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Welcome to the Drawing Board #5!

Hi All! What a month!

I can't believe January has come to an end- though I'm sure it was a productive one! I started a weekly newsletter (hi!), an active blogging practice, my in-person classes and our online sketchbook development course have started strong, a new podcast is in development and will be ready to launch soon, and I've even found some time in the studio preparing for a really exciting exhibition I can't wait to share with you all!

I've added a new section to our newsletter: a weekly "sketch starter"! If you're like me, sometimes I have the urge to draw but am grasping for ideas- the motivation and excitement of "getting into it" and "making marks" just seems to bulldoze everything else. These weekly "sketch starters" are just a little prompt to help you spark an idea if you find yourself in need of one. Check it out below, under the quote from Ann Gale!

Blog Post Round Up:

My computer was in the repair shop this week, so the blog was a bit spotty- but I still found time to explore some really exciting bodies of work:

• ​Ann Gale’s Dualities: Painting That Balances Density and Air
• ​Sigal Tsabari's (Amazing) Botanical Drawings​
• ​Judith Leyster's Musicians (a historical WOYEW post!)
• ​Odd Nerdrum's Bricks - yes, bricks!

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Digging the blog posts? Think you might like to create some? Send me your thoughts at ekitson@theopensketchbook.com

Writing Lists and Finding Priorities

My word for the year is "productivity", and to help me continue to build the habits that'll keep me moving towards the kind of creative person I want to be, I've chosen to focus on that topic for the month of January in these newsletters. We've covered a lot of ground doing so, and I hope you've been enjoying the discussion.

List Making
​Sometimes the scope of our tasks/aims are hard to really comprehend. When we're taking on a new project, we tend to underestimate the scale of our vision because, typically, we've spent time with it- working out the various components, mentally iterated and adjusted our aim, and have a good, lived-in understanding of the pieces. But, without the pieces put down someplace where we can compare them all at once, their scale is too nebulous for us to be able to truly estimate our undertaking. (I can't tell you how many times I've only given myself a few hours to frame an artwork, only to have it take multiple days and trips to the hardware store.) It's like writing a novel from start to finish without ever giving yourself an outline- it probably won't work out as well as you think it might.

Much in the way an outline will help you with your novel's pacing, timeline of events, character motivations, and more, a list will help you determine what you already think and know about your project (any task), and reveal what you haven't considered yet, or maybe have over estimated.

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I hand-write my lists. I like the extra time it takes to do, compared to typing, and the freedom to cross-out, box, circle, point to, and stack lines keeps me feeling more active as an editor of my thoughts rather than just an author/presenter of them. (Bolding something in a notepad app doesn't have the same feeling as if I go back over the letters heavily in pencil...)

But my favorite quality of the written list is its limitations in scale. These 6"x4" post-it note sheets are big enough to get a lot of thoughts down, but restrict me from elaborating too much or adding too many focus points. This forces me to really hone-in on what I need to know/do and a couple of supporting notes underneath.

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Digitally, you have as much space as you'll ever want - but I always notice we use that to overexplain, which turns into stalling, or worse: we feel like we've accomplished something because we've elaborated on a thought, rather than putting that thought into action. When your outline starts to look like your novel, it's no longer serving its purpose- you're just doing twice the work, without the benefit of the clarity.

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Anatomy of a List - and Finding the Most Important Component​
This is a bit prescriptive, but here's the anatomy of a typical Kitson list:

I always put the task/project title up at the top. Sometimes I stall by doing so in a fancy font. The next line is reserved for the first thing you think of that'll be necessary to get started. This is your way in: gathering materials, setting up your space, cleaning, researching, etc. I like to give about two spaces (lines) before the next piece of the project. This gives me space to write out some smaller notes or make corrections in that area. You can see that I stack my smaller notes on top of each other sometimes to make the most out of the limited space. If I start to overload an area, that tells me it's important and maybe I haven't thought enough about it yet.

By the time I get to the third component, I've found 1) my "way in", and 2) the logical next step, or a stalling step, and now I can put down what's probably the most important bit. This is usually the piece of the project I haven't figured out enough yet, or will require some groundwork to make happen. If I'm unsure about the importance of these component parts, I find it's usually number 3 that I should prioritize.

Anything after that is extra, typically. This space is often redundant, but useful. It's around the bottom quarter of the paper that I revisit the early pieces, or things that might not need to get written down- so... stalling.

If your project has more than five pieces/components, you might want to zoom out and look at the bigger picture. This will probably help you better navigate your timeline as well.

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Final List Thoughts​
I'm sure this wasn't particularly revelatory, but I do encourage you to consider how you use lists, or something like a list, in your planning and reflecting. When I utilize the Pomodoro Technique, I'll write down my goals/tasks for the total amount of time spent, and often key bullet points for each time-chunk. In the tomato drawing example, I had a list that broke down the start (first 20 minutes), the middle (second 20), and the resolve (the final 20min chunk.) I wish I would've kept my list to show you- but as my habit stands, I throw them out after crossing off the items or scribbling them out. The lists are not precious, they're just a tool for planning and reflection.

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What'd you think of our discussions on productivity this month? Let me know by replying to this email. We'll move on to another topic for February: creativity within limitations. Limited materials, limited access, limited time, and more!

Weekly Sketch Starter:
​Draw an everyday item that has importance in our lives but might go unnoticed.

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​Odd Nerdrum chose to paint bricks. What will you choose?

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Thanks so much for reading the Drawing Board! I've been enjoying putting together these weekly newsletters for our community! I hope your January was creatively enjoyable! I'm very excited about everything coming up in February- I'll see you then!

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Happy drawing,
Evan​​

​​https://learn.theopensketchbook.com/​

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