THE MAGIC OF PAINTING 20 MINS A DAY

I call it #20minwatercolorworkout.

Meaning, painting about twenty minutes every day, anything you want, is like working out your art muscles. Like the warm-up we do before we exercise, or yoga, dance, jog, taekwondo … whatever! You get the picture.

A half an hour watercolour session in my sketchbook. Gouache – Holbein Sketchbook – 4″x 6″ Stillman and Birn, Alpha series

Practice and Getting Better

Now I say 20 minutes, and I believe that for me, this has proved very effective. Not so long that one is not able to work on one’s (commissioned) projects, but enough to get the the mind active. One can, of course, stretch it to half an hour, an hour, or more if wanted or required; but on the whole 20 minutes is good practise, and has a number of other benefits too.

For instance, I love the sea, everything from being in it, to painting it. And I want to get better at painting it; better, faster, more intuitive, build it into myself to such an extent that I don’t need to spend too much time understanding the scene with my mind before  breaking into painting (who says we can only break into song?) In other words, build it into my muscle memory. And what better way than to paint it a little everyday? One gets to experience the different moods, the varying seasons, the colours, all the different oceans from the beaches of Mauritius to my first love, Goa. So without spending an excessive amount of time, I just paint intuitively – small 4″x 6″ seascapes in a sketchbook  kept for this very purpose. No pressure! The more one paints, the better one gets… and it all gets recorded in the sketchbook.

Candolim Beach, Goa in the Monsoons – 6″x 8″ (gouache and watercolour pencil) This is from a reference photo of a memorable holiday!

But some days I may not want to paint the sea. In the 20 (or 40) minutes, one can try new colours, new art supplies, new subjects, whatever takes your fancy! Some days I want to paint birds, which also I love, or maybe colourful florals. Perhaps one just wants to throw some paint around, and watch the watercolour pigments intermingle with each other in that magical way… meditation in itself!

Personal Space

It is a good idea to keep seperate sketchbooks for various purposes. I have one where I paint seascapes, one for landscapes, one for general messing around, seperate ones for travels, one small one that stays in the purse (so that one is always prepared) and so on. This allows me to compare later artworks with the older ones, make notes on colours or effects that work or don’t; I get to appreciate my own progress on days that I sorely need to, or decide the areas I feel the need to work on. Some days the artwork may be left unfinished, or not upto my expectation, and that’s okay. I might want to work on them again, or maybe I won’t. That’s alright too. The point is, this becomes my own personal space to grow, play, experiment, or simply to get motivated on days that look bleak. I can share my “unsuccessful” artworks on social media, or maybe not. It stays as personal as I want to make it. It is my very own art journey.

And every day, I get to spend at least 20 minutes with it, just the way I want, flexing my art muscles.

Wait, there’s more…!

The thing is, that this ideology can be used for just about anything that we want to do in life, but cannot find consolidated chunks of time in our everyday schedules. Say, one wants to learn the guitar. Practise 20 minutes everyday. A non-threatening, no-pressure approach to taking baby-steps towards the final destination. Slow, but steady. Eventually, one gets there.

Want to do research on the Ayurveda? Learn a difficult math topic? Learn to pirouette? Learn gardening? snorkelling? Write a blog? Yes…20 minutes everyday!

A day by the seaside – Commissioned original watercolour, 5’x 7″ on cold pressed watercolour paper.