Artist Way

Artist Way

Together with @blok__designs we worked throught the whole Artist Way. I would like to share a bit about this experience of give or take 12 weeks in this post.

The things we liked where the way the assignments force you to give attention to processes and surroundings you work in, things we normally took for granted. It made us change small habits that annoyed us (eg buy a better scissors or invest in a handstitching clip).
One of our favorite assignments where definitely the artist dates. It is so easy to prioritize work and your work environment, instead of taking the time (even if it is a small break) to let youself be surprised and insired by the smallest things.

A tough thing to do and keep doing are the morning pages. Before you start, taking the time to write down whatever comes to mind. The reward seems small, but gets bigger with time. It makes your thoughts real and actions flow out of them. Small steps that help you achieve your dreams. (Eg I am going to develop bio degradable habedashery with @leatherworkbygab starting in feb)

It is not a magical solution to taking yourself (even) more serious as an artist, you have got to do the work all by yourself. But for us it sure helpt create magical moments and insights and the weekly structure of it helped us normalizing taking the time for this process. (Eg taking the time to visualize what you want to do with a collage, it helps you make decisions as you have literally a vision of your dream in your head).

It takes a lot of time, more than anticipated. It is impossible to calculate if it is worthed in terms of money. But it felt priceless to do it, a true gift to ourselves.

If you have the opportunity to do it with someone else? Go for it! It helped us finish it, we where able to talk through things we didn't understand straight away, we could talk about our answers, discussing it together makes sharing your artist thoughts and dreams real and achievable.

When in doubt, go for it!
You might just like what you have in you.

ps. the bookmark you see is what we made for ourselves. To clip in our notebook with a pen as a reminder to keep doing the (nearly every day) daily morning pages.