When Art takes a vacation…

I have talked before about how there's no magic, just a system — Asana, chunking, the whole unglamorous machinery that keeps a full studio practice and half a dozen shops running without falling over.

Here's the part I didn't mention: the system also has to know when to stop.

So, for the next stretch, I'm taking that break myself. I'm headed to my happy place — the one that isn't a board, a task, or a color palette waiting to be picked — and I'm turning the workflow off for a bit. No collections to mock up, no motifs to sketch on a deadline. Just family, and whatever wants to get made.

I'm bringing two things with me: my iPad and a sketchbook. That's it. No production schedule attached to either one. If a drawing happens, it happens because I felt like it, not because it was chunked into a ten-minute task with a due date. It might be a few lines in a notebook while everyone else is talking. It might be nothing at all for a few days — and that's allowed too.

It turns out this is its own kind of layer, the same way graphite goes down before the paper-weaving, before the watercolor wash. Rest is a layer. Family is a layer. I don't always remember that, because it's the layer with no checkbox next to it.

The shops will still be here when I get back. The boards will still have their columns, and the wall of a big task will still be waiting to be broken into something small enough to start. None of that goes anywhere. I just want to go be somewhere else for a while — sketchbook in one hand, nothing to prove.

Art takes a vacation!