Currently Browsing: Internal Critic 40 articles
Sketching on Any Old Paper You Have At Hand
Sometimes we can get into our heads. We can spend time telling ourselves all the reasons we can’t take time right now and paint. As a teacher for over 30 years I think I’ve heard every excuse there is: no space to set up, don’t have the materials I want to work with; I don’t […]
Another Potential Journaling Hiccup: The Perfect Time and Place
Blog readers and students often write to me about their hopes and deferred dreams for their journaling and their art life. They live with the hope that if they can “just get through to retirement,” or “Just get through this current crisis [fill in the blank as to what that is]” that the clouds will […]
Journal Practice Hiccups?
I always tell people any day is a great day to start a journal practice. Start. But I know that many people think it important to have a milestone day like the first of the year for a starting point. If it gets them to start then I’m all for that. As a new […]
The Case for Not Finishing a Sketch
I’m the first person to encourage people to finish what they start. In fact I encourage people to push past the point where they think they have finished, because until you “break” a few sketches you don’t really know where that point of finish resides. But I also wanted to put a word in today […]
InkTober 2020—Setting Up a Plan and Enjoying What Comes of It
Note: Enjoy this long post and the attached gallery. Family and business obligations will keep me away from this blog for most of November. I may pop in with a quick post or two, but the first two weeks of November are particularly tight. I wanted to give you something to look at in […]
The Final Lectures—Self-assessments, Goals, Working with Intention, Lies of the Internal Critic, and a Pep Talk
This is part 4 of my farewell to teaching series. That’s a long blog post title, but that about covers it. This 46 minute video is excerpts from my Wrap Up Webinar with my final Drawing Practice online session. I talk about the topics in the title. For past drawing students just showing up […]
The Final Lectures Series: Which Question
Note: If you’re playing the home version game—today’s image on the blog’s landing page is a sketch of Dame Margaret Rutherford. It’s in the video. This is part two in my farewell to teaching series of posts. In today’s video (an excerpt from the mid-session webinar in my last Drawing Practice class), I address […]
Virtual Fair Sketch-In Wrap Up 2020
Thank you to everyone who stopped by, whether to check in, sketch, or simply ask some questions at today’s Virtual Minnesota State Fair Sketch In 2020 We used “out” in the event hashtag (shown below) because I’d already set it up on Facebook. You’ll be able to see some posts already there. You’ll also find […]
Finding An Art Buddy Might Be Detrimental to Your Drawing Practice
Yes, I said it. I called out one of the elephants in the room. Finding a sketching/art buddy to go sketching with might just turn out to be detrimental to your drawing practice. This is difficult for people to digest, especially during the pandemic when most are craving more contact with people. […]
Last Session of “Drawing Practice”—Registration Opens Wednesday, May 6, 2020
Registration for “Drawing Practice: Drawing Live Subjects in Public” opens May 6, 2020. (Click on the link to read about it and register.) Pre-class information will be available to all registered students immediately upon registration so that you can begin to set your goals and organize your time. (See below for a link to the […]