"Paintings With Personality"

This is one of a very few watercolor architecture scenes I painted. Miralago, Switzerland is such a beautiful place I would love to go back there again. Narrow streets and alleyways. Amazing.

         When I retired my life didn’t change a lot. ‘Honey’ was still working and I still did everything at home. All that changed is I had more time during the day and I was less organized than I had been when I was working. When ‘Honey’ retired something happened to my brain. I took off my wristwatch and declared, “I am retired too!” Thus it started, cooking only a couple of nights a week, going to bed late, getting up late, no organization, etc.

According to Wiki How, “Procrastination is the art of avoiding required tasks by allocating tremendous importance on actions more useless, mundane, or interesting. Procrastination is generally considered unproductive, and many teachers, bosses, and managers take great pains to point out it delays the inevitable and places a spanner in the works of completing tasks.”

To Wiki How’s definition I’m adding ‘not just required tasks but something loved as well’. I love painting but I will still find a thousand things that must be done before I can go to my studio and work.

In reading the combined (Wiki How’s and mine) definitions, I’ve decided not only am I a procrastinator; I am an Extremely Lazy Procrastinator. Not being self-motivated, I put everything off until the very last minute. In the meantime I am doing absolutely nothing of importance. Some people are naturally motivated to do what they need or want to do; I’m not one of those people. I know paintings won’t appear all by themselves and my life won’t organize itself. To consistently produce art and improve as a painter and get things accomplished, I have to make some important changes.

Here is a list of six things we procrastinators can do in order to get to the studio on a regular basis. I’ll try all of them tomorrow or maybe the next week.

1. Go to bed at a reasonable time and get up early.
2. Be more disciplined – make a schedule and stick to it. Get up and get to the studio first thing in the morning. Painting at least three hours every day would greatly improve our creativity. We won’t always be excited or motivated to paint but we need to be there when inspiration strikes. We’ll be glad we did when we see our art start to improve.
3. Don’t think about the alternatives – focus on what we are doing, keep our minds from wandering to other things. Eliminate all distractions turn off the phone and TV, no texting, etc. This is our block of studio time and we need to stay in the moment. Think about all other things in life when the painting session is over.
4. Every painting doesn’t have to be a masterpiece – We need to take it easy on ourselves and be aware if we’re being perfectionistic. When we give up perfectionism we will be in our studios more consistently and the more we are there the better painters we become.
5. Have everything ready for the next day and there will be no excuses – our work surfaces are there on the easel, the water containers are filled and the brushes clean and waiting.  There is nothing to do but pick up a brush and get to work.  
6. Make a plan – know the night before what we are painting the next day. Write down a plan for the day and stick with it. Include fun things in the plan as a reward for being disciplined. Leniency is important as well, we don’t want to be so strict we insist everything be done our way and in our time.

Do you have other ideas of how to stop procrastinating and get to work? I would like to know what they are, maybe they would work for me. Please comment below.

This is my day of new images. I have only done a few abstracts but enjoy the process when I do paint them.  Wish there were more hours in the day so I could paint more. Right now I'm concentrating on large acrylics on canvas.