Caution:Artist at Play-Artwork by Shana Rowe Jackson

"Caution:Artist at Play" 10"x10" Acrylic     Art, in itself is fun. It is it's own rewarding adventure from day to day, it's relaxing, and therapeutic. I absolutely love being an artist!! It's also a lot of work. I'm not just talking about challenging myself to be better at my craft, reading and learning, pushing myself, experimenting, and the years of work and personal growth. That is a factor but I consider that to be the fun side of art. What I am talking about is the menial things that most people don't think about when getting into art. The things behind the craft to make it possible. There are a lot of things going on behind the scenes, and not all of them are fun. Here is my list of top 10 tedious things that I do for my art, in no particular order as they are all in the same boat in my eyes. 10. Cleaning my brushes. This is a simple task, but it bores me to no end. It can also be time consuming depending on what medium I have been

  "My life As a Painter" Self portrait 20"x20" Oil © Shana L Rowe Jackson 2013   One of the things I love the most about being an artist is being able to set my own hours. This is great in theory, but not having a set plan for the day can often lead to procrastination and cause important tasks to build up, which will become over whelming. I don't want my passion to feel like too much work!! So to try to curb this at the end of each day I make a mental list of the goals I want to complete the next day. These goals can be something as little as putting a hanger on a painting, doing a blog post, or entering a new contest to as big as starting a new painting. I also factor in house hold chores on my list too. The important thing is to do something to promote and support my art each day. I find this helps me plan out my day a head of time so that I can do something creative each day, and not get over whelmed by how much I need to do. Doing a few things each da