2 June 2005 ... Building the Art Habit

It has been proven that I can be perfectly happy, as a jobless bum, reading all day and playing on the computer. However, the despair evident in my last entry made me realize that I'm probably spending too much time on the computer, reading about the destruction of the environment and the daily cruelty to billions of animals... and not enough time with coping strategies.

Actually, all of my creative pursuits have fallen by the wayside. I'm not really gung-ho about typing here, I have not made any new blank books, haven't designed any new stickers, don't want to spend the time on a new site design. It's been two weeks since I've touched Paint Shop Pro, and I've not been reading the user guide lately either. I am writing in my notebook, but not drawing.

And you know what? I want to be an artist when I grow up. Or, I want to be able to call myself an artist...

When I decided I wanted to be a writer, I read books and discovered that "Writers write". I followed the Artist's Way and wrote morning pages for a long time, and then morphed them into journal writing. When I was a jobless bum in Arizona, I journalled in my notebook a LOT. I challenged myself to 10 full pages, front and back, every week. And I filled about ten of those 100 page exercise books.

And today, I've got the habit, I write almost every day, tho I'm not as prolific. I consider myself a writer. ;) Yeah, okay, I classify myself as a journal writer, but still, definitely a writer.

But the drawing habit seems to elude me. You know how they say that it takes 21 days of conscious effort to develop a new habit? That's a big fat lie, because I've tried it multiple times and I still don't have a drawing habit...

The most recent effort, of course, was my Art By The Inch challenge, last November. I am terribly proud of myself for completing my goal, and also proud of some of the drawings that I made. I drew every single day, and many days I spent hours on my drawings.

But when the challenge was over, I thought I needed a rest. And I never really got back to drawing. And this has happened over and over, with my self-challenges!

Last night, I started reading a new book, The War of Art. Two things immediately started to click...

The author says that it's not the writing that's hard, it's the sitting down to write that's the hard part. *nods, nods, applied to drawing* And then a few pages later, he says it never gets any easier.

Oh. Well then. Here's me, complaining because it's so stupidly hard to sit down and draw... When I really should ignore the complaining and "just do it".

Yep, I quit reading and went and drew something. I have no idea what the book's real message is... I'm only on the first chapter and "just do it" has not yet entered the scene. :)