Think in terms of Hours
When you are a new artist starting out, it is a must to build a body of work. This post is not so much geared to what your body of work is but rather how to achieve your goals of creating your body of work.
You need to think in terms of time, how much time did it take. Being an artist is your job and you need to be aware of how much actual time you are spending on creating the work itself. I’m talking about writing down your start and stop time. Often, we are not working on the art itself but other things such as buying supplies, looking for shows to enter, working on your website, writing your blog (ha ha) just to name a few. And yes, these are all important components of being that artist you are wanting to be, but it is also important to be aware of the time it took to create that work.
When you keep track of your worktime, I’d recommend writing down what kind of work it really is. If you tend to work on multiple projects at a time, make sure you specify to which project you worked on. When asked how long it took to create a piece of work, many artist will say, a month, 3 months, or 6. But what does that really mean. Some months I am far more productive then others. Last week alone I spent 43 hours on my recent drawing alone. When you work write what time the clock says when you started and when you stopped. This can help you determine weekly goals, monthly goals, yearly goals. It will help you determine how much time it will take to create a specific number of pieces needed for a show, or grant.
I have been creating a weekly goal of how long I will work on art alone. I will write down how many hours I plan to work in a week. I will then reflect at the end of the week to see if I managed to accomplish that goal. Once I started keeping a record of work in hours and minutes, I was able to know how long certain works took and whether I was spend enough time each work to achieve my monthly goal, my yearly goal and my five year plan goals. Recently I have increased my hourly work to reflect what I want to accomplish for the year.
This is my big take away for you. Write the time you spend working on your work. It will only help you achieve your goals.
Becky Lee Artist Teacher 