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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You can checkout the entire Gameplan here.

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.

Today we think of our practice as a means of collecting tried and tested material

Crafting something is a long uncertain process a maker should show her work

— Austin Kleon

A comedian is someone who can do the most terrifying job on earth (speaking in public) and make it seem effortless.

A comedians prowess is measured in minutes, how long are they able to stand on a stage in a room full of strangers and make them laugh, reliably. It’s measured in minutes not because it’s a test of stamina or mental prowess. It’s measured in minutes because everything the comedian says on that stage is part of an act.

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Project Notes: Continue working in your artist diary for 10 minutes a day, if you don’t know what to work on use week 2 as a menu. This project explores one aspect of interfacing with an audience, in the tech world you might call this discovery or product market fit, next week we’ll be talking about earning true fans, this is not that yet… this is the step before, figuring out who you’re making art for and what you want to make for them.

Today we will ask when is a work of art done?

All in all the creative act is not performed by the artist alone…

the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting the inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.

— Marcel Duchamp

A work of art is never really done is it.

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I’ve been doing a kind of free-writing exercise on at off.

I call it start with an image. What I do is i find an image from a magazine, collage paper, or sticker book, and stick it in the middle, and write around it. What it does is turn the page into a kind of terrain that the words need to navigate. I find the extra effort and the strangeness of the exercise occupies the monkey mind enough, that it forgets to censor and criticise enough that the writhing just flows.

In today’s example I used an image from ‘The Eclectic World of Julia Rothman: Sticker Book’ I use to work from a different book where I cut out the images, but I don’t know, there is something so satisfying about choosing and using stickers

Here’s an idea of what I get to choose from…

I’ll be honest, when I learned they were making a book of Julia Rothman drawings as stickers I was so jealous! I was also covetous, even now as I’m writing this, my 5 year old is going on and on reserving stickers for herself.

So imagine my delight when the publisher reached out to me to ask if I would like a copy to review! I think I would not be happier if they asked my to collect my own drawings to be turned into a book. It’s funny how happiness works.

I got these books in the mail, days later, courtesy of the publisher.

The sticker book is like a curated sketchbook, collage paper and sticker book in one. It’s a beautiful usable artifact. And a book of wrapping paper is pure genius, first because Julia’s art elevates any gift, and second because a book is a genius way to store wrapping paper, if you currently store any wrapping paper, you’ll know what I mean!

You may have guessed by now that I am a Julia Rothman fan, I’m also a fan of sketchbooks and icons, so it’s just been wild to get to share her work with you!

Deadlines, I have them…

And oh so many of them! I’m on the home stretch of a couple of books (please recommend some good podcasts and audio books to listen to while I work)

I went to bed last night so exhausted, but also satisfied, it’s one of the greatest pleasures in life to go to bed exhausted doing something you love.

I’ve long days ahead colouring spreads, this is the fun part, it’s also lonely. It makes the time I spend with family so valuable. Also the time I spend writing things like this.

I’m planning a retreat, in real life

That is exciting, it’s like planning a holiday that some of you will take with me.

I’m calling it ‘Drawing playful picture stories’, the idea being that illustrations are picture stories whether it’s a postcard, a comic or a picturebook spread, pictures do the heavy lifting to tell a story.

I want to create an experience where participants tell a picture story with a character in different formats, I want you to experience this Medieval village in Portugal through the eyes of a character we’ll create together.

The retreat will run for 5 days and the 3 modules I’m covering are:

1. Discovering Story Moments, which is all about working with a sketchbook and moodboards

2. Bringing Characters to life, which is about techniques that you can start using at any level

3. Telling stories with pictures, the nuts and bolts of creating a picture story image

I’m going to use the opportunity of working with a group in the same place and time to do a lot of collaborative workshopping, but also give participants a chance to work on their own.

I’ve written thousands of posts and ‘known’ some of you for years, I’m really looking forward to the chance of meeting you in person and create some art together. I’ve also planned 2 unique keepsakes one that i will prepare for you in advance and one that we will produce together with no extra time.

And I’ll be offering each participant 1-1 office hours.

That’s the gist of it, I would love to hear your questions and thoughts about the content I have planned.

Finally, can I introduce you to who’s been a part of the community for 6 months, showing the results of her using the Ten Minute Visual Journal Method my free 5-day mini course to starting a creative practice in 10 minutes a day.

What are you working on? Write back!

You can checkout the entire Gameplan here.

Project Notes: For this project divide your spread into two sections. We will use the right page for the Art Assignment, and the left page for notes.

This project is meant to supplement your daily art practice rather than replace it. It will give you tools to tackle your daily practice with more confidence and skill. I will leave it to you to decide how you will make time for this extra practice.

Welcome to day 2:

Shapes

“Observational drawing is all about shapes, light and shadows and reality as we see it. Once we have mastered these concepts, it is possible to deconstruct and select what we deem relevant, adapting reality to our personal point of view”

— Isabelle Arsenault

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You can checkout the entire Gameplan here.

Project Notes: For this project divide your spread into two sections. We will use the right page for the Art Assignment, and the left page for notes. In the example below you’ll see I left the left page for notes, and used washi tape to mask an ‘Art’ area. Once the washi tape is removed, the blank white space will create a nice frame for the artwork.

⚠️ This project is meant to supplement your daily art practice rather than replace it.

It will give you tools to tackle your daily practice with more confidence and skill. I will leave it to you to decide how you will make time for this extra practice. Perhaps you will take an additional ten minute slot per day. Or maybe you can manage a few hours somewhere in the week. Revisit the first project, if you need help making the time for this additional practice.

Some of you might also already be thinking of doing this using ‘No extra time’ and somehow baking it into their daily practice, you’re free to try that too.

It’s just important to maintain your self initiated daily practice, while adding these skill builders.

With that let us begin!

Welcome to day 1:

Mark making

“You are only ‘n’ actions away from any goal”

The way to attain any goal is to take a series of actions.

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You can checkout the entire Gameplan here.

IMPORTANT:

This is the last assignment for the Artist Diary project. I encourage you to pick one of these methods as your default go to method and spend 10 minutes a day, filling a spread in your diary, over time this will evolve into something completly unique… don’t rush to get there, let it happen organically, in the chat some people have shared their unique practices.

My aim here is to get you started or started again. Your job is to pick something that gets you excited to do daily, see it as a pleasure not a chore.

We’ll break for 2 days, use that time to review the 10 dispatches we’ve gone through already, try any of the assignments you missed, engage with the others in the group, and keep going in your artist diary.

Next week I’ll be sharing some drawing tools and ideas that really helped me improve in a short time. it’s going to take practice for sure. My hope is that knowing what to practice will be a big help.

With that all out of the way,

Shall we go?… Let’s go!

Welcome to day 5:

Start with an image

Tony Buzan famously emphasized starting a mind map in the centre of a blank, horizontal page, stating that this gives your brain …

“freedom to spread out in all directions and to express itself more freely and naturally”

In his mind mapping technique, he teaches us to explore our mind on the page by creating a map. Using his techniques I once went from 4th last in class, to 4th, securing a place in one of the ‘good’ classes in high school.

We’re often told to use our brains, but not often told how. Mind mapping, and specifically starting with an image, is one way to do that.

Interestingly Lynda Barry also teaches us to start with an image. And she calls an image a place.

In one of her exercises she asks us to imagine a specific car. This provides the center all image. Then she ask us to picture ourselves as the viewer, and write from that perspective (you can also draw but writing is faster).

Where are you she asks? Inside or outside, behind or in front, what’s to your left, right, above, below. What’s behind you and ahead of you.

Where Tony Buzan introduced a map. Lynda Barry brings you on a guided tour, to the place where images are. And she teaches you how to go there.

These two methods are ways to use our brains, our whole brain, that requires all that logic and reasoning, but also requires, imagination.

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You can checkout the entire Gameplan here.

A note on the assignments: If you’ve done the Ten Minute Visual Journal Method, you are going to recognise this format. I spend 5 whole days talking about it here. And you can feel free to dig into that. I just felt that this Artist Diary project would be incomplete if I don’t mention the method. This is my go to daily format, and no matter what else I’m doing I will always try to sneak in these four panels.

Welcome to day 4:

Comic Diary

I find that adding structure—through repetition, rhyme, and color—makes my ordinary, individual experience interesting to others.

—

Most of what we’ve done so far creates a kind of personally satisfying but sometimes in coherent rambling sort of work, or at least that is what it’s supposed to do.

A comic does something different.

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You can checkout the entire Gameplan here.

A note on the assignments: Some assignments lend themselves more to being shared others might produce work that is more private. It’s tempting to think that if you can’t share it then the work is not valuable, that’s not true at all. The work we make ‘for ourselves’ become the raw material for future work. By keeping an artist diary you are collecting ingredients, and good ingredients is the first step to any good meal.

Okay Let’s go, welcome to day 3:

Daily Diary

All of us are far richer than we imagine. While we may worry about being original, remember that you are the ‘origin’ of your work

— Julia Cameron

For the past 25 years, millions of creative people across disciplines have either read the Artist Way, or had to fight of other artist telling them that they absolutely had to read it. The bestselling book included this concept called Morning Pages.

The idea was to write freehand longform for 3 pages first thing in the morning.

It is a revealing practice if you have the stomach for it, but it’s also excruciating for so many reasons. The act of free-writing takes you places you might not want to go, and for 3 pages, that jinn is is not going back in the bottle.

Freewriting is hard, it’s digging through mud to find gold.

But it’s mostly digging through mud.

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Daily Diary

We know that athletes, musicians and actors all have to practice, rehearse and repeat things until it gets into the body, the ‘muscle memory’, but for some reason, writers and visual artist think that they have to be inspired before they make something. Not suspecting that the PHYSICAL ACT of writing is what brings that inspiration about.

— Lynda Barry

I was talking to my friend one day and we were discussing teenage rebellion.

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Welcome to day 1 of Artist Diary, ‘draw one sentence’

Here are some of my recent artist diaries, along with my notes for today’s dispatch.

Artist Diary

“There is a kind of hopefulness to a daily project like this, that I can use time to my advantage, that little simple bits of effort over time, turn into more interesting and complex things”

— Austin Kleon

The first ingredient in a daily practice is setting aside the time.

The next ingredient is the actual practice, now that we’ve carved out some time, what are we going to do with it. Over the next 5 days, I’m going to give you 5 distinct ways you can ground yourself in a 10 minute Artist Diary Practice.

This is to give you a taste of what’s possible at the end of the five days I’m going to ask you to choose your favourite of the 5 practices to become your default ten minute daily practice.

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If you’ve not done Day 1, please start there.

Now if you’ve thought of starting, but haven’t I want to say 2 things.

1. You can actually start anytime and go through the assignments at your own pace, the chat will is always bustling, and I at least will always be there to witness your work, however…

2. If you want to do it in a group and get that energy and company of doing this together, right now is probably the last moment it is realistic to do that, you can catchup on week 1 over the weekend, and jump into week 2 on monday.

A note on the assignment: For today especially, use a piece of scratch paper for the assignment. Take your notes and be extra messy and playful on your scratch paper, then draw the assignment again in your template, share both your scratch paper and your assignment in the chat/gallery.

Shall we go, Let’s GO!

Shall we go, Let’s GO!

Shall we go, Let’s GO!

Welcome to day 5:

Sacred Time

The clock lets me know the drawing took a certain number of minutes, but I didn’t feel those minutes in the usual way.

The drawing seemed to take a long time and then no time at all, even a minute after I had finished I could hardly remember the beginning stages, and it took a feeling of having appeared on it’s own, somehow making itself come into being

— Lynda Barry

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If you’ve not done Day 1, please start there.

A note on the assignments: We’ll be doing more drawing today, I encourage you to use the template, we’re going for a cartoony big head and small body, then go crazy and loose with the hands, this will let you capture more ALIVENESS, which is the aim for the moment.

Okay Let’s go, welcome to day 3:

Take Time

Mindfulness gives you time.

Time gives you choices.

Choices skillfully made, lead to freedom

— Bhante Henepola Gunaratna

When someone says “I have all the time in the world”, they are obviously using hyperbole — but what they mean is that they are willing to spend this particular instance of their finite most precious resource to show up fully present.

There are times in our lives when we actually show up like we have all the time in the world — when we suspend any care for anything other than this present moment.

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If you’ve not done Day 1, please start there.

A note on the assignments: It’s nice to see that so many of you know when your high voltage times are, from early in the morning to when you find your seat on the train. I hope you’ll be using one of those high voltage times to do today’s assignment.

If you can’t that’s fine, better to do it than wait for perfect circumstances, but if you do use that high voltage times you’re going to get a little bit extra out of it.

The assignments are a codified and visceral way for me to communicate some ideas to you, not everything can explained, and even if they can, I’m choosing not to explain everything upfront, so just know you will be learning by doing. I don’t mean to be a strict teacher or a demanding parent, maybe a coach.

So if coach (me) says make a drawing, or do some writing, try to do all the steps. You’re converting an idea into a thing in the world that you made by hand, and that is a powerful thing.

Also at the end of 30 days (or whenever you can manage it) you will need to submit your assignments, they won’t be graded but they will need to be complete for you to receive Part 2: your personalised 30 day project.

Looking forward to seeing more of your assignments, there will be a week after the last project to send in your assignments.

With that out of the way, welcome to day 2:

Time Tetris

“People sleep more, work less & have more leisure time than they imagine”

— Laura Vanderkam

Laura Vanderkam is a time scientist.

Not the kind that thinks about time travel, rather the kind that studies hundreds of participants from all walks of life to see patterns in how they spend their time.

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Settle down to read this and do your assignment, perhaps with a cup of tea or coffee maybe even a snack, stand up and stretch or do a couple of jumping jacks… done? okay, lets go!

Over the next 5 days we’re going to work at identifying, setting aside, enlivening, inhabiting and defending our sacred time.

Let’s begin with what I’d like to call high voltage time.

To quote Scott Adams:

“The energy I have for a task is more important than the time I allocate to it”

You’ve felt this, it’s as true about a hard conversation you need to have with a friend, a problem at work, a movie you’ve been wanting to watch, or even playtime with a kid. if you don’t have the right energy for a task it could end in disaster.

My teacher says “an hour in the morning is worth two in the afternoon”. And while this is not always true for everyone. There are a number of factors that make those early morning hours the most high voltage. As in you have a lot of energy to give to whatever task you have.

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