Underground Art School

STUDENT // TEACHER: Sara Wood

Sara Wood is a recent illustration grad from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. As part of her senior thesis for her BFA she created book cover images combining some mad skills in illustration and design. She's going to have to design something for us one day.

 

 

 
 

APPLIED ARTS: The Artist's Way

 750 words a day to keep you motivated and on track 

A LONG time ago now I worked through Julia Cameron's excellent The Artist's Way. One of the two major linchpins of the book is Julia's insistence that all aspiring (and practicing) artists write three pages a day of long-hand stream of consciousness thoughts which she calls Morning Pages. On and off for fifteen years I've been taking her advice. Starting as a fledgling artist, too scared to pick up a pencil and draw, Julia's Morning Pages have steered my through faltering early steps, my first drawing class, starting an art foundation course, my eventual MA in Fine Art and on to working as a full-time artist and blogger. 

 How writing daily has helped me 

They have been a friend and a grounding witness to the good and the bad times. I have piles and piles of them! One of the guidelines Julia suggests it that Morning Pages are written longhand. She believes there is a more direct link between the brain and the words if they're written in pen and ink. Until very recently I agreed with her (I've also been a longtime proponent of drawing with pen and ink, but even that is something I've been rethinking of late), but over the last couple of months I've been working on my Morning Pages on my laptop using a site called 750 Words. I've discovered I love working on them this way. It's interesting, even after a decade and a half of writing Morning Pages, that I've realised how inhibited I was about what I wrote. Writing them online, where I have no fear that they might be read has made me far more uninhabited about the topics I explore and what I say. That's exciting. 

 Online or offline the Morning Pages are the smart choice for any   artist because: 

1. They form the start of a creative routine. This is a bit like autopilot for artists. Create a creative routine and eventually the work just happens.
2. They are a sounding board for new ideas
3. They help you explore ideas and thought that otherwise you might well just ignore. Creative breakthroughs happen when everything and anything is up for grabs.
4. They start the day with a feeling of accomplishment. If you can write 750 words everyday, just think what else you can do.
5. They help you learn to discover and trust your own artistic voice. If you're just out of formal education you've probably had your tutors' and teachers' voices in your head guiding your work for years. Replacing those voices with your own is vital for your creative development.

 Resources: 

1. 750 Words. A free to use site where you can securely write your daily Morning Pages. The site has a great email reminding service to keep you on track and you earn "badges" the more you write (keeps the child artist in me VERY happy).
2. The Artist's Way The now classic text from Julia Cameron.
3. The Basic Tools A free pdf download from Julia Cameron's site explaining her thinking behind writing Morning Pages (and her other basic tool, the artist date).
4. Video of Julia Cameron talking about writing her Morning Pages (in which she explains why she thinks writing them in the morning and in longhand is best).
5. The Morning Pages Journal that Julia talks about in the above video

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 Michael Nobbs is a full time artist, blogger and tea drinker. He publishes The Beany, an illustrated journal of his life and writes, tweets and podcasts about drawing and trying to keep things simple.