Making Art a priority during your busy week

Weekly Art Practice #18.

Author’s Note: On Saturdays, I share my art practice over the past 7 days. I’m fascinated by artistic practice – it’s not just about creating art but the entire process. From influences and ideas to materials and skills, each artist’s unique approach shapes their work, making it more than just a finished piece.

Thank you,

P.S. If this piece is too long for email, you can read it here in Substack. Or download the app.

Thank you for joining me in my art practice for this week.

After the 4-hour painting session last Friday, I have a renewed focus. I’ve realised that it doesn’t have to be all go go go with painting, but I always go with the inkling to paint when I feel highly motivated to do so. A friend of mine said he paints in seasons, which is a lovely alternative, as he paints for solid blocks and then stops for a bit. Let me remind you that you don’t have to paint every week of the year to be an artist, you art an artist 24/7 regardless, it’s part of who you are. It IS who you are!

As you may know, I have a love-hate relationship with Instagram, but I have started giving Reels a go. After the chat with my Art PR contact, I’ve come to understand that a lot of connections in the Art World do happen on Instagram. I love making videos as well, I’ve had odd jobs of video editing over the years and learned by doing. If creating videos was a slog, I’d stop. It’s so easy nowadays as well, I use Canva (not an advert) because you can edit videos easily on your phone, and you can flip between mobile and desktop as it’s web-based.

So let’s have a little look at my Reels stats over the past week. I won’t read too much into it as it’s early days, I’ll treat the data as data and not a metric for my self-esteem. It looks like the account reach is at 53 accounts engaged with my videos. Ignore total followers as I stupidly bought 2000 or something a couple of years ago, all of them spam accounts, despite them guaranteeing real followers. Lesson learned, never again.

I’ve started scheduling two Reels per day, one in the morning, and one in the evening. It’s easy and fun, I filmed a reel whilst walking the dog the other day, as I live by 4 of my murals. As I typed the last sentence, I don’t want you to think that I’ll be filming everything I do with a pout on my lips, but I do like the idea of having a load of videos filmed in advance that I can publish when I want.

What irks me is that I get the thought “I could share these on TikTok and YouTube Shorts too”. I’m hyper-aware that I don’t want to spend too much time using social media, and I could easily find myself checking YouTube and TikTok regularly. I’ll leave it for now, but I might schedule the videos I have on YouTube Shorts, let’s see what unfolds over the next week. I don’t really want to sign up for TikTok again though.

I guess while you’re here, let’s have a look at the Substack stats too:

I know I often say “Don’t look at the stats” but if you look at them without emotion (hard, I know) I’ll get some insights into what’s happening. For example, I didn’t even know that I got 21 subscribers in the past week, that’s around 10% of what I had previously. So thank you!

What else have I been up to?

I had studio visits three days this week, it’s been so wonderful getting into the flow of things. Having a large painting to work on helps somewhat, as I can return to it with new perspectives and ideas.

Here’s the timelapse of the piece in 7.5 seconds (Total time around 3 hours). You can see the longer one in my previous post.

I’d like to leave you with this…
To the artists who have a day job, book off ½ day in a month’s time. Make this time sacred for making art only, no cleaning, no errands, no kids, no social media, no Substack. If you need to prepare a theme for your art, do that beforehand so you can spend those sacred hours creating. If you’re comfortable in allowing inspiration to guide you, do that. It’s your time.

Literally, go and book it off now if you can. You won’t regret it. Share what occurs with me, and make sure you tag in your Note on Substack.

a calendar with red push buttons pinned to it

Fit it in however you can, I’ve just booked ONE HOUR off on the 22nd of May so I can paint for an extra hour before picking up my daughter from the childminder.

Thanks for reading!

Best wishes,

SLART

P.S. Please kindly share this post, positive Karma and Blessings will be bestowed upon you! If you’re not into Karma, the person whom you share this with will think you’re cool because you know me, the World’s Greatest Artist!*