Always Remember
to warm up
Even in art, it’s important to warm up. I used to fake “warm up” by trying to make a solid drawing to sell me as an artist to the world. To make it “good enough” to solicit a sale directly or entice an art director to hire me for a job. Now I’ve come to love warming up to explore and surprise myself. To try out new techniques and to make myself laugh. The entire structure and thought process has been taken back to its roots and it just feels right for it.
I never know where the art will go or what I’ll draw next (the top left really was an indication I had a caffeine headache) . It rarely connects from image to image, usually a dog passes by or I hear a word from someone in the coffee shop and I add it to the mix. It’s now improv as art sort of deal. I only use pen so I can’t plan anything either. It’s been a great start and shake up to my days (where deadlines aren’t glaring at me like an evil monkey on my back).
I’ve learned to embrace the chaos (thanks kids) and the art of not having a plan (thanks blank canvas) and it’s freed me from the social need to overshare, aim at a random target or get upset by the results. It’s only the goals of the warm up that have changed. experimentation, surprise, and humor. If I’ve nailed that, boom. It’s pretty nice. I’d also say that now that I’m a writer as well, this substack that you’re reading is my warm up to writing too. I like natural writing and dialog so I don’t correct much. I’ve got drafts of posts I haven’t posted and just move on. Usually because the subject matter needed more time, internally to let itself out naturally instead of forced. I didn’t really know I was doing that until recently. So now I have two ways I’m warming up.
I sell my curated random warm up pages on my site, you never know what you’re gonna get, just like me. Warm up pages
It’s funny to imagine if I needed to do this exercise for daily interactions, but maybe that’s what “small talk” is? Just a warm up to a bombshell confession?!?!
Do you warm up? How and why?
Thanks and talk soon,
Brett