Mornin’ Sketch

I have written before about “The Artist’s Way” and the practice and benefit of writing daily and general task continuity as opposed to sprinting(!). The magic of just writing is that you can discover a good idea or thought somewhere along the way all mixed in with the bullshit that swims in your mind. I have, I think successfully found a drawing analogy for morning pages and of course, come up with a grand universal theory of converting your hobby into a morning pages like habit:

  1. What are your boundary conditions? time? as in 30 minutes space? as in 3 pages
  2. What is the lowest activation energy thing that is tangential to the habit you want to form. For example: I want to paint more watercolor. But sketching with a pen is something I have done forever and is much easier to do when I am tired or not feeling it. Art is largely composition and communication, pen is effective for concept sketching. However, this also works well because I am not trying to actively get better at drawing.
  3. What tool can you use to unblock yourself midstream and just keep going? here as an example, for doodling I draw a random shape and try to make it into some creature. for writing, it is stream of consciousness.
  4. Being chill that most of your stuff will just be bad, okay, whatever. the good will come eventually.
  5. eliminating other things that get you hung up on the quality. Ex: for drawing, just getting out that crisp white paper and staring at that blank page can make you feel like you are just going to fill it with crap. I use the crappiest paper possible to just eliminate this subconscious thought.
junk craft masking paper allows me to just keep rolling it all out – about 6″ tall.
2 days of doodles. I try to do about 5-6″ of width.