April 28, 2025
Good morning everyone! The sun is shining, and it is the start of a new week. I am here today with this week’s Studio Notes, and I can’t wait to share what I’ve been up to in this beautiful weather.
I’ll start with describing how I’m cultivating specific spaces in my home to foster my creativity. Then, I’ll dive into my daily creative practice than I’ve been doing since the beginning of January, and explore a bit about the impact it’s made on my work. And finally, I’ll give a little update on how my plein-air art is going.
So settle in, keep on reading, and enjoy!
Now that I’ve been back at home for a few weeks, I’ve had the time to intentionally cultivate more separated spaces for different aspects of my creativity. I’d like to share them and explore what makes each space unique and suited to what I’m using it for.
As I’ve shared previously, I’ve moved my desk to my living room in front of all my windows. There, surrounded by plants, I have a beautiful view of my lawn and field. I have a large desk that I can turn standing, and overall it is perfect for productivity. I am trying to incorporate using the pomodoro technique when I am working at my desk (25 minutes of work, 5 minutes break), so that I am getting up and moving. I have a tendency to get sucked into my work, which is good in some ways, but I want to incorporate more movement throughout my day. In those five minutes, the only rule is I need to get up from my desk. I can stretch, I can chug some water, I can clean a bit of my house. And then, when those five minutes are up, I’m good to jump back in. The main thing for the breaks is to do something that does not occupy my brain, so I’m still thinking about what I’m working on. That way, it doesn’t even feel like a distraction or like I’m getting out of the flow.
Next, of course, is my studio. I finally have it all unpacked, and it is laid out in a way that I can just jump in and get to work. There’s a lot of open space, and I can just go crazy in there for as long as I want.
However, I’ve found that there can be a barrier to getting into my studio. Mentally, I need nothing ahead of me in my day to go down and paint (for the most part). I need the openess and freedom to stay down there as long as I want, otherwise all I’m thinking about is the time. When I’m in my studio, I like to not look at the time at all. I rarely check my phone, and I don’t have a clock anywhere in the room. It helps me feel like I’m in my own world, just me and my paintings.
With all that, I’d run into a slight problem. I wanted to be able to just jump in and create, even if I only had ten minutes. But it takes that long just to get into my painting clothes, fill up my water bottle and grab a snack, and make my way downstairs to my studio. So in my current life, it’s not feasible for me to get into my studio to create every day. So what was my solution?
I’ve had this painting desk, that I got from my grandma who got it from my aunt, that is very cute. I had it in my previous studio, and was actually my main surface when I was just painting in my bedroom as a teenager. Since it was old and nearly falling apart, I could freely paint on it without worrying about staining the surface. But there wasn’t space for it in my new studio, so I was ready to get rid of it.
However, my family convinced me to keep it. So I put it in my bedroom where my other desk used to be. I brought up my sketchbook supplies: my markers, pencils, pens, gouache, and watercolors. I laid them all out, and I opened my blinds and the window, and I started creating.
It’s been the perfect setup. When I’m in my studio, I like to paint big, so I rarely sit down to work in a sketchbook. But with this, it’s a low-pressure, comfortable way to just work creatively. And it’s really brought a lot of joy throughout my days, as I can jump in and create with no prep work, and when I don’t even have much time.
At the end of last year, I bought a hobonichi techo, which is a daily journal from Japan that is very nice and high-quality. The paper, while very thin, is very durable. And since there is a page dedicated to each day, I decided to fill it up creatively with whatever I wanted. The only rule was that I needed to create daily.
And so far, I have. I’ve missed a day, here and there, usually when I’m traveling. But I go back in and fill any pages I’ve missed. I’ve varied which times of the day I do this, and for the past couple weeks I had been quickly filling it out, out of obligation more than anything, right before I went to sleep in bed.
While this had worked before, it was feeling a bit stale, and I wasn’t enjoying it as much. But all the while, I’d really been starting to see a difference in my creativity. In this small journal, I was experimenting with mark-making, colors, and ideas, and working through them in this low-stakes and consistent way. I was shaping my creative identity and how I like to express the abstract thoughts in my head. And now?
Now that I have my sketchbook desk set up, I’ve been sitting down around mid morning. I open the window, let in the light and air. And I do whatever I want. I can more accurately use colors (instead of the low, very warm light I had been creating under right before bed) and also use wet media like paint. And incredibly, this hasn’t been enough. I don’t stop at one page: I will turn to my other sketchbooks and journals and keep creating. This has brought me so much joy and contentment this last week.
Overall, this has become one of my favorite parts of my day, and I cannot wait to see what this journal looks like at the end of the year.
I’ve kept up with plein air sketching! We’ve been on another camping trip, and this time the weather was warm enough to bring along the kayaks. I’ve wanted to paint and sketch while kayaking for a while, and I can confirm it was a lot of fun!
Unfortunately, the small pocket-sized watercolor sketchbook I had bought and brought along to test out had just terrible paper. I did two little paintings in it and the paper pretty much ruined the artwork. It was also cold-pressed, so it had too much texture to do any pen sketching on.
However, I absolutely LOVED the size of the sketchbook. It was 3.5” x 5.5”, with the binding on the short side so it was landscape-oriented. And this was the perfect size. So, I’m going to get one ASAP from a brand that I am familiar with, and I can’t wait to try watercolor plein air once again.
Luckily, I had my back-up pocket notebook that I filled with brush and ballpoint pen sketches. It is such a great way to soak in the moment and document the memory.
And that’s about it for this week! My art shows are coming up fast in May, so I will be very busy doing all the prep work that entails. I am so excited to keep you all updated in the next few months, and hopefully see a lot of you in person!
Please let me know if you have any thoughts on these Studio Notes, I love hearing back from you all. Other than that, I think that’s all I have! Have a great, creative week, and I’ll talk to you all soon!
~Anna
