketchbook on a daily basis for 20 minutes, 5 days a week to get better at drawing. I will be posting the results on my Instagram account and on Facebook if you want to view them, and of course, here on the website. If you want to learn more about Duhigg’s Power of Habit speech

, you may watch his presentation on youtube by conducting a search on the power of habit, or you may look up the book, The Power of Habit your local public library or on Amazon. For this week, I am posting my progress photos of the mixed media portrait, Hope is the Thing with Feathers, featuring Emily Dickinson.