Artist Date

Open Mic Sketch #2

An “artist date” is one of the tools I incorporated into my creative process after reading The Artist’s Way, probably the definitive creative process how-to book. The Artist’s Way is worth it’s own post another time, suffice to say it recommends the artist date as a weekly (if only…) discipline. Artist date criteria:

1. Spend a minimum of two hours
2. Do something you actually enjoy and want to do
3. It must be disconnected from any of your normal obligations

On Thursday I walked into downtown Ferndale for open mic night at AJ’s Cafe. Sometimes drawing is too stressful to count as an artist date for me — it feels too tied to work. But on this night I really felt like drawing, and the 1/2 mile or so walk into downtown was lovely in the crisp final throes of winter.

Most of the sketches really weren’t good enough to show, but that’s not the point of an artist date anyway. This one turned out pretty well. The guy was a perfect subject — he barely moved once he started playing.