Why is it important to get organized before we start?

Getting organized and comfortable before starting any project saves us a lot of time in the future, allows us to achieve better results and to be comfortable while working and even avoid muscle aches. 

In this post we'll share with our top 10 tips that help us to save time, to not procrastinate before starting to paint, to find the perfect "place" even if it doesn't exist and to be able to concentrate even though I have a construction site in front of our house.

 

1.The chair is the most important element 

The posture when doing any time-consuming activity is extremely important. Discomfort and fatigue affect your concentration and also influence the quality of your work.

Having a ergonomic chair to work can really improve your quality of life.

 

2.Organize your desk in the same way always

This is an example of how one of the Iperartika team members distribute her materials on her work table before starting to work:

"This is the most comfortable way I found to organize my elements to have everything at hand and to work faster without having to waste time looking for the cloth to clean the brush, a special brush, the dropper to add water to the palette or stretching my arm too much to pick up water to clean the brush and running the risk of staining the whole work" -Mary

We recommend that you find the "preferred distribution" of all your elements to paint in a comfortable order and that you will always use not only to work with different paper formats but also not to lose any tool and to have everything within reach when creating. 

 

3.Avoid natural light

 

Although natural light is pleasant, warm and improves our mood, it is not really the best option for our drawing studio.

The big disadvantage is that natural light changes continuously and if we are painting looking at a real object we will have to adjust the shadows and highlights continuously. 

Also, watercolor is a technique that requires a long drying time between coats, and while we are waiting for one coat to dry before painting the next, the light may have changed a lot which can affect our work.

The light of a sunrise is not the same color as the light of a sunset and this influences the way that we see the colors.

If we are going to continue painting a work that has already had a few layers of paint applied, it is best to always paint under the same conditions, that is to say, if you applied the first layers in the morning, with a certain light source, it is best to apply the following layers with the same light at the same time of day. 

If you live in a place with a stable climate, lots of sunlight and you want to take advantage of the daylight, the best way to make sure that the variation over the hours does not affect your work so much, is to nuance the light. 

Before the invention of electricity, artists painted in buildings with large windows that let in a lot of light, and to make the light conditions more stable they would put cloth over the windows. 

If the light coming through your window is not so intense you can use a white cloth, but if the light is very strong, you can perhaps nuance it better with a grey cloth. 

 

4.Use neutral light to paint 

The warm light that we usually have at home in our light bulbs, causes a change of tone in the color of the paper of our work. The ideal is to use a white or neutral light bulb, also known as artificial natural light.

Avoid too much direct light on the eyes, this exhausts the eyes, makes us see the colors lighter than they are and our work ends up being darker than we want it to be. 

The ideal is to avoid lights that are focused towards you, lamps that are too low, side lights that are too close or back lights that can generate shadows on our work.

In our studio we use this light bulb to paint. 

 

4.Change of context inspires 

 

Photo by Luke Porter

 

Have you ever tried changing the environment and going to draw or paint in a square, on public transport or even in a café? 

Although there may be more ambient noise outdoors or in a busy place, it has been proven that working with white noise in the background, such as crowd sounds in a café, can help you concentrate better.  

We know that at first we may be embarrassed to draw or paint in public because we think that everyone who passes by is going to start looking at what we are doing, but the truth is that very few people are going to stop to look and if they do, we may not even notice it because we are going to be so focused on painting. 

Or maybe we will even catch someone's eye and an interesting conversation or a job opportunity may arise. 

Another interesting thing that often happens when we paint or draw in a context in which we are not used to is that we make works that are very different from what we would have painted at home. It is amazing how the environment in which we are creating influences our work. 

  

5.Keeping materials in the same place prevents procrastination 

Photo by Sema Martin

 

Did you know that it takes us on average 29 minutes to regain our concentration when something distracts us? 

That's why it's important to take some time before starting to work to leave at hand everything we are going to need and I'm not only talking about the materials, it's also good to have at hand a glass of water to drink, a hot tea, coffee or mate and maybe also, why not, something small to eat so we don't have to cut 20 minutes after starting because we got hungry. 

Having a drawer with the painting stuff ready, a backpack or suitcase with all the materials or even if possible a table ready with our things organized allows us to procrastinate less before we start working. 

If we see everything ready on our work table it gives us the feeling that we don't need "a lot of time" to prepare everything because the paints are already there, on the table, waiting for us.

  

6.Leave your mobile phone out of your visual range and turn off notifications 

The mobile phone is undoubtedly the great thief of our attention. We give too much importance to every little noise it makes and sometimes we don't realize that the device and all the apps it contains are designed especially for us to look at them and forget about the world outside the screen. 

Always turn off notifications from all apps before you start working, including WhatsApp (especially WhatsApp!). If someone wants to contact you for some very important reason, they will call you. 

Another tip we can give you is to leave your mobile phone out of your visual range.

Why is this a good thing to do?

Because even if it doesn't ring to interrupt us, just the sight of it will tempt us to check social media to see what the world has changed in the last 5 minutes.

Any app or social network can wait and I assure you that dedicating yourself to making your art will fill your day much more. 

  

7.If we organize ourselves as if we have no memory, we will never need it

A great tip is to organize all your items and papers as if tomorrow you would lose your memory and have to look for everything using only common sense.  

So when you are looking for something, not only in your studio but in your house as well, you just have to ask to yourself what would be the logical place where that item should be?

And when you go looking for it there, not knowing it was there, you'll find it. It's a great trick to never lose anything.

  

8.Visual order = peace of mind

 

Photo by Arthur Lambillotte 

 

The best way to organize our thoughts is to start by organizing the space we live and work in.

We think that the organization of the workspace affects the results. 

There are people who can produce beautiful work in chaos but not everybody can. 

If we have an accessible wall near our workspace a good tip is to put a pegboard with adjustable interchangeable containers where we will put what we always need to have at hand.  

That it not only helps us to keep our thousands of papers, pens, pencils and other materials organized but it also allows us to have a clear desk for quick cleaning.

 

8.How do you wait without stopping working?

Have you ever been painting with watercolors, made a beautiful coat, but because you couldn't wait for it to dry, you rushed to apply the new layer and it got ruined?  

Did you try to hurry the drying with a hairdryer and the paint ran, the paper wrinkled or the colors were dull? 

We discovered this anxiety-proof technique that allows us to wait for the layers to dry properly without having to stop working waiting for them. 

How? 

What we do is to put the watercolor paper on 3 or 4 plywood panels and work on several paintings at the same time. 

We adhere the papers to the wood to keep them stretched while we paint on a firm surface that we can then lay down somewhere else.

To protect the edges, we use a masking tape so the paper doesn't get damaged when we take it off once the work is finished.

The technique consists of doing the first layer of the first painting, then move on to the next one, do the first layer as well and when we finish with the first layer of the third painting, the first layer of the first work will already be completely dry and we can start the round again.

 

9.Sound should also be planned

Having a prepared music playlist prevents us from having to stop working to choose a new song.

If commercials don't bother us we can choose a live radio or a playlist of film soundtracks or if we also want to listen to something interesting or learn while we paint without having the visual distraction that we would have with a screen we can listen to a podcast.

If we are distracted by music or want to put all our attention on the painting or artwork we are doing and a podcast steals a lot of our attention and there are sounds in the environment that disturb us, a good tip is to listen to sound frequencies also called binaural sounds.

Binaural sounds are "beats" that operate on specific frequencies to stimulate certain brain waves.

Binaural therapy is used not only to stimulate concentration but also for anxiety, depression and stress treatments.

A beautiful frequency is for example 432Hz. You can listen to it when you need to "block out" some ambient noise and concentrate on actions that requires your full attention.

You can find them on YouTube by simply putting "432Hz frequency" in the search engine.

 

What music do you like to listen when you are painting? Do you have a favourite podcast? We'd love to hear about it in the comments! 

 

10.Inspiration comes from all the senses

Looking for images on Pinterest and having dozens of moodboards with illustrations by other artists is not the only resource we can turn to stimulate our creative energy.  

We can look for inspirational images in films, photographs, books and museums but it is also very enriching to pay attention to the other senses in addition to stimulating creativity in variety of ways. 

We propose a series of inspiring exercises:

• Before painting an object or elements of nature, close your eyes and feel the textures with your fingertips and describe those sensations in your mind.
• Put an incense burner with a new scent in the room where you are going to paint.
• Paint while listening to music that you have never heard before or that you are not used to.
• Paint in different positions: standing, lying down, sitting on a table.
• Painting in the dark or with your eyes closed
• Finger painting
• Drawing a song
• Drawing poetry
• Painting a sound

How do you like to prepare yourself before you start creating? Do you have any rituals or practical tips that help you concentrate? What is the perfect workspace for you? 

Tell us, we are looking forward to hearing from you.

  

IF YOU LIKED THIS POST, SHARE IT WITH A CREATIVE FRIEND!

TO PIN TO PINTEREST AND SHARE :

Share your painted work by sending us a photo to our e-mail address: hello@iperartika.com or tag us on Instagram @iperartika. We will share your photo on our Inspiration page! 

Tell us what medium or paper you used for coloring or if you want any extra details such as what music you listened to while you were painting, what tea you drank or to whom you were thinking of giving the artwork as a gift. We are looking forward to see your art work :D 

Do you have any other questions? Do not hesitate to contact us at hello@iperartika.com

Let's keep creating!