staying on track

My life is back on track these days. Despite the rain and gloom of yesterday and today I feel like I’m being productive and responsible. With my health, my work, my social life. Everything seems to be falling into a balance. Wait, I'm making it sound like somehow that just magically happened. No. I'm MAKING it happen. I've decided it's time to stop whining and get to work. What a difference in myself! I like this. I'm still not exactly brimming over with new ideas for the direction of my jewelry, but at least I'm working towards the deadlines I need to meet.

In college one of the absolute best weekly assignments I ever had, and by far the most memorable, was to keep a sketchbook for my freshman sculpture class. Every week 20 pages were due. The sketches could be of absolutely ANYTHING we wanted. Or it could be written words, just as long as we came in with 20 pages worth of new work weekly. The main thing this exercise taught me was discipline. It's not easy to force an artist to do something consistently. Although, it's often times what creative people need the most. It's said that writers should write every single day, no matter what. Musicians need to practice consistently to keep up their skills as well. In looking back at those class sketchbooks, I have to say, they remain my most inventive, creative, and free sketchbooks out of all the ones I've filled over the years. Sure, there are a lot of pages full of pure crap, filler to appease the assignment. However, the sheer volume involved insured that SOMETHING great would come of it. Maybe even a few things. And there were, plenty of wonderful sketches and ideas in those pages. You can't practice something THAT consistently, and not get anything out of it.

I wonder what would've happened if ALL my art classes throughout college required a sketchbook be kept with such vigilance? Wow, now there's a concept.