Hello,
I'm Mervi Eskelinen!
An artist, nerd and sorcerer, dedicated to make world softer and better for everyone, and to get you to make more art. Make art, change the world!
How to make time for art
You are a very busy person. So am I, and so is the person next to you. Life gets in the way, work gets in the way, you just cannot draw every day. That's how I used to explain myself why I wasn't drawing daily or even weekly or monthly at one point. I had to wait for better time and for that elusive inspiration to strike. I needed better art supplies and less shaky hands. So I drew less and less.
A few years ago I made a decision to draw more. It was a bit of a tool driven decision. I had bought a tablet, stylus and a drawing app. I felt I had to use those, since they weren't exactly cheap and I'm not made of money. Still I kept giving myself excuses why I shouldn't draw every day. Slowly that started to change and I joined some Instagram daily drawing challenges here and there.
Because of my shaky hands I felt ashamed of creating art that didn't use technical advances to make lines smoother. Stabilisation and streamlining. It's still a struggle to me, but I'm slowly getting over it. About two years ago I bought my first hard cover sketchbook and started to fill it. That sketchbook didn't see any daily artwork. I doodled, and drew and painted in it now and then. When I had it almost filled I made another decision.
I would try and draw in a small sketchbook every day. Quick doodles, more detailed stuff, testing different techniques and styles and supplies. I figured I would fill one sketchbook with this little challenge and maybe then forget it.
But I have now been drawing (almost) daily basis since then. It has been over year and a half. I fill a small sketchbook after another with various subjects and various media. Sometimes I sketch, sometimes make a very quick little drawing, and sometimes I take a longer time to fill a spread in the latest little red sketchbook.
During this process I remembered making art is fun. My shaky lines don't matter as long as I'm not too serious about it all. Besides, nobody else has my shaky hands, so my art is always very indistinguishably mine.
Now the title of this post promises to tell you how to make time for art. Well, you might have caught already where this is going.
To make time for art you need to choose to make time for art. It doesn't mean you'll need to lock yourself in a room to paint for hours and hours until you hate everything and especially art. Or to write a full length novel in a week or even a month. It means taking a few minutes of your day to doodle something or write a few lines.
Here's a little video I made last year about how to keep drawing every day without burning out:
Doodle while on phone or while you wait for someone to reply to your inquiry. Take a five minute break from your work to draw a quick drawing of what's on your table or what you see behind the window. Or write a quick, five line poem about how your work stresses you out.
Finding time for art is a matter of choice and practice. If you found time to read this post, you'll find time for art. It's a choice you make, to make time for art.
For me drawing every day isn't even about me making time for art. It's more like needing to do it. Just like I need to eat or I need to take a shower, I also need to draw every day. I get something from it rather than give something to it. It sustains me. This change didn't happen overnight. It happened because I started choosing to make time, even if it was only 5 minutes, for art.
Making time for art is all about choosing to do so. Making the decision that art is important part of your life. Deciding to give it time and energy, until it starts giving something back to you. It's about loosening up and having fun instead of being all serious. And it's also about being sensible about it, and not trying to do too much each time you make time for art. That painting or that story will be finished some day, if it feels like it. Slow down and let it happen.
Make art time and it will give you so much more than you ever thought it would.
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