Daily Practice - Artist Spotlight - Deborah Lyons

Artist Deborah Lyons walked into the #20for20 Challenge ready to tackle a new medium.

And she did, including some ah ha moments about oil.

But she also learned valuable lessons about the pace she wants in her practice and how to arrange her day so that she’s ready to paint when it’s painting time.

You can learn more about artist Deborah Lyons here.

How did you decide where in your day to put your 20?

My favorite time to create art is first thing in the morning. Schedule wise, painting for 20 minutes could be possible here. I work full time from home and start at 7am- 3:30pm. I also drive my son to work so I’m only left with a half hour before my workday begins. So technically there is time for painting.

But instead of using this time for painting, I found that the better use was preparing the sketch and deciding on the palette.

My daily painting time actually worked best either during my lunch hour or right after work. Because I like to take a walk during these times as well, I just decided day by day when I would paint. More often it seemed that over lunch was my preferred time.

You expanded beyond the 20. How did having it be “just 20 minutes” help you get into your space and start creating?

The ‘just 20 minutes’ was a big help because it is less daunting to create small, simple paintings.

It’s a timeframe that I was confident I could accomplish daily. I knew it would help me to quickly learn my new medium. It would also be satisfying to create finished work where I would be able to see my progress.

Before starting the challenge I was pretty confident that 20 minutes would be adequate as I’m a fast painter with other mediums. However, I did not anticipate some of the stumbling blocks that I ran across using oils. So I adjusted my approach and decided not to worry about the time limit. Instead I committed to completing all 20 daily paintings.

How and where did you keep your materials the same? Did you do any prep?

I chose the canvas paper because I didn’t want the substrate to be too precious. Working on gallery canvas puts added pressure on me to create something ‘good’. With paper I can still use them as a finished piece if I like it or throw them in the garbage if I don’t.

I did some preparation beforehand by taping off the 5” x 5” square and sketching the images out ahead of time. I also have my studio set up in the dining room so I’m always ready to get to work.

I especially found that having the paper taped and the sketch done helped me the most. On weekends I would sketch a few of them at a time so I could just take one and start painting. I didn’t need to concern myself with anything else. It was a big time saver.

You decide to use the references from the Starter Pack and your own photos. What did having someone else choose photos and you just followed give you as artist?

The prepared references were the reason that I decided to do this challenge. I have always struggled with what to paint.

I knew that if I want to get good at oil painting I need to paint as much as I can. Interestingly, a lot of the reference photos were not my usual subjects so it was good for me to be pushed into the additional challenge of painting scenes that I am unfamiliar with. I surprised myself with some of the finished paintings being quite pleasant.

It also came in handy to use my own references when the subject was not something that I was inspired by. I think that the diversity of subjects made for a well rounded body of paintings in the end.

What were you hoping to explore with your project?

My main goals were to learn how to use oil paints, focusing on a square composition with the end goal to complete all 20 paintings, hoping to have at least 2 that I could use and/or help to prepare me for an art exhibition in the fall with my art guild ‘Small is Beautiful’ show.

This challenge was organized completely differently from how I would normally work. I normally would choose a subject and paint it here and there over time until it was complete or overworked.

I tend to bite off more than I can chew as they say, so scaling back to smaller, more manageable sized painting, with simpler subjects gave me the extra time and structure where I could fully concentrate on a painting from start to finish in one sitting - alla prima !

What benefits did you find working daily even if not for a long time? (learning benefits, anxiety benefits, just actually doing it benefits?)

It helped me explore this new medium more deeply.

The alla prima method of painting was wonderful. I was able to get into that meditative state and feel how to manipulate the paint better. All of the descriptive words that I had heard about oil painting ‘pushing and pulling the paint’ came into practice and I got it. My a ha moment. I fully believe that this small daily practice excelled my learning curve.

If someone wanted to follow your lead and do this specific Challenge, any advice for them about what you’d change or what you’d make sure to not change? Why?

I would keep my routine the same - having the substrate prepared as well as ensuring the images were already drawn on them ahead of time. Having my ‘studio’ set up and ready to paint and painting during my lunch and/or right after work before I had to start on my other responsibilities.

What I would change would be having more of my own references ready. I only had one as a back up so I did run into some days panicking about what to paint when the reference wasn’t something I was interested in.

At times I painted them anyway and they never turned out. I made sure to finish them but they went straight into the garbage.

I’m like everyone else and have 100s of images saved on my phone or Instagram as potential paintings but they all seemed too complex or not suited for a square composition.

For the next challenge I’ll make sure I have some simple compositions with colours that I love saved. I had only one image for this challenge of a little yellow house with a camper in the driveway that I knew I wanted to paint and I still love it.

The others I took pictures or found a reference online the day before.

I’ve started a file for challenge references for the next time, now that I know what I’m looking for.

So often the focus is on finished and beautiful work. Did you feel any difference in shifting the focus to the showing up? (The habit.) How did that change your relationship to your practice?

It certainly did. I definitely had the goal of having a finished painting when I was done for the day. However, showing up every day was very difficult. I love painting very much but trying to fit it into my life everyday proved to be a lot more time consuming than I thought and it really didn’t work very well for me and my schedule. Things that I needed to get done were slipping and I found that I don’t really want to paint EVERY day.

It did help me to understand a better way that painting can work with my schedule. Less days but longer painting times are a better balance.

Before the Challenge I would beat myself up thinking that I was not doing daily practice, waking up at 4:30 am to paint before the day starts. Now I know that’s definitely not where I’m going to find creative inspiration. Most of my painting time now is carved out of the weekend and 2 nights during the week.

Learn more about Deborah Lyons here.

Learn more about joining the #20for20 Art Challenge here.