Art in the Morning

In 2015 I started a daily morning art practice. I called this Morning Paintings and it was exactly as it sounds: one painting every morning. In 2016 I tweaked this morning practice into doing half an hour of art in a special sketchbook. That way I could work longer on a drawing/painting if I wanted to and didn't have to stress about finishing a page a day. This way I filled what I called the Morning Book. Purely coincidentally the endinig of that book coincided with the end of the year, this was not planned. But it meant I had to think again about what I would do in 2017. One thing I did know is that I loved doing art in the morning before the rest of the day started and that I wanted to continue this practice.

Basically for 2017 I have simply one rule: make art as often as possible for 30 minutes in the morning. The way I am currently doing that is by integrating  it into my journal, but I already have ideas of doing it on seperate sheets or starting up a second Morning Book. In the end the format doesn't matter as much anymore as the fact that I keep up my morning art practice, so for now I am simply calling it Art in the Morning or Morning Art. I think the only other rule I have is that these art pieces/drawings only get worked on in the morning and are fully separate from any other artwork I might do.

So here are some pages I have done so far this year:

As stated above these are done in my current journal, which is a Seawhite of Brighton sketchbook of about 20x20 cm (8x8 inches). I cannot say enough good things about these sketchbooks, they have been my favourite for years, but I had not worked in one for a while and now I'm back into one I remember how spoiled I was. The paper is the most allround paper I have ever come across in a sketchbook. If I didn't like variation so much I might only work in these.

Integrating this morning practice into my journal makes my journal more interesting I think, but it is also practically a bit difficult to get used to. This has to do with the fact that I do the Morning Art in my studio upstairs and my journaling at my kitchen table/journaling table downstairs. So often you can find me cursing because I have to walk either down or up because I forgot to bring the book. ;-) This is one of the reasons that I might take the Morning Art out of the journal again when this book is filled up. We'll see how it goes.

Hope you are experimenting with some artsy practice wherever you are and wishing you a wonderful and artsy day!