Becky Lee Artist Teacher

Goalllllllllllll!

In the past blog I mentioned having goals.  If you are just brand new to being an artist you may wonder why goals are a must.  Well let me educate you on the why’s of goals.

Whether you are an athlete, singer or visual artist, goals help move you forward. When you add on the restriction of time, when a specific goal will be accomplished, it helps with getting the goal completed so that you can make your next goal.  See, it moves you forward. 

When you are an artist not only are you creating amazing works of art, but you are a businessperson too.  You will find that a business needs a business plan and that my dear creators requires you to have goals.  I’ll talk about artist business plans later.  For now, we need to think about goals. 

Depending on how you work will determine how to set your goals.  I recommend creating your overall yearly goals first.  What do you want to accomplish in 365 days?  If you have been working and have a vague idea of how long it takes for you to create a piece of work you can start with determining how many pieces you want to create in that year.  If you have no clue on what you can accomplish in a year, give yourself an obtainable goal for now and once you start learning how many hours your work takes you can then revisit your yearly goal with a more informed decision.

Example on yearly goal: I want to make 12 portraits that are at least 18 x 24 inches in diameter.

The next goal I make is a monthly goal.  What do I want to accomplish within a month.  I write these goals down.  Not in hours but in what I want to see completed when I reflect on at the end of the month.  You may not be very good at monthly goals at first but the more you work at it the better you will become.

Example of monthly goal: I need to make one portrait this month.

The last goal I create for myself is a weekly goal.  Sometimes this goal does appear in hours.  Since I am writing these weekly goals, I can be more flexible with them.  Maybe I have family coming to town the third week of the month and I know that their visit will take a great deal of my work time and energy.  I can not only make my goals achievable for the week they are here, but I can keep into consideration what I need to do the week prior to them arriving and how much time and energy that will take from me and what will be left to do my work.

Example of weekly goal: in order to complete on portrait I need to work 10 hours.  (from tracking my time I know that each portrait takes between 30 and 35 hours to complete.  If I work ten hours per week I can complete my monthly and yearly goal)

Having weekly goals is great because they tend to be more flexible, and this allows for changes if need be.  For example, I was working on my drawings (completed gallery ready art) ten hours a week and I realized I would not be able to accomplish my year end goals if I continued with ten hours a week.  I was able to work more hours which told me my end of year goal was obtainable, it just meant my weekly goals were lacking.  I recently bumped my work time up to fifteen hours and have been successful at accomplishing this amount of time.  This past week I worked 43 hours on my art (completed gallery ready art)!  Maybe I will require twenty hours of work time.  That does not mean I will have that time every week but if I am able to do that amount of time this month it will help me rack up extra hours for when I have family come to town.  The takeaway is to create goals.