21 Days to Creative Abundance - Day 19

Water Dancer

Today Sebastion Michaels asks us to tackle Procrastination. 

His suggestions include being clear about what you want to do and why, having an easy “on-ramp” to your art, making a list of what needs to be done on your art project so you can always know what’s next, and having an accountability partner.

Generosity. In the past few days, I discovered something not on his list that works for me. One of our challenges was to complete a piece of work and give it to someone. I knew who I wanted to give a particular piece to and this morning that desire pulled me into making art when I might have done something else.

Follow your energy. I'm adding this as a procrastination technique. Today's challenge was to create a book cover. I found myself doing anything but going to Photoshop and finally realized I really didn't want to do this challenge. I've done a lot of book covers so it didn't feel fresh. When I shifted to creating an image for my series on digital artistry muses, I couldn't wait to get to my computer. Sometimes, if a task just feels like slogging uphill through muck, maybe it's time to turn around and skip downhill.

My easy on-ramp is simple … just browsing through my photos or spending time organizing them throws open the doors to Photoshop and makes me want to see how one or more photos might play together.

The list is something I need to do. I’ve identified three projects I want to work on, but I need a simple to do list for each of them, posted in a place where I can review them easily.

The accountability partner is a challenge. People are busy and they have their own projects. I’m thinking that maybe deadlines and having a recipient for each project might keep the fires stoked.

Since one of my projects is the creation of images for the nine muses of digital art, I’ve decided to make a separate blog page for them which will also be a little accountability pressure as I create images for each of them. The photo above is a young Mexican woman who is the stimulus for the second muse, Bailanda. Check out this page to see the muses.

This post was prompted by Sebastian Michael's "21 Days to Creative Living" and "Photoshop Artistry" programs. More information here.