Batch Your Work
One of the most important things Brian and Debbie Miller do to be daily painters isn’t what you think. It’s not mixing beautiful colors or even understanding foundational things like composition and value.
Instead, it’s making sure they have their red gessoed panels ready to go.
This is important because when their alarm goes off for their 5AM morning practice, they have limited time to start and finish their paintings. They can’t stop everything and prep a surface.
So what they do is batch their efforts. They'll take a weekend and prepare dozens and dozens of red surfaces so that when the next week of painting begins (and the weeks after), they are ready.
Put it to Practice:
Painting comes with admin work. Some of that is making sure you have that blue you love. Some of it is making sure you have a space cleared off. And some of it is prepping your red gessoed boards like the Millers.
And whenever possible, try and turn this into batch work.
Yes, sometimes you need to do work as a one-off. Maybe you’ve let the cut paper run down and so you need to do that before you can begin your painting for the day.
But it’s not the most efficient use of your time. And worse, it creates a pretty big (and unnecessary) obstacle between you and painting.
If you want to create a consistent painting practice, always be trying to lower the obstacles between you and the work. And doing batch work to prep your surfaces is a great place to start.
Bonus: It’s a great thing to do when you’re tired but want to hold your studio time.
Get more ideas on how to streamline your process by listening to Ep.68a, 7 Transitions to Make for a Daily Painting Practice, here.