Creating a Daily Practice

Filling a small sketchbook (4”x3”) with illustrations created with Tombow watercolor brush pens every day quickly results in a portfolio of work. Day by day the pages accumulate, leaving a record of my practice. Photos by Melissa Donald

By Lucy M. Pritchett

Some women thrive on keeping a loose and spontaneous schedule. I am not one of them. My idea of a good day is a well-kept calendar/planner, a To Do List with all items checked off, and my daily art practice.

My routines and rituals support and sustain me.

When I began life as a freelance writer, I knew better than to wait for inspiration to strike before I sat down at the keyboard. Persistence is the key. Just write. Every day. When I started to paint with watercolors, I knew I could apply the same principle — make art every day.

Then, along with painting, I started keeping a sketchbook. Later, I discovered collage. Eventually, more crafty paper items showed up — handmade little books, notecards, junk journals, and the creation of all sorts of vintage embellishments to enjoy. (Thank you, YouTube.)

On these pages you will see a few results of this daily practice. None of these projects will find their way to an art museum or gallery, but that is not the point. As a writer, I am used to watching my words bloom on the page or computer screen. As a daily artist, I still get a thrill of seeing and touching something that I created with my own hands.

My daily mantra: Step away from the screen and step into the studio.

(Top) I set a project for myself of painting a flower or some sort of botanical image each day for 30 days. These were done on 4.5”x6” sheets of watercolor paper. I displayed them by hanging the day’s finished piece with tiny clothespins on a ‘clothesline’ strung on the side of my refrigerator. Instant art gallery.

(MIddle) A handmade collage journal helps use up my abundant supply of decorative papers, stickers, washi tape, images, and other ephemera. The small pages (3.5”x2.5”) mean that I can create something quickly and don’t get bogged down with thinking too much about the design. Each page is dated using an old-fashioned library due-date stamp.

(Right) These handmade tags resulted from a daily project of creating tiny pieces of collage art. I made prototype tags of different sizes and shapes (the largest is 2.5”x4” and the smallest is 1.5”x2”) and dug into my art supplies to decorate. Each one is dated on the back.