Boost Art Productivity with Short Studio Sessions

Not all artists are able to devote themselves to their art fulltime. In fact, it is not uncommon to find many aspiring and professional artists struggling to attain a balance between a steady paycheck and managing the time and energy to create.

I know how this feels. As a stay-at-home-mom, my own art career slowly developed within the short studio moments I could steal during my children’s naptime and in between loads of laundry. But believe it or not, I was still able to produce some good art back in those days. Below, is the first article in a short series that I will be posting on time management skills for the artist. Here you will find some great tips to help you use small intervals of creative time in productive ways.

Boost Art Productivity with Short Studio Sessions

Guest author: Originally posted on ArtBistro.Monster.com
If, like many artists, you find it hard to secure sizable chunks of time to paint—and even if those large chunks are available to you—it is good to get clever at organizing your mind, your equipment, and your life so as to make the best use possible of those small chunks of time that fly by each day.
Carving out those longer painting periods of course remains essential, because creating requires extensive and concentrated intervals of work. So you have the ongoing job of finding the way to create those substantial painting periods. But small chunks of time can have significant value if you get in the habit of using them well.

Here are four tips for using small intervals of time in productive ways:

1. Have a Clear Idea: Get in the habit of knowing what your current painting needs, so that you can return to it with an internal understanding that you are “turning directly to the left arm” or “working on that second rose from the right.” By maintaining a clear sense of what you intend to tackle next, you avoid procrastination and you find the motivation to turn to your painting even though you only have a few minutes at your disposal. Naturally, such clarity isn’t always available. But it is available more often that we suspect if we train ourselves to be open to it.
2. Less is More: Create some projects that lend themselves to being worked on in small increments. Maybe your central or major works can’t be divided up neatly and maybe they require the kind of attention and concentration that only long painting periods afford. Still, mightn’t it be possible to create some secondary or smaller projects that lend themselves to being worked on for fifteen minutes or thirty minutes at a time? If it is, then over time you’ll complete many additional works and do a nice job of building your inventory.
3. Unplug: In order to make use of these small chunks of time as they arise, we have to break our habit of routinely and reflexively turning to one of our “distraction addictions” to while away those minutes. As a matter of routine, and without thinking about it, people nowadays check their email, browse the news online, turn to Facebook or Twitter, catch up on one or another of their Internet games, or do something else Web-based so as to “get rid of” those few minutes. Until we break that habit, there is little chance that we can make productive use of the fifteen or thirty minutes that become available to us throughout the day.

4. Do not Procrastinate: We need to remind ourselves just how quickly certain things can be accomplished. How long does it take to write a two-line email to someone who might help to grow your art business? Typically people hold this to be a huge task because anxiety wells up in them when they think about putting themselves “out there.” But the reality is that the email itself takes hardly a minute or two to write and a microsecond to send. If you learn to calm yourself, center yourself, and not magnify the risk involved, you could make significant headway every time you found a few minutes at your disposal.

In an ideal world we might find ourselves doing less scrambling. For most of us, however, the reality is that our days are choppy and jagged and that bits of time suddenly arrive — and vanish. It isn’t that we have to grab every one of those fleeting intervals and make use of it. By the same token, though, we do want to grab a lot of them — as they may be the only time we have available.

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Good luck with boosting your own art productivity during short studio sessions. Stay tuned for some more time management tips in the coming weeks. If you have any time management or studio tips you would like to share, please leave a comment. We all learn from each other! ~Lori

PS. Let’s meet on Facebook and Twitter! And please check out LoriMcNee.com to see my paintings!

You might like to read a few of these helpful posts:

The Healthy Artist: Tips to Help You Stay that Way
Artistic Temperament: What to Do When it Strikes!
How to Jump-Start Your Art Career
10 Ways to Overcome Mental Blocks & Boost Creativity
Feeling Unproductive in the Studio or Office? How to Combat Spring Fever