Do You Lose Hours?
By: Marsha Hamsavage
Tags: Planning, Painting, Artist, Organization, Creativity

Do You Lose Hours?

And where do those hours go?

My studio! Photo by the author.

The best days for an artist are when we have uninterrupted time doing our art. If we are pulled away, there is a tendency to call it “lost hours.”

In the life of an artist, there are many hours or days, where roadblocks come along to keep us from doing our art.

A good thought can be when doing something non-art related, it might inspire the next painting. The time away from our art, the visual distance or a needed break, brings fresh eyes to the art piece we are currently working on.

Being creative in some way, is what makes us happy.

Getting caught up in our creativity is called being in the zone! If I get outside to paint “plein air,” I can usually be assured minimal interruptions, and I end up in the zone.

When you are in the zone, you don’t really realize it. Later you think about where did the time go, but the feeling you do remember is of euphoria! Many of us talk about those hours as lost. Time flew by!

Those are not really what I mean by “lost hours.” Here are a few things that happen to me that feel like lost hours, and I bet to you also.

Organizing is a big item taking time away from creating!

Can you imagine trying to organize the studio above. It looks like chaos, right? To do so is a big feeling of lost hours.

I have to tackle it about every three months just so I can find something I worked on months ago! When I do take time to organize, it usually becomes a full day of work. Or, it may be only four hours of moving stuff around that makes more sense on that particular day. It is a good thing to do occasionally.

Organizing frees my mind from the creating, and the “lost hours” eventually become a good feeling and productive time. If I am not doing art, I am usually thinking about something art-related. While doing some of these “hours,” I might be planning what my next painting will be. So maybe they are not really lost!

As an artist we are always planning.

Planning is another of those things that can be time away from the studio easel and feels like lost hours. This is a big one that gets in the way of that creativity and being in the zone mentioned above.

It has been said that 50% of our time is spent on non-creative aspects of our art and mostly on promotion. We can use some of those lost hours to think about a variety plans that may promote our work.

If you wish to sell, then the artwork needs visuals. Taking photos, writing descriptions and logging the work into inventory are big items that take part of that time. This leads to the next item on my list.

These things are what you need to do to promote on your website, or on social media. Definitely the need of these is a big one for your newsletter which needs sending on a consistent basis. You are going to point your people in the direction of your website and your galleries if you are in some. Definitely this is what feels like lost hours, but is not at all!

Marketing, Galleries and Selling!

There are times I need to think about what the next marketing move should be or when I need to implement one I have already planned.

Being a professional artist, I create paintings and have a few galleries that represent me. Many paintings never make it to a frame, and I must do something with those. I need always to be thinking of where those paintings are going or where to store them.

The photo below shows a recent event to sell some of my pieces at my home. It took me a couple of weeks of a few hours each day away from my art to put the sale together. It required creating and sending emails and a newsletter to promote the sale.

Ready for a Sale! Image courtesy of the author.

Most professional artists never have a sale because it undermines their art’s current value and the art purchased by their clients and patrons. If we are overwhelmed with stacks of art, it becomes a thorn in our side. We need to do something with all those studies and experiments! The above-referenced sale was my first “sale” ever … in 49 years of being a practicing professional artist.

Yes, it created a lot of what might be considered lost hours, but they were necessary one!