Daily Practice- Artist Spotlight: Amy Packer
Artist Amy Packer’s life is FULL. And while she loves art... it can't take first priority. (She’s a Mom of 2 elementary-age kids… plus a basement renovation was happening in the midst of the #20for20 Challenge.)
So taking that into account, she wanted to build a project that would help her see improvement and set her up for future paintings.
To do this, she created a framework using chapters from Mitch Albala’s book, “The Landscape Painter’s Handbook. She built a project that helped her build specific skills and kept her excited about painting.
Bonus, she’s taken what she did in the Challenge and has begun to scale it up like this painting here.
Learn more about Packer here.
When in your day did you put your 20? Why there?
I dedicated time for the 20 for 20 right after lunch.
Last year I heard someone suggest doing the most important things first in your day. And while I might enjoy painting the most, it’s not the thing that keeps me and our family functioning.
I have 2 elementary age kids + husband. I’m not working right now, but we are in the midst of a basement renovation project. My kids were in school during the 20 days. I decided that the most important things are my health & making sure our family has what it needs.
My mornings were dedicated to those priorities. But it was a real motivation to get those things done so that I could get to the thing that I really wanted to do - painting.
Did you cap your time at 20 or go beyond? How did that way of working help you get into the studio?
For the first few two’ish weeks I capped it at 20 minutes per piece. Sometimes I worked on multiple versions of the same reference image, but tried to cap those at 20 minutes. For the last week or so I started going longer, getting back into the groove of longer painting stents.
What references did you use for your Challenge? Why those?
I used Mitch Albala’s book, “The Landscape Painter’s Handbook“ as my guide, so I focused on landscapes.
Each week I chose an exercise from the first chapter of the book, then I selected reference images from my digital pile of reference images ideas that I keep on my phone.
Most were images I had taken myself during our travels. I outlined my 20 days ahead of time so I knew what skill I would be working on (value studies and simplified shape painting)
You worked with squares each day, how did working in the same size and format (square) help you in the Challenge and just working daily in general?
It kept me working fast and helped eliminate the decision fatigue of what to do next. And gave me the freedom not to cherish what I was working on so much, to use this time as a skill development exercise instead of a time to “create something special.”
THE PROJECT
You used Mitch Albala’s book, “The Landscape Painter’s Handbook“ for the Challenge. Could you talk to us about how you used the book as your guide?
I have had very little formal art training. My journey into painting really started when I stumbled into Ali Kay’s online classes during the early stages of the pandemic.
We had just moved to Chattanooga and Ali and I have kids the same age and same school. To my dumb luck we became Facebook friends.
Then I stalked her once I saw her posting her online demo classes on her FB page. (Ali is fantastic and everyone should listen to your episode with her.)
I spent about a year or two taking her online classes and absorbing every bit that I could from her fantastic teaching methods.
As I began exploring my own subjects, I really felt drawn to landscapes and wanted to explore those more on my own. But I found I kept getting too far into the weeds with details, and I wanted to learn how to “see” my reference images differently.
I decided to embark on some more self-guided work and found “The Landscape Painter’s Handbook” through reviews on Google and Amazon. I purchased it before I decided to do the 20 for 20 and it just sat around -- I found that I needed dedicated time to really start digging into it, and I decided that I could use the 20 for 20 for that purpose.
For the first three weeks of the challenge I worked my way through exercises in the first chapter. Then I spent the weekdays applying those exercises to my own reference images. (Weekends were usually watercolors when we were outdoors or I just didn’t do something because we were traveling.)
The last week I took what I had learned and just played with an assortment of my own images. This last week is when I spent more than 20 min on individual pieces, but I did keep each one to only a single session, less than 90 min.
You talked about how your goal was to use the 20 to practice simplifying your references: How did you go about doing this each day?
By setting a timer and squinting a whole lot. I set a lot of my images to black & white to help focus just on shapes instead of color.
Ali always mentions squinting in the classes I took, but I never really understood why to do that until I started working on the landscape images.
I tried to squint and work from that blurred perspective - really just focusing on bigger shapes and less on the details. The anxiety of that timer also really helped me just to play and see what would happen and not to feel so INVESTED in a specific outcome.
How useful was it to hold space for specific skill development? How different was that from how you’d been approaching your painting time? What difference did that make for you?
Working on shape abstraction has helped me pull out of the density of the reference image. To me, working on landscapes is fairly freeing anyway already.
However, cultivating a skill where I think about it more as shapes and blobs or blurs instead of A SCENE has helped me detach from what the end product “should” look like. It lets me feel a bit more freedom to see what might come from the inspiration of the image instead of just replicating the image.
I’m certainly not full-on into abstraction painting by any means, but just starting to “see” where things can go differently.
You mentioned that your favorite part of the Challenge was “The framework for planning and organizing my work.” Could you talk more about what you specifically set up and why you think it was a good way to approach things?
I outlined my 20 days ahead of time so I knew what skill I would be working on (value studies and simplified shape painting). Then I selected my images based on ones I’ve been meaning to do something about.
Before the 20 began, I wrote down which skill I would be working on each week and the image for each day.
For the first 3 weeks I worked on the same set of 5 images, but applied different skill lessons to each of them. It was really beneficial to experience working on the same reference image with a variety of intentions.
MINDSET
What was the most helpful mindset for you to try and keep during the 20for20? Was there anything that was useful to remind yourself as you showed up each day? What was that and why?
The most useful mindset was what I’ve heard so many people say on your podcast and what was written in the handbook I used -- knowing that I was going to make some really terrible art was so freeing. This wasn’t an outcomes-based process for me, but one of an exploration of learning and playing.
I certainly came out of it with plans for specific pieces in the future. And I really learned the value of a small study before embarking on bigger works. Since I’ve never done any “formal” in-class training, this wasn’t really sometime I had done before.
If someone wanted to follow your lead and do this specific Challenge (the way you set it up for yourself), any advice for them about what you’d change or what you’d make sure to not change?
Overall, I feel pretty good about the way I did the challenge. My biggest piece of advice came from your instructions to make a plan. I wouldn’t have thought about that, honestly. But it made me approach it with intention and not just because it would be something to do.
Learn more about Amy Packer here.
About the Series: The #20for20ArtChallenge inspires artists to commit to 20 minutes a day for 20 days to jumpstart a daily art practice. In this series, you'll learn how past participants have set up their 20 days and discover pieces of insights for designing your own daily art practice.