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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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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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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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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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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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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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Every month I drop a new 5-Day project, to help you add some variety to your daily creative practice, or to serve as a ramp to gently invite you back in if you’ve fallen off. Whether you make art for the pure joy of it or if you’re a working creative professional, I encourage you to try a Ten Minute Artist practice.

The practice of creating something for yourself daily, even if only for ten minutes.

In this project we’re going to talk about MAKING COMICS

One last thing before we begin: I’m starting another cohort for Gameplan: How to be an Artist on July 6th and you can get a preview by turning that on here.

Welcome to Day 5 of : Making Comics

Comics employ words & pictures to communicate.

But one thing that is sometimes misses is that words in comics ARE pictures. The art of lettering, is the art of Drawing, not writing letters. As an artist, shifting from writing letters to drawing letters helps your words have more clarity, emotion and impact.

And if there is one piece of advice that yields tremendous results it’s this:

Draw your letters, not write them and draw them slowly.

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