Of Pipe-dreams and Practice

Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about attending Savannah College of Art and Design (or SCAD for short). I’ve always wanted to go to art school, ever since I started doing art for my A-levels. I love to draw and I’d love to study at a place solely dedicated to drawing. The thing is though that it’s a bit of a long shot. Not only is there the whole applying and hoping that my art is good enough (which I doubt but we’ll get to that shortly) thing, but there is also the matter of the cost. The total fees for just one year of study are more than I owe in student loans, which is a butt load. It’s an amount that I have very little hope of ever saving up although I’m not doing too badly with savings. I’d feel bad, spending that much on further education, especially four years worth of education, when there are so many other things I could and should spend it on. Like a house, or paying off my student loans, or any number of other things that I can’t think of right now. There’s a very low possibility of me ever earning enough to afford it and as each year passes, despite the desire to attend still being there, the likelihood falls lower and lower. In a nutshell, it’s a pipe dream.

Then there’s the matter of my ability in general. I love drawing but I don’t draw enough. One of the reasons is that I can never get what I’m seeing in my mind down on paper properly. And there is one key reason for this. Practice. I do not practice drawing. I seem to expect it to instantly come out perfect, exactly how I want it to without trying. Sometimes I wish there was a magical print button that simply put what was in my head down on paper without me even trying. But that is wrong. I need to practice, I should practice. Practice is what helps you get better. It has worked with my writing, the more that I write the better that my writing becomes (or at least it seems to at any rate, I’ll let someone else be the judge of that). So I came to a decision.

Just because I can’t go to art school doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t try to get better. Just like with my writing I need to figure out some form of programme of study to improve my drawing ability, to get it to where I want to be. I’ll need to look at the various syllabi of art colleges around the world, see how they build up their teaching over time and figure out my own version based on that. More importantly I need to get over the idea that everything I draw will be perfect straight away. It is going to be flawed, there are going to be glaring errors and when I look back at those drawings I am going to hate them. But that’s what improvement is all about. Practice makes perfect is a cliché saying for a reason, it’s true. To an extent anyway.

I think that’s what a lot of first time writers don’t realise. You cannot just expect things to come out exactly how you want them to right from the beginning (unless you’re a crazy genius savant or incredibly gifted). You have to work for them, learn about them, practice them and all the time you’ll get better. It’s the 10,000 hour rule, the idea that in order to consider yourself a master, or at least adept, at your craft you need to put in at least 10,000 hours of work before you are seriously any good. I don’t say this to put people off trying to write. I’m just stating a fact. Sure you can put a book out there, paint a picture or play an instrument without the 10,000 hours but it won’t be as good as it could be if you put those 10,000 hours in.

That’s the wonderful thing about life though. You don’t get a one shot only kind of thing. You can try and fail and try and fail as many times as you want. No one looks down on someone for trying, as long as they keep the rest of their life in some form of order (ie paying bills and not becoming a drug addicted mess). You have to strike on, keep going. Refusing to give up on your dream can earn you a lot of respect (unless it’s a crazy dream like living on the moon. Then you need to rethink) and show your loved ones, particularly the ones who are doubting you, exactly how determined you are. In fact it could earn you a lot of support from places you least expected it. And if the failures keep coming maybe it’s time to practice a little more, study a little more and learn from the successes out there.

So I return to practicing my craft, practicing writing and practicing my art. Once I know how to art that is. It’s been a while since I had any kind of formal training so my brain’s a little dusty. And maybe one day soon, I will get to go to SCAD and be an art student. Or I might finally get a book out there, a whole series of books, and people will know my name. But at the moment I’m focusing on the now and less on the future.

What are your big dreams? How do you practice for your dream? Let me know in the comments.

Revelations and Alterations

It’s been an odd week. After all the excitement of the weekend I seemed to get stuck in a slight rut. I was barely drawing, barely writing and if I’m honest getting a little depressed about my life. Then I had two girls and a baby hiding in my bedroom for an hour. While they were hiding we got chatting and they both said things that made me think. They have both worked to get what they want and they seem relatively happy with what they have. I haven’t.

I coasted through school and university doing the bare minimum and I got by fairly well. Every year after university was done and I returned home for the summer I’d kick myself for not applying myself and yet when I went back I’d just fall into the same habits and coast along. I’ve started to do that again now, now I’m graduated and trying to join the real world. I’m sitting around, doing the bare minimum to reach my goals and for some reason feeling proud of this. Well... not anymore.

After a couple of weeks easily managing to attain the majority of the goals I realised that they need reworking, they’re too attainable. I’m reaching them easily and it’s not actually pushing me to grow as an artist/writer. So from my own thoughts and the feedback of other people participating in RoW80 I’ve edited them.

• Edit 100 words of DW daily.

This was both too easy and too difficult. On a bad day I would generally get over 1000 words editted, working on entire scenes rather than brief chunks. I tried to edit in small 100 word bursts but it just didn't work. The blocks didn't really connect and everything felt discombobulated. With that in mind I came up with a new one goal based off the original idea that pushes me to my limits and makes me work harder to attain my goal;

• Edit 1 chapter (2,500 words) of DW a day.

• Draw one full art piece a week

With sketching thumbnails, writing and all the planning I'm doing I just don't have time for even more art on top of it. Full-time artists and writers have told me that they even struggle to achieve this goal so I don't feel too bad about altering it. So, with that in mind I tweaked the goal, keeping the general idea but changing the time-frame for it;

• Create on full art piece a month.

•   Write everyday

This was too easy. I included any form of writing I did, whether editing, planning for NaNoWriMo or even a blog post. I needed to write something that wasn’t included in the other goals, that I couldn’t use as an easy out for completing that goal and so I tweaked it, edited it and came up with;

• Write something non-NaNo, DW, or blog related each day.

 And so, with my goals and targets reworked I set to work again, with the hope that I will start taking my work more seriously than I already am and actually succeed in achieving not just my RoW80 goals but my life goals as well.

Journal, journal, journal, notebook - it's all about organisation... and other blogs

I've developed a strange obsession with journals and notebooks in the last week. I've always had a weird love of the things but I think this odd love peaked on Friday when I found a use for 4 previously unused notebooks in half an hour. Now I have a big pile of the things.

I already had one journal, for writing everyday thoughts in and just generally rambling and exploring my thoughts, a turquoise number with magnetic clasp and holes cut out with bright yellow fabric underneath that I got for £30 from Warehouse, pretty pricey but it's held up ridiculously well all things considered. I got it in May and began using it pretty much instantly. Before I was never much for keeping a diary, always losing interest after a few weeks. But I've been writing in my journal now at least once a week for the last 4 months. Nice to see I can stick with something. Now though, in the space of a weekend I've acquired two more. One is a writing journal, where I explore everything writing related, particularly for Geniania. It's basically where I jot down thoughts on stuff I need to research, carry out writing exercises and other writing related things. The other is my art journal. I only started it yesterday and it's basically where I do doodles and sketches and other artsy things, whether it's trying out a technique or sketching out that picture I've gotten stuck in my head. I already had a sketchbook but it's a bit too big to be carting everywhere. These two are roughly A-5, both plain black, (one with faux suede on the cover and the other with a strange smooth pleather type stuff) and can fit in most of my handbags, at least the ones I use during the day anyway which is when I would use a sketchbook or journal.

Then there's my notebooks. I had just the one originally, a black Moleskine notebook that was pretty cheap (you can find it and other notebooks here. I have to admit the colour a month planner is looking very tempting) and I used it to set myself tasks for the day. I'd also just down quick lists of things I needed to do. It's where I wrote my monthly targets too as well as points of research. It was, and still is, my all-duty notebook that I find myself doodling in a bit more then I should. Then I thought.. you know what I need somewhere to put those little lists that are just a bit general. So I found a little slim notebook and turned that into my 'Little Book of Lists'. It's a tiny Oxford A-5 notebook that fits easily into any bag I own so it can go everywhere with me, just like the Moleskine. Finally there's the stripey jotter notebook where I write down any interesting suggestions and creative exercises that can help with my writing. It's pretty basic and I used to use it for lectures about my creative writing dissertation so it only seemed fitting that I use it for notes on the creative writing process. Another one that I forgot to include in the picture is my page layout notebook. It's basically white with about 4 signatures of A-4 folded in half. I hope to one day use notebooks that I've bound myself but finding lined paper in the right dimensions and sizes is proving to be tricky. I have this feeling sometimes that what a person writes in says a fair bit about them. As does what they write/how they write it. I plan to explore that in a later blog though.

In other news I've been reading the blog of a remarkably artistic person who lives in Tuscany, Italy. She binds the most beautiful journals and includes numerous tutorials and illustrations. It's thanks to her that I can now understand how to create coptic stitch books. Her name is Linda Tieu and her blog is just full of ideas and thoughts. You can check it out here. I particularly like how she structures the week of blog posts, especially the creative progress/workspace pictures as well as her descriptions of current projects. Just reading it gets me in the mood to create and to share with readers my absolutely awfully cluttered workspace. I say workspace but I mean collection of shelves and the end of my bed.

I'll probably explore more of these thoughts in later posts, I think that this one's been pretty big for today, particularly given my knackered and hungover state.