Personal Day

Let me give you a little background in my household. Dogs, Cats, Rabbits, Birds, Fish, Hamsters, a mouse and a turtle. That's about all the background you need. Twenty plus animals keeps a man busy. My wife helps out with the dogs and cats and birds but I'm the primary caretaker of the animals and that can take a lot out of you. I try to get to the gym, take care of the outside of the house and do a few extra things on the side, like Tai Chi (just beginning) and Cross Stitching. All this leaves little time for thinking about art.

It has been a dry few weeks where I'm at and consequently the time it takes to cut the grass hasn't been granted to me to think about art. Pushing the lawn mower is a great time to think, just as is Cross Stitching, or exercising. But I've been on the go! With this and that going on who has time for art? And then it hit me. It's something I've always know and adhered to, but with so much going on we let what is relaxing and personal get bunch up with the necessary.

What hit me is that Art isn't my profession (although I wish it was), it is my hobby, my relaxation and if I haven't had much time to relax then I haven't had much time to think about art. Sitting down with a sketch pad or walking around with a camera is like taking a personal day, as it should be. Art isn't a necessary rush of graphite, acrylic, and glue to be added onto a day, but rather an exploration of time we've earned for ourselves.

Art is like taking some of your free time between developing corporate graphics to make a little something fun. By taking a Personal Day I mean playing a little, by using a tool you never used before or doing the simple little things that make you think.

To the side is a little 3D doodle that I did some time ago. It was simple and fun and made me think about some possibilities but it is just a little something I did between other things. I had no purpose to do it or real directive. Little personal day projects aren't things that are forced. They are conceived and born to life is a relatively small amount of time.

So if you follow along and do the exercises from week to week your exercise for the next week is to really do nothing, specific that is. Play with a tool you've never played with before. Or spend some time with your favorite tool pushing paint around a real or digital canvas. Bend some wire into the shapes of small animals or into geometric shapes and roll them around your work space. Draw some cross hatches on a piece of paper and color them in to make some small little pattern or maybe to emulate a piece of fruit.

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