Years ago, I took a drawing class. It was the third in a series of classes taught by a scientific illustrator, and the goal of this class was to create a "finished drawing." In this context, that meant a technically-accurate, realistic rendering of the subject. Given this objective, some amount of homework was mandatory if I wanted to get feedback on my work at all stages of development.
We were using dried seed pods from kokia trees, so there was no danger of the subject wilting. But to work from life (well, dead life), the subject needs to be lit consistently. That may not sound like a big deal when written out, but I assure you it is very fiddly. One needs to control both the light shining on the object and the extraneous light in the room.
One day, I had about 30 minutes free and wanted to work on my drawing. I got out my specimen and lights, my drawing and pencils, and I set everything up to work at my desk. I spent 25 minutes fiddling with everything to get it out and placed correctly, then I looked at my watch and realized I had just enough time left to pack everything away.
As I was putting all of my materials away, without pencil ever having touched paper, it occurred to me that anything I could do to streamline this process would be resources well-invested.
For reference, at this point, the spousal unit and I lived in a 550 sq. ft. apartment (about 50 sq. meters for everyone else in the world), and he insists on having possessions and interests of his own. Carving out a dedicated space for drawing wasn't trivial. I certainly didn't have room for a drafting table, but that didn't mean I didn't have room.
After some cleaning, decluttering, and rearranging (and a few minutes with a hole saw), I cleared a tall shelf to set up my subject and lighting and taped my preliminary drawings to a cabinet door above it. I spray-painted the lid of a plastic Ikea box, stuck my subject to it with some museum putty, and used the top of the box as a cloche to protect it from dust and feline interference when I wasn't working. I used a piece of gatorboard with a nut epoxied to the back and a cheap tripod as a "drafting table" that could be set up or broken down in seconds. I set my pencils and drawing tools up on my music stand, set flat. I had one small lamp for my specimen and one for my drawing board.
I could set all of this up in about two minutes, and put it away in about the same time. The pencils and second lamp tucked on the shelf, the drawing board (with a piece of tracing paper protecting my drawing) and tripod could be easily stashed behind the door when not in use. An entire week of my "homework" time went to figuring out these solutions, all of which were cobbled together from things I already had.
For that one-time effort, I got an extra 25 minutes of drawing time every time I sat down to work, purely from not having to muck about with my tools.
We've moved since then, and I have more space. This allowed a much-anticipated expansion into oil painting, which has a reputation for being a pain to set up and clean up. Below is my studio palette with paints I mixed about two weeks ago. They are still workable. Knowing that it is important to me that I get to do this work when I can, and that I cannot rely on being able to paint consistently, I started looking for ways to make it easier to start and stop.
Oil paint doesn't truly "dry." It oxidizes. Clove oil is a powerful antioxidant1. The keys here are a glass palette, a cover I hacked together from wood trim and plexiglass held together with some E6000 adhesive, and a teased-apart cotton ball doused with clove oil that sits in the lid of a squat, metal2 tin.
To get started, I switch on my lights, lift off the cover (which also keeps my feline "helper" out of the paint when not in use), close up the clove-oil tin, pick up a brush and start. When it's time to stop, I get my brushes clean enough (towel out as much paint as I can, maybe use a little solvent or safflower oil if they are quite dirty or I think I will be away for a spell), lay them on a clean part of the palette, put the clove oil tin on another clean part, and pop the cover over the whole shebang. If I go a very long stretch away from my palette (over a month, usually), I may need to scrape some paint off with a razor blade, and some colors may get tacky enough that I want to refresh them with new paint, but for the most part, it keeps well.
This can be applied to practically anything that you want to do.
- For exercise or sports, first, make sure you have enough clothes or team kits to get through between laundry days, and ideally, one or two extras for when life gets busy and laundry falls behind. If equipment with moving parts is involved, like a bicycle, make sure it gets regular maintenance so you can hop on and go. If you are so fortunate as to have space to dedicate to a home gym or studio, create a space you will love to (and actually will) use regularly. It doesn't have to be large to be effective.
If you play a musical instrument, get a stand3 for it and another for your sheet music so they can live out of their traveling cases and be picked up at whim. Keep a spare of anything that might break and need replacing before you can play (reeds, strings, etc.)
If you love to cook, you need ingredients on hand. A well-stocked larder will serve you well: all the spices you regularly use, a windowsill herb garden, any oils/vinegars/condiments you use regularly, and any foundational staples (garlic, onions, celery, carrots, lemons, limes, chiles, etc.) you use frequently. Furthermore, a clean kitchen is an invitation to cook, and a dirty kitchen is an invitation to order out. So if you want to cook, the last step (after you have enjoyed the fruits of your labor) needs to be washing the dishes and cleaning the kitchen to whatever condition you are happy to work in. Rope in any dining companions and put on some music.
You can pack a dedicated bag for anything done regularly out of the house. I have dedicated bags for my plein air painting, figure drawing, spin classes, and aquafit (old lady splashy time!). I'm slowly building our Ravinia setup to streamline sprawling on the lawn while listening to live music, because that is something I always want more of. When you get home, the last step is to unpack anything that needs to come out and re-pack anything that needs to be swapped out for next time. You aren't done until you are ready to walk out the door on your next adventure.
Packing lists or checklists can be brilliant for things done less frequently. You might not remember every last thing that you need to go camping, to host your family's favorite holiday, or whatever else you do periodically but not frequently, but having a checklist that you can pull out and start executing gets the ball rolling much faster than when your first step is "figure out what the heck I am doing."
And to repeat myself, because sometimes it takes a few tries for a message to sink in, the last step is not "finishing" whatever you are doing. The last step is setting yourself up for success next time. The goal is to keep doing things you love to do, things that feed your heart and your soul—no need to trip over our own shoelaces while doing so.
I really can't recommend mixing clove oil directly into your paint. Some people suggest it, but I haven't tried it myself and have zero desire to, as it would most likely make the already slow-drying paint take for-ev-er to dry.
Clove oil will degrade plastic, and it did something weird to the glass on my palette when I tried putting it directly on, so a glass palette and a metal tin with cotton below the level of the plexi are essential for success here.
If you are concerned about pets, small children, or adults with the motor control and awareness of pets and small children smashing things, look at wall-mounted options. Purpose-built stands exist for many instruments, and a little ingenuity can be used to come up with something that will work for your situation. And if you think that you couldn't POSSIBLY put a hole in the wall, let me remind you that life is short, and spackle is cheap. For best results, ensure the wall is concave (going in) when you spackle. If the material around the hole starts flaring out when you remove the screws (or if you used wall anchors), bash it in (including the wall anchors—they are designed to stay in place) gently with the end of a screwdriver until everything is a squidge below the surrounding wall, and then patch the whole shebang by smearing spackle over it and smoothing with a putty knife.
Love how you’ve added very real examples and solutions here! It’s amazing how long we can be kept away from a beloved hobby simply because the idea of set up is just too much. This may be why I have 6 bins of untouched yarn...