No.17 A Project Pile Up

when projects pile up illustration by @thesmarti

Lately, I'm feeling manic trying to claw my way through projects. I blame it on the fact that I took on too much client work (yay for the finances, boo for personal work). And it doesn't help that I'm like an elephant and will NOT forget a project if it's in my head. I almost don't feel free of it until it's been made. Even if it's not perfect, I just need it out of my head. And it got me thinking about why this happens, and what kind of strategies I can use to think/feel/act my way out of it.

the one who whimpers illustration by @thesmarti

A daily conversation between me and my partner:

C: "Hey, I'm home! How was your day?"

Me: "Oh, hi! Yea, it was good. I didn't get done as much as I thought I would, or even what I was supposed to do, but look what I made!"

When I have a stack of projects on my desk it doesn't take long before it starts to feel daunting. Like, how can I even get through any of this? Everyone has a different experience with project pile ups. There's the rational stuff - like strategy, logic. And then there's the creative stuff - the emotional flow, inspiration...

On the rational side, it's due to bad time management and poor priorities. I'll confess, I'm not good at keeping it on a gentle daily schedule. I stack days at a time without resting for perspective OR rest too many days in a row. When I feel the crunch, I'll pull long hours and every now and again I will sometimes stay up late into the night to get through a project. (This might be partially due to my peak inspirational hour being in the late afternoon, but I digress.)

In the priorities department, I can also be silly. I treat all my tasks the same which is to say, I'm NOT good at deciding which tasks are priorities (besides client work, of course.) Basically, I throw everything on my list. And if it's on my list, I'm going to try to army crawl my way through it. Not by order of priority, rather by order of can-I-knock-it-off-the-list fast instead of tackling them in hierarchy.

If I was clever I would estimate better how long it takes to write a blog, record a visual brainstorm, sketch this thing, paint that thing, etc. And I would do a daily review of tasks and just shift them over as I move forward. No judgement needed. But man, that's all beyond my experience and patience. I'm just not there...yet.

But creativity is hardly ever just a logic game. Emotionally, I'll feel my way through my projects and some carry more weight than others. A series on my Abuela who passed away is too heavy for me to finish lately. Or a piece that I adore feels too precious for me to go back into and I'd rather see it on my desk - like an old friend to greet me daily! And even still, some projects will never get off my desk until I learn the skills to paint/sculpt/make them when my future self can step into the role.

In other cases, I let inspiration choose me. I'll get in the studio and have things laid out for a particular project, but I'll just slap it off the table like a haughty cat and do something more interesting. So fascinating, right? All I can say is that letting inspiration choose ME is a beautiful feeling. The fluidity of body movement, feeling at peace in my mind, falling into the flow. I have to accept that this is ALSO part of the process.

Maybe on the creative side, it's trusting that intuition is telling me that this is ok? Productivity isn't linear. Maybe it comes in cycles. There are periods when I will be active. There are times when I'll need to rest. There are things that will come easily and some that will be hard won. Maybe I don't have to put judgement on it - maybe it just is.

RATIONAL STRATEGIES

1. Get a better planning breakdown, spend time detailing out each project and keep it front and center so one can see what it actually takes to finish.

2. Keep a strict schedule - put away phone, block hours, use pomodoro, take breaks, etc.

EMOTIONAL STRATEGIES

1. Acknowledging my feelings. "Ok, mind, we are feeling anxious/sad/angry about these projects. This is what anxiety/sadness/anger feels like. Let's just peek our head into one and calculate what's actually in the mix." Maybe acknowledging my feelings will take away the sting of the feeling when I'm stepping into a project?

2. Practicing enoughness. Can I find gratefulness in making the smallest of progress? Can I let go of the pressure to finish? Can I accept that the act of trying is the only thing that matters? Isn't there beauty in the wanting to finish but not being done? Is there a place where I can feel softness for the human need of a finished project without giving into the pressure?

the one who looks weird illustration by @thesmarti

Project pile ups happen. I hope it's something I get better at as time goes on. Hopefully I learn better skills, or find new ways of emotionally immersing. At the very least, I'm reframing these pile-ups as being so excited for buffet of life that I put too much on my plate. That's ok. It's naive and wonderful and silly and forgivable.

Here's hoping you find strategies or softness in your project pile-ups too,

smarti

16: A Look Back At Old Art Skills

Whatever I think I've learned now ...is definitely going to feel primitive when I look back. I'm reminded of this epiphany every single time I stumble upon my old art. Today I'm going back to not so long ago when I started this journey.

I've always loved drawing, but until my 30s it never progressed beyond small doodles. But when we were stationed in Paris in 2018, I took up a drawing with a passion. It helped that there was a heck of a lot of people-watching available. On the way to school, gym, or getting groceries, I would sometimes surreptitiously snap pictures so I could use them as references to draw. Those pictures were immensely helpful to study shapes, and practice hand-eye coordination and line fidelity. (Probably wasn't legal then to take pictures, but I never posted any of them, so I hope it was ok.)

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  Black and white illustration of an old diva in fur coat by Smarti.

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  Black and white illustration of a man feeding the pigeons at the park by Smarti.

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  Black and white illustration of a woman walking away and a man walking forwards by Smarti.

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  Black and white illustration of a woman holding a finger to her lips in thought by Smarti.

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  Black and white illustration of a woman talking on her cell with her bag between her feet by Smarti.

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  Black and white illustration of a skinny man scrolling through his phone by Smarti.

Illustrations @thesmarti

After half a year of these drawings, I got obsessed with line thickness and photo-editing to maximize the black/white contrast. My work became more stylized and it was probably the most freedom I felt while drawing. I love how sloppy and expressive my lines started to be. (You can see more of these type of minimalist drawings here.)

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  Black ink sketch of a woman in a winter coat walking her dog.

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  Black ink sketch of a man in beard and chest hair by Smarti.

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  Black sketch of a teen boy with backpack on by Smarti

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  Black ink sketch of a toothy little kid by Smarti.

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  Black ink sketch of a woman on the bus listening to music by Smarti.

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  Black ink sketch of a woman with bun and sunglasses by Smarti.

Illustrations @thesmarti

After that, I started testing out my drawing skills with pencil only. There's something about feeling the pressure of the lead and how it can create softness and depth with textures and weight. I made a little travel paper pack and it made drawing-on-the-go a lot easier when visiting museums and being about town.

Illustrations @thesmarti

In the lead up to corona virus in 2020, I started transferring images and playing with my iPad's procreate app drawing tools and playing with layouts. I had a lot more time on my hands without errands outside of the house. So I started trying to be more serious with my instagram postings and sharing curated storylines. And gosh, I had so much fun creating these series and pushing my creativity. The ability to tell a bigger story felt like an 'aha' moment for me.

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  Pencil sketch of a portrait piece of Momola by Smarti.

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  Graphic line sketch portrait of a man with beard and fedora by Smarti.

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  Graphic illustration comic composite of Parisians by Smarti.

Illustrations @thesmarti

And well, that's enough navel gazing for now. What I'd like to share is that I'm not one of those people who ALWAYS had the skill. Nope, I learned and erred and practiced. And then through everyday exercise in learning, playing, experimenting, I started to trust myself.

Yes, there's cringe when I look back sometimes. But I also have so much compassion for wherever I was then. I'm grateful Paris gave me time and space to explore this.

I read somewhere that if you don't look back at your art with dismay, then you really haven't learned anything. I'm still learning a lot, but it's fun to look back and see how my skills change each time I try something new.

here's to hoping you find some joy looking back on your own progress,

smarti

15: Two Ways I Mucked My Blog

So I'm still very new at blogging. And I've done something really stupid things in the process. Things like overwhelm myself with grandiose ideas, failing to plan, forgetting to schedule, stacking my website like an overloaded Publix sub sandwich that I can't fit in my mouth! Silly me. But these things will happen if one is trying new things. Here's to hoping this post helps someone from making the same mistakes!

NOT PLANNING FOR PROCESS OR SCHEDULE

Whoo, boy. This is embarrassing to share. But I've come right to the edge of the blog diving board several times without taking the plunge. The first time, I came in around new years all gung-ho for the idea of a blog. [Ah, new years and the resolution hype gets me every time!] So I wrote a whole bunch of idealistic notions and ideas down in one inspired journal entry. And then did nothing for about a year. When new year came around again I kickstarted with one introductory post in January. And then did nothing for 8 months. ::sigh:: Like a fickle teenager, oscillating from obsession and abandonment - I just couldn't willpower myself into consistency.

Eventually, I returned back to the goal and wrote down each stage of the process in detail. Write the entry. Edit the words. Sketch the accompanying illustrations. Draw the illustrations in color. Polish the post. Automate for publishing. 6 stages - Write, Edit, Sketch, Draw, Polish, Publish. And once I figured that out, I could finally do the responsible planner thing and blocked it into my calendar. Every first Tuesday of the month, I open up a google doc stacked with a list of ideas to review them and add new ideas. Every Friday, I block an hour of time to do a stream of conscious first draft. I use the last week of the month to sketch, draw and color the blog opening illustrations. The first week of the month I polish and upload the images and then set the blog date to automatically publish. And then I move on to the next post.

Sometimes I have to tweak the system so that I give a little more wiggle room. I pushed my publishing date to mid-month because I find the first of the month too initmidating. I sometimes sketch when I get the idea because I'm more inspired by the illustration than the post. Sometimes it goes the opposite way. I'm not die-hard about the schedule and I will shift it if I need to. The more important thing is to have them on the schedule in small bits so that I can shift forward on that diving board.

TAKEAWAYS:

• Don't set up a goal without a system.

• Don't set up a system without a calendar.

• Be assertive in making up a system, try it, test it, tweak it. Don't give up.

• If you get squished for time, do less (shorter writing time, smaller illus) to still make it work.

NOT LEARNING ABOUT WEB OPTIMIZATION

I'm still in the process of learning how to make my website. When we moved to Windhoek, Namibia my internet access diminished considerably. The service just isn't as fast or as consistent. And I kept loading more and more blog posts into the system with really large illustrations. I was in that exciting and productive stage.

And then one day I tried to share one of my blog posts with a friend but she couldn't get the page to load. So I tried to do it myself and whadayaknow - each page was too heavy to load. So I started researching different ways to make the pages load faster. And I realized I had loaded up my website with big illustrations that weren't reduced for the screen size, and that hadn't been through a lossy compressor app or plug-in. So my website sandwich was too thick to bite. Who knew you had to go through that process?

So now I'm going back through and fixing each illustration. (Shout out to Igniting Business for publishing the blog post on this exact problem so I could fix it. But there are also so many other videos and online resources about this if you're curious.) Now I'm resizing each finished illustrations small enough to fit on a regular screen without losing sharpness and then compressing them enough to take up less weight on the page.

TAKEAWAYS:

• Resize illustrations to fit the maximum screen size of a laptop.

• Compress images (tinypng, eeew, imageoptim) and save it in a separate file.

• Test the blog pages by using a website optimizer.

I wish I could say that I have licked all my blogging problems. But I'm still making plenty of mistakes - like not linking social media enough (I ghosted LinkedIn years ago, it makes my skin itch to blog blast on Facebook, and I barely share my blog posts on Insta). Or not optimizing SEO. (I have so little idea what SEO means. But I've set aside time on Fridays to start researching it little by little). And I'm sure there are other things that I don't even realize are wrong yet.

But I'm plunging in anyway.

Because a) I like sharing stories, b) I love organizing things, c) I'm a persistent girl, and more importantly, d) I imagine that I'm somehow in service to my own perfectionist healing by just sharing. I can still be too precious about everything and either overdo it or just abandon it altogether. As I'm getting older, I'm trying to be more accepting of human error and just fail anyway. Because in the process, I'm often failing forward.

It's so embarrassing and I have to make room for the emotions of anxiety and shame. But I know it's good healing for my mind and my heart. And in the journey, I learn something new, I become more robust and more willing to experiment - which is great for being an artist. And honestly, I hope it can make it easier for someone else to find their way, too. But that's maybe going a bit too far?

cheers for failing forward,

smarti