Coffee Hour Drawings

I've written in previous posts about the challenge of finding time to actually make artwork. As crazy as that sounds, it's true. But since last week and this week, I had a session with Donna Price, career coach and owner of Compass Rose Consulting. She helped me to realize that not only do I have the time, I'm just allowing my marketing side to take over. I love drinking coffee in the morning and until today, I used to go directly to my computer to sip my coffee, check email, surf the web and gradually transition into the day.

Today, the computer remained off until 10:30am. I plugged my mother-in-law's percolator into the studio, brewed coffee and stayed in the studio for 2 1/2 hours. I began something I hope to continue that I did during an art school drawing class, and also included in my lesson plans when I taught art. It's the idea of a daily drawing, which I will call "Coffee Hour Drawings". They might just be drawing exercises, ideas for future pieces or finished drawings. I've included an image of the first one here. It's related to the the series of gelato paintings I've been working on. The drawing, Tre Gelati, is watersoluble graphite on a 7 1/2" x 10" piece of Arches paper.

After completing the hour drawing, I started the third painting of the Napoletano series of gelato, fragola (strawberry). It's amazing how much I accomplished merely because I scheduled my day. Thank you Donna for helping me implement a realistic schedule!