Personal trainers say that it takes 21 days to develop a habit, one that you can really get into and own and happily I have found that for the artist this can also can be applied to the training of the creative person. Everyday carve a little time that is dedicated to exploring some aspect of applied art. Use a favorite drawing tool mine is a soft pencil that allows me to really dig in to the paper and back off from the surface and explore some very expressive lines and gestures, grab a favorite tool and experiment with different lines and marks that you can make by varying the angle pressure paint saturation and speed of brush or pencil on the paper explore new and exciting marks, shapes and edges, Break out your palette and pick out a color that you haven’t used lately and mix it with one of your favorites, see what new combinations you can come up with. and if you repeatedly find one of the colors to be not a favorite than get rid of the color and bring in a new one. After a period of about 30 minutes, move to something else but you will notice that you have a bunch of great ideas floating around in your head based on the wonderful right brain activity you were just involved in. This is the start of getting in to a creative zone. Have no expectations of a painting, a drawing or finished work the only expectation is to improve your contact with your creative brain. Add these days up and you will begin to get to this zone easier.
15 x 22 graphite gestural drawing with watercolor accents on tinted paper. I started by using a very bold mark around the head of the largest figure. I really wasn’t thinking figure I was thinking creative line and I just kept drawing a adjusting the line until I had an interesting series of shapes on the paper.
This is a good exercise on many levels!