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Welcome to the Drawing Board #19!

At the end of the academic year I collect the various drawing pads, boxes of painting materials, and other teaching ephemera from my classrooms and bring it all back to the studio to sort through. My teaching year doesn't quite feel like it's over until I do that- and I've been putting it off this year because I had so much fun working with the students this last semester. Getting around to this sort of ritual has made me think about all the different types of small activities that I do as an artist, like batch-spraying fixative on a pile of drawings/sketchbook pages, or building frames and supports for an upcoming exhibition.

Small activates like these have become a big part of my practice- I know that my best painting happens after I pre-mix some colors on my palette; not just because it helps me broaden my color perception and better set me up for success in how I work, but in the barrier it puts up between me and my effort time-wise. It sort of forces me to take a small, mindful break and "get in the zone". Do you have any sort of mini rituals like that in your practice?

From the Studio Flat Files:

As I was gathering up all the demonstrations and classroom sketches from this year and putting them into the flat files in my studio, I noticed that I'm running out of space (my sympathy for anybody with a print-based practice! How do you find space for all of your work?) I found drawings from the Art Students League of NY from 2012, classroom sketches from 2015, piles of color study demos from over the years, and a healthy amount of skull drawings (surprising no one.)

I've collected ~90 of these artworks from the flat files for an online studio sale that's running now to Saturday, 6/27.

These works are substantially discounted for the duration of this flat file sale with the hope that each work will find a new home and be enjoyed. I'm happy to say that six of them already have been claimed at the time I'm writing this (thanks so much, Virtual Studio Crew!)

Please check out the PDF of Flat File artworks and don't hesitate to reach out with any questions you may have! I look forward to hearing from you. The sale ends on Saturday, 6/27.

How Does an Artist "Warm Up"?

As I was going through the flat files and curating work for the sale, I found three more of my "warm-up" charcoal self-portrait sketches. These came about when I was feeling like doing anything else but making art- that happens to me from time to time. I lose literally all of my motivation for everything, and it can be hard to find my way into the studio and get to work. I was reading Philip Glass' memoir "Words Without Music" at the time, and he said that you must develop a work habit that you keep to. For him it was a time block during the day that he would sit down at the piano and force himself to work, no matter what. He said that after a while, even if he wasn't feeling inspired, during that block of time he would find himself working and entering into a flow state anyways- he had become accustomed to that being the time when musical creativity happens for him!

I remember I was also looking for inspiration at the time and found myself reading every Phil Hale interview that I could find. He had spoken about a practice of "head" paintings that he would do every day where he would put on an album and listen to the whole thing while pushing paint around. When the album was done, he was done with the painting.

So feeling inspired by Hale's sort of gamified practice and Glass' advice, I mixed both of those ideas into my studio practice for a few months. Every(ish) day I would head to the studio, put on an album and draw a self-portrait using charcoal from the mirror as a warm-up. I find that once I get started, it easy to keep going- so having Hale's "rule" of when the music stops, I stop, really helped me to treat these as just what they were: warm-ups that got me into the studio and working. It was easy to hop over to another work in progress after this.

Do you have a process to "warm-up"? Lately mine has been to overthink everything- perhaps I should return to these charcoal drawings?

Thanks so much for being here and checking out the newsletter! I really appreciate it. Please let me know what warm-ups you might use in your own practice, or if you've heard of some interesting ones from other creatives!

Please head over to this link to check out the Flat File Sale artworks and let me know if you'd like to purchase any by Saturday. All sales will be conducted through email just be to sure the work is still available. Hope to hear from you!

Happy drawing,
Evan​​

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