I’ve been meaning to write, but I’ve just been so busy.

I’ve finished one book, and right now I’m about to finish another in quick succession. So my days have been spent working through page after page of illustrations. When I sat down to write today it really felt like I had nothing to write!

It’s easy for me to write daily, but once I drop that, any other cadence is a slog. This is why I’m such an advocate for a daily practice of making something, the longer you stay away the tougher this stuff gets.

To get the creative juices flowing today, I started by folding paper..

I folded a sheet of paper into four, folding paper commits the paper to the task, it’s an easy way to start. On the sheet of paper I drew comics in the usual way. And here I found myself back in the flow. I wondered what useful think I could share with you, and I thought of some notes I took from a recent Andy J. Pizza podcast about getting the creative juices flowing.

“The acquired taste is so essential to your unfolding as a creative”

He was talking about how it’s essential to consume art and develop an acquired taste.

If feels unnatural at first, even fake or pretentious to read something or engage with art that is outside of your norm. But that inauthenticity IS the creative journey. Andy asked this question:

What is the last piece of creative work that lit you up?

And to be honest it was difficult for me to come up with something, my best answer would probably be a Youtube video by Yes Theory! Or the book about their journey.

I don’t know if that qualifies as real Art though. Maybe I should watch a classic movie or read something fiction. In the mean time, I read some Peanuts comic strips, that lit me up.

How are you doing, let me know in the comments, I’ve gotten a lot of mail from you and I haven’t been able to respond to everyone individually, I hope I will get to do so soon.

For now, I would love if you shared the last piece of art that lit YOU up? And what art experience you might seek out next.

Each idea in themselves can serve to unlock our latent abilities and serve as a base for future growth. Taken together these aspects will give you the confidence and tools to be able to draw anything.

As usual the project consists of five ten minute assignments, designed to be taken one a day, be warned these exercises are so enjoyable that you might end up spending hours.

Here’s what we’ll cover.

Day 1: Mark Making

Day 2: Shapes

Day 3: Blocks

Day 4: Blobs

Day 5: Better Stickmen

This project is part 3 of Start a daily drawing habit - a gameplan

We need a place to collect play and collect our inspiration, record our days and explore ideas. Some people keep sketchbooks and journals, but those label can create an expectation and pressure.

An Artist Diary, is something much more intimate it’s a place that we can write and draw in, but we could just as easily make a painting, and stick in some interesting pieces of paper and ephemera.

We’ll be doing some of that in this project. (And more in a future project)

Over 5 days I will offer you 5 ways to fill your artist diary.

Some use this as a menu, others have picked a default and kept going with that, ideally this will be an inspiration and you will develop your own ideas.

These are the modules we’ll cover.

Day 1: Draw One Line a Day

Day 2: Daily Diary

Day 3: Free Writing

Day 4: Daily Comic

Day 5: Start with an image (the messy page)

Ten Minute Artist is a community of creatives who believe in the power of a daily creative practice. By taking Ten Minutes a Day to practice our creativity, we build that creative capacity that transforms the mundanity of daily life into opportunities for new creative expressions.

This might mean some thing special in a sketchbook, but it could just as likely mean sparking a meaningful conversation, or solving an impossible problem in your life or the lives of those around you.

Algorithms, divide us and dehumanise us, turning us into nothing but mindless consumers. Exercising or creativity is a tool for freeing ourselves from imposed programming and writing our own scripts

“Start a Daily Drawing Habit, a 15-day gameplan (10 minutes a day)” is available to all paid subscribers.

Paid subscribers also get a new 5-Day project each month.(10 minutes a day) It’s a way to keep momentum, jump back in if you fall off, and stay connected with the community.

The Project Library houses all previous projects, this lets you pick a creative challenge to suit your moment in the journey.

Join the Community!

As soon as you join, I’ll walk you through the Starting a Daily Drawing Habit Gameplan, through a series of daily emails. There will be room for you to share your work with the community and you’re free to reply any of the emails to ask me questions if you need guidance. I look forward to seeing you inside!

The entire premise of Ten Minute Artist, centers around our ability to be present, energetic and tap into the creativity that is in us and around us, and bring some small portion of that onto a page each day.

This means existing in time in a certain state, to make space and time for our art. The good news is that all you need is 10 minutes.

This project is designed to be taken over 5 days, but if you want to work through them more quickly, go for it!

Day 1: High Voltage Time

Day 2: Time Tetris

Day 3: Taking Time

Day 4: Alive time

Day 5: Sacred Time

Join me and hundreds of Ten Minute Artist in the gallery (link at the end of each day’s assignment)

Ten Minute Artist is a community of creatives who believe in the power of a daily creative practice. By taking Ten Minutes a Day to practice our creativity, we build that creative capacity that transforms the mundanity of daily life into opportunities for new creative expressions.

This might mean something special in a sketchbook, but it could just as likely mean sparking a meaningful conversation, or solving an impossible problem in your life or the lives of those around you.

Algorithms, divide us and dehumanise us, turning us into nothing but mindless consumers. Exercising or creativity is a tool for freeing ourselves from imposed programming and writing our own scripts

“Start a Daily Drawing Habit, a 15-day gameplan (10 minutes a day)” is available to all paid subscribers.

Paid subscribers also get a new 5-Day project each month (10 minutes a day) It’s a way to keep momentum, jump back in if you fall off, and stay connected with the community.

The Project Library houses all previous projects, this lets you pick a creative challenge to suit your moment in the journey.

Join the Community!

As soon as you join, I’ll walk you through the Starting a Daily Drawing Habit Gameplan, through a series of daily emails. There will be room for you to share your work with the community and you’re free to reply any of the emails to ask me questions if you need guidance. I look forward to seeing you inside!

7 years ago.

I started drawing again.

Daily.

At first in small 10 minute bursts.

This was enough to remind myself that I was indeed an artist, I had put off my creative pursuits, but I realised then that it doesn’t have to be either or.

10 minutes of creativity in a 14 hour workday at my startup, made me start to feel alive again.

It would be years before I would go after an artistic career directly, but in those years I felt like an artist again, I felt like I was healing, recovering, eventually I would generate enough self belief and fear of regret to take the great leap that helped me achieve my dream of being a published illustrator.

All started with a daily drawing habit.

Even now as I scurry from deadline to deadline working with dream clients I still start my day with a ten minute drawing practice.

Maybe you’ve forgotten there is an artist inside of you (there probably is), or maybe you’re hard at work going from deadline to deadline, that what you’re doing feels more like a job than making art.

Taking as little as 10 minutes a day to be an artist can be such a catalyst for living a creative life. I’ve shown thousands of people how to do it, and now if you’ll let me, I want to show you too.

So here’s the gameplan, I’ve designed three projects, each takes only 10 minutes a day over 5 days to complete.

The first project is called Sacred Time, where you will start setting aside ten minutes of your most high voltage time for this practice.

The second project is called Artist Diary, where I will introduce you to 5 different ways to spend your sacred time, use it as a menu or pick and stick to your favourite.

The third project is called Draw Anything, what ever level you are at these repeatable exercises will give you the confidence of a chile in approaching your art practice.

The best part is you won’t be doing these projects alone, as I along with a community with hundreds of Ten Minute Artist will be there to witness and journey with you. Here you will find brave amateur and seasoned pro alike learn from them and with them in this amazing community.

Welcome to Start A Daily Drawing Habit - A Ten Minute Artist Gameplan

This Gameplam is now available to all paid subscribers of Ten Minute Artist.

I’ve temporarily reduced the annual subscription of the newsletter to $50, but the price will go back up to $100 in on September 1st.

Once you subscribe you will get access to

Start A Daily Drawing Habit - A Gameplan

I will personally guide you through these projects by sending you a quick reminder each day, but you can also take the projects at your own pace whenever you’re ready.

Paid subscribers also get a new Ten Minute Artist project each month, these will add novelty and momentum to your practice and serve as an on ramp if you ever fall off.

So if you want to save $50, start a daily drawing habit and become part of the Ten Minute Artist Community.

Subscribe now

If you’re not ready to make the investment, I’ve created a free project called Ten Minute Visual Journal Method, it’s the best thing I could show you and it’s absolutely free for anyone.

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This is not a program to help you become a Children’s illustrator, unless that is what you want to become.

But at the moment a lot of my examples and experience comes from being a children’s illustrator, so bear with me. I had just finished my first Children’s Picture-book Course with (100% Recommend), and I had 5 portfolio pieces, I threw together a website and started reaching out to agents.

One agency wrote back with a list of things they needed to see to consider me.

Kids, animals, consistency, diversity the usual suspects…

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When I was starting out on my journey to become an artist for the second time, I stumbled on this strange book.

It was a recommendation by Mathew McConaughey the actor, via a podcast, and the book is called The Greatest Salesman in the World. It’s by Og Mandino. It’s a strange book almost game like in quality, prescriptive and directive. I recommend it, just take a pen or Sharpie, and cross out the word salesman and replace it with whatever you like.

The book works just the same, for me I cross out salesman and wrote ‘illustrator’.

Remember at this time I was unemployed, and living off savings at the beginning of a pandemic.

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It was like going back in time. It was also a move to a richer life, one 8th the view of the sea from the balcony. Streets where you could find family businesses run by third and fourth generation craftsmen, back ally hawkers who are widely regarded as some of the best chefs in the world, and people who were once travellers had decided to stay as residents.

As that 11 year old, one of my favourite places on the island though, was a gift shop outside the supermarket under the escalator in a tiny mall.

And once a week, my sister and I would find ourselves in that gift shop admiring the art on wrapping paper and browsing sheets of stickers, that we might add to our sticker book collection.

These memories flashed back to me as I flipped through two new books from the Eclectic World of Julia Rothman sticker book, and the Eclectic World of Julia Rothman Wrapping paper book.

Looking through these books with admiration, brought me back to those childhood memories. Except the childhood memories was one of longing for another sheet of stickers or more than one piece of wrapping paper. And these books give you a feeling of completion.

First of all, a book, is a perfect format for Wrapping Paper.

I’ve never seen anything like this before but I have a feeling it’s going to be a thing.

It’s portable, it stores easily and there’s a wrapping paper that’s just right for every gift/recipient. And this book even comes with a sticker sheet of gift tags!

It’s a perfect way to elevate a gift and even if you never intend to wrap a present Julia’s charming illustrations across 12 fold out illustrated sheets make for a treat you might be tempted to give yourself.

Looking at the wrapping paper has me wondering what would make a good gift to go with the wrapping paper. And something came to mind that made me snicker to myself and that is, ’The Eclectic World of Julia Rothman Sticker Book.”

There is this quote that I sometimes see on social media that says ‘If a small human sticks a sticker on your body, it’s a great sign of respect in their culture”. The thing is it works both ways, there is hardly anything more valuable to little kids than stickers.

And because all of us have at one time been little kids, we understand this cultural appreciation at a deep level. We remember IN our bodies that feeling of receiving a single sticker. Now imagine receiving 1000 stickers.

I know if I received 1000 bound in a hardcover book, my fist thought should be; “how did they know I love stickers”. The thing is, everyone loves stickers.

This might be a bit of a stretch, but hear me out. Imagine you had a dozen people you needed to get gifts for, and this is something I would totally do… you could get 12 copies of Julia Rothman’s Stickerbook. And one copy of the wrapping paper book, then wrap each book with a one of the 12 wrapping paper designs.

And to personalise it, use the sticker gift tags (found in the wrapping paper book) and say something like “the friendship bracelet stickers on page 44 made me think of you”, or make a personalized comments about the teacup stickers or video game themed stickers.

There’s going to be something from the 1000 + stickers that tells the story of your relationship.

Personally, I am thrilled to have received both. The wrapping paper book, and the sticker book from Artisan.

And I can tell you that my daughter and I are already fighting over the stickers. She plans to use them for everything from decorating her possessions, rewarding people and creating original artworks using her stick and draw technique, see example below.

And I want to use them in my journals and letters and my own version of the stick and draw technique.

Julia Rothman is an inspiration to me. I love her Anatomy series and the way she creates illustrations as icons, distinct and self contained images that are perfect as stickers, to me the sticker book is more than a sticker book it is a curated sketchbook filled with images that tell stories. If you know and love Julia’s work, this book will fit right into your collection, and if you don’t know her work, this book is the perfect introduction.

In true, Ten Minute Artist fashion let me end this post with a prompt, but instead of my own prompt, I’m going to introduce you to Julia’s most well known prompt, which is the, More/Less prompt.

1. Spit a sheet of paper in two halves

2. Label one side ‘more’ and the other ‘less’

3. Draw the things you want less and more off as a visual list.

   

   The prompts are great for transitioning into a new year, but I also think anytime is a good time for reflection.

Here you can find:

The Sticker Book

The Wrapping Paper Book

This is NOT a sponsored post, although I did get these two books as a gift from the publisher, and I am a fan, so I consider it an honour to introduce you to one of my favourite illustrators, Julia Rothman.

said this, or something like this…

Once you find your tools you’ll find your style. As you start getting drawn to the artwork of certain artist, it makes sense to explore the tools and methods they use to make their art.

It might surprise you, you might discover that the thing you like is the marks certain tools make. Or you might discover that there are certain types of art that you might enjoy consuming, but not creating.

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The style conversation is a tedious but necessary one.

The consensus is to keep working, and style will mysteriously and magically emerge. And there is truth in that, the problem is, what do we do in the meantime? It took me 40 years to come to my style.

The conversation is so tedious that many would sidestep the question about style altogether and instead talk about voice.

The way I would see that is that style is like clothes and voice is the body.

There are two problems.

1. The only way to develop your voice is to use it, and this development takes time, decades, and who is to say when it is ever ‘ready’.

2. All benefits of Style and Voice come from being it being recognizable.

I would argue that one needs to resolve these problems and develop something like a professional style, in order to enter certain markets as a professional.

And that this step can be done by anyone, in ten minutes.

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Once in my previous job working in a tech startup.

As a small team we collected 1000 emails in 3 days from potential customers at a trade show. We did that by talking to them, sometimes individually, other times in groups.

The internet is a great way to reach true fans, but possibly the most powerful way to make a connection is to go direct.

In my case I flew half way around the world to attend a trade show, but there are other ways to go direct.

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Fans want to know what you’re working on.

Start there. Create a regular cadence of letting your fans know what you’re working on. This is easy if you’re always working. You might have seen a trend on social media that says, ‘Don’t show your work, show you working’.

How exactly we do this is a matter of taste and style and just as important as what we share.

Let’s start with a list of do’s on and don’t’s

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Once you’ve decided what to offer your True Fans, you need to make sure they can find you.

To do this, you need to be findable.

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To have fans, the first step is being a good fan.

It’s like dating advice, how you find a good partner is by being a great partner yourself. By being the best possible version of your have. Fans respond to generosity. That is the best place to start.

And the best place to practice generosity, is to join fan clubs.

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IMPORTANT Project Notes: This week we’ll be getting a bit more personal in our diaries as we question our goals as creatives in relation to money, some of us might have no goals for our art related to money at all, and then it might move on to selling something at a weekend market, to making a living. In every case we’ll explore the questions. For the assignments, feel free to share sparingly, cover some key details if you need to or be as open as you like.

Also remember that this is not about comparing, we all have different needs, desires and capacities and what is important is understanding your own goals of how you might want to make money from your art, and how much you want to make if any.

This is a framework to help you think about your OWN goals, I use the example of $100k a year as an illustration, but really someone might be happy with earning $500 from their art while someone else might need more.

The goal of this week is to think about how money, time and art relate to one another for us.

I acknowledge that it is a tough topic to breech, but I’m also confident that over the past few weeks of interactions we have learned to trust each other a little bit, and if that is true for you maybe we can continue sharing and learning from each other, and if you prefer not to share any of your work from this week, that is also fine, you can instead do exercises from week 2 and 3 and share those.

Regardless of whether you do share, do take the time to think about these things.

"To be a successful creator you don't need millions. You don't need millions of dollars or millions of customers, millions of clients or millions of fans. To make a living as a craftsperson, photographer, musician, designer, author, animator, app maker, entrepreneur, or inventor you need only thousands of true fans."

— Kevin Kelly

That’s a relief ainnit.

As a kid of 5, or even 25, I hardly knew what a million was, it was an abstract unattainable concept. It was equated to making it, in any field, it felt like any thing worth doing was only worth doing if you could get a million something out of it.

Sell a painting for a million dollars, sell a million copies of a book, have a million dollars in the bank, and so on… But how do you get from anywhere to a million. And more importantly is a million even the right number?

Kevin Kelly’s famous article, transformed that idea, and should probably be credited to why the creator economy is even a thing.

Today we’re going to be talking about numbers, specifically the money we will need to earn from our art, to just do the thing. ( if you have no intention to make money from your art, I hope you will take this as a form of general knowledge, or perhaps, a ‘what if’ exercise.

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Today is a start of another busy week, I’m co hosting an Art Quest session with and an Art Gym Session with , a Gameplan Cohort and Finishing art for a picturebook, while on the back burner I have a book pitch, planning for a retreat.

But instead of jumping into all of that, I’m starting with my daily practice of making something for myself for Ten Minutes.

At least I will attempt to.

After Twisting my pen on, I find myself once again with a blank page, and the usual barrier that prevents me from making the first mark easily. So I put down the pen..

.. and pick up this date stamper my mom gave me, set up todays’s date, and boom.. I’ve committed to the spread, the date stamper is equal to the task of breaking that first barrier, maybe we can talk about why in the comments.

So I start by drawing a box and dividing it into four panels, I call this the ten minute visual journal method , having this little scaffolding helps me never have to think about what I’m going to make while always producing meaningful and valuable results.

In the first panel I draw and write about a moment I had yesterday.

Then I move quickly to what I’m working on today.

Next I make a panel about something that is coming up

And I wrap it up by choosing to focus on one aspect of my life that i am grateful for, today I drew my family as a collection of hearts, inspired by something my kid told me yesterday.

In the past this would be the whole exercise, but these day’s I’ve added a second page where I write the answer to the question, “where is your mind going to now”, I’m watching in real time as the next though floods in, pulling me down from this creative state of self expression and creativity, to the survival mind.

Which is of course important, but it’s also the place where anxiety and animosity come from, it’s a more animal than human state. But I listen and write it down, I keep my hand moving and filling up the page by asking ‘what else..’ whenever my hand stops moving. And at the end of the page I stop.

I’m allowing myself to pay attention to this internal dialogue, to respect it.

There was once a prophet who said that the voice of God, is not in the great wind, the earthquake or a fire, but in the quiet whisper. I write down the whisper.

And that is how I use this practice to center me and orient me, while also building a catalogue of inspiration that I can draw from in the future, where everyday is recorded and remembered.

Don’t let your days blend into an endless forgotten blur, instead take ten minutes for yourself to make some marks and listen to that quiet whisper inside of you, it is divine.

.

Project Notes: Continue working in your artist diary for 10 minutes a day, use week 2 as a menu of options if you need some ideas.

Writing on stage has been about showing your work so you can make it better.

Many aspiring artist have a closed loop of making something, then trying to make it better, without showing it. They think that showing their art is a once and done, and so it has to be absolutely perfect.

In reality showing it, is a repeatable step.

We can show our work to different audiences and at different stages. We can show iterations and developments and sequels and side shows, and every time we show it we get feedback and can use it as a chance to make it better.

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Project Notes: Continue working in your artist diary for 10 minutes a day, use week 2 as a minute of options if you need some ideas.

I read when I was 11 that being a comic artist is great work if you can get it.

The article in Wizard Magazine went on to explain how every comic fan want to draw Spider-Man, and at the time there were only a couple of opportunities to do that, so everyone was fighting for the same spot. And that lead me to believe that being an artist or an illustrator was an ultra competitive job where, you’re goal was to be the one.

To outdo everyone else and get that scarce job. I was wrong.

Obviously.

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