Building a daily painting habit or rebuilding a daily painting habit, in my case, is no easy task. I used to be very good at maintaining a habit of painting every day, but have struggled considerably since the pandemic started. While some people found the extra time on their hands a boon to their art, I found the entire experience stressful and downright anxiety inducing. Now that living during a pandemic has lost its novelty and faded back into the banality of every day life, I’m finding it easier to focus on my art again. But how does one go about creating a sticking to a daily habit?

Deciding to create a new habit is one thing, following through is an entirely different thing. A quick internet search will give you a ton of helpful tips, but I think having specific examples is also helpful.

• Set a specific goal – Participating in a daily painting challenge like Inktober or the Strada Easel Challenge is a great goal. It has a specific start and end date, narrowed expectations, and accountability though daily posting and community support. You can also set your own goal. For example, you could say, “I want to complete 15 11×14 landscape paintings in 15 days and post my progress on instagram every day.” If that is too much, say, “I want to oil paint for at least 20 minutes every day, for 5 consecutive days and blog about it weekly.” Do what works for you.

• Start small, and expand on your goals as you achieve them – If you successfully completed 7 days of painting, you can then create a new goal of 14, 30, 60, or more days, changing up the size, the subject, or the medium. The main purpose of starting small is to build up your confidence. By setting very achievable goals to start, you can ride the wave of accomplishment to tackle more ambitious goals.
• Reward yourself – The achievement of the goal itself is a great reward, but it can still be nice to treat yourself too. I typically reward myself with a new art supply or two I’ve been eyeing. Those supplies can then be used in yet another goal.

To use myself as an example, I will outline how I plan to build up my own daily painting habit.

• Complete 30 12×12 food based still lifes in September or finish as many painting as possible while painting every day. I finished 22 paintings.
• Photograph or scan (depending on dryness/size) each painting and edit
• Post each painting to instagram or facebook as it is finished
• Write a blog post each week, including all paintings from that week Post all paintings at once to blog a month later

While I strove for 30 finished paintings, I gave myself the gift of understanding. It isn’t always possible or practical to paint every singe day. Family events, emergencies, sickness and a multitude of other occurrences will happen and I’m not a hermit. My goal was to make painting a priority in my life and to choose it over lounging about, endless internet scrolling, or an impeccably clean house. And to be perfectly honest, I didn’t complete 30 paintings in September. I did however, paint every single day except for the last day. I also let myself take two days to finish a painting if I didn’t have enough time on one day or became frustrated.

The important thing here is that I painted every day. I’m not going to dwell on or beat myself up about my failure to meet all of my goals. I’m incredibly proud of the paintings I did finish and around of myself for trying. For one, I completed 22 of the 30 I planned on, which is nothing to sneeze at. For two, each of these paintings is 12×12 inches. It isn’t easy completing a painting that large in one sitting especially coming from years of painting 6×6 to 6×8 inches. While I don’t think every painting was as successful as it could have been, there are certainly a few gems I’m extremely proud of.

So give daily painting a try. If you don’t achieve your goal, remember not to beat yourself up about it. You can always try again.