Moonlighting Series: How I Made 365 Pieces of Art in 2018
Last year, I began thinking of an idea for a series about local Toledo artists. I wanted to feature people that make no excuses in getting their work out in front of an audience on top of their full-time careers. It’s been an incredible year getting to learn from Toledo area mixing engineers, ceramic artists, photographers, illustrators, and hip hop artists on how they balance it all.
I wasn’t sure how to wrap this series up, but I thought it only fair that I turn the questions on myself and give you a look into how I manage to make room in my life for personal creative pursuits and growth on top of having a family and a busy career that I love at Vers Creative.
Work In Secret
I intentionally don’t talk about my personal creative pursuits publically until they are finished. I unpack the reasons to work in secret further in my book, UNFINISHED, but the basic idea is that I’m FAR more likely to complete a creative project if I only let two or three people in on what I’m doing or if I do the work anonymously. Announcing the start of your work to social media circles adds so much unnecessary pressure to a creative pursuit and skews the work. Some people will say that it provides accountability, but as humans, were we ever created to be accountable to a mass audience for completing our personal work? I don’t think so.
365 Pieces of Art in 2018
One of the goals I completed in 2018 was creating 365 pieces of art. I was inspired by the idea of “morning pages,” made famous by Julie Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way. The idea is to free-write two to three pages in the morning before you do anything. It’s essentially a morning workout for creative types to get the brain going. I translated this into creating a piece of art every morning in 2018. It started out as some screenwriting, drawing, processing photos, blackout art, or mixed media, but quickly transformed into something surprising.
ART 365
My goal was to create one piece of art each day in 2018. I started with some photography, some screenwriting, then I sort of just fell into creating an album cover every day for fictitious bands.
A Love for Creating Album Covers
Around day 50, I started to make album covers for fictitious bands and artists. My background in music crossed into this daily practice of art in an exciting way. I would think of a band name and base the art around how I think that band’s music would sound. By the end of 2018, I had made around 300 album covers. Some really great things came from this practice, but I fear to talk about success because success as a byproduct distracts from the fact that this was meant for the practice. My biggest hope is that you see the biggest benefit of this practice was an incredible start to your day. To begin with a big, deep breath. Doing something creative the first thing in the morning did a few things for me:
It prepared my mind for the work ahead of me that day. I work for a creative agency, and I found the practice the same as how Tim Ferris ‘state primes’ by doing 5-10 pushups at the beginning of the day.
It gave me a small victory to start my day. If you are like me, being able to check one thing off your list first thing in the morning sets a positive tone for the rest of the day.
It stretched me as a creative and made me better at my full-time job. Also, on several occasions, I found that when I did not feel like doing it, pushing through actually yielded work that I was really proud of.
81 of my favorite album covers I designed in 2018. I would make up fictitious bands or choose a band I wanted to make an album cover for.
How I Made Time for Daily Art
I wake up around 6-6:30 am every day, before the rest of the family, read for 30 minutes, then start the design for the day from a blank slate. I did most of the album art quickly, usually spending no more than 20-30 minutes on each piece. I used the Over app, as I work much quicker in there than Illustrator or Photoshop. I also used Unsplash for starting photography when I began to run out of my own photography to use. I also have used the Way of Life app for the past year to set good habits. This simple, beautiful app keeps track of when you hit a daily goal (green) or when you miss it (red). It’s a great visual I now use for all of my ‘dailies.’ I realized 4 years ago, when I wrote UNFINISHED: A Guide to Dream, Complete, and Repeat Your Life’s Work, that I really just made a handbook for myself and a few close friends who would ask me how I’m able to complete so many goals. I used a lot of what I wrote in that book to help push myself to complete 365 pieces of art last year, and I hope to continue this daily practice again in 2019. I hope you found this and the other Moonlighting articles helpful this past year. I would love to hear what you are working on in 2019. Good luck!