Studio Time. A Reflection on Time Based Competition for Getting Art Done

There's Dust on My Guitar Notebook by TET.
Available from Redbubble.

Studio Time is the time I spend in my studio actually creating an artwork...or so it has come to be defined. It seems to suggest that the actual execution is more important than the collection of ideas or time to just absorb and reflect. Perhaps I should explain.

In order to get more art done, myself and some fellow artists, have come up with the concept of recording 'studio time'. Essentially clocking on when you start to paint and clocking off when you're done for the day.

You then set yourself a weekly quota of hours and try to reach that in studio time. The final piece of explanation is, you partner with another artist and compete to reach, not just your quota, but more, if possible, with the winner being the artist who records the most studio time over a given period.

It's a great idea in theory, and works really well when you're on a role with lots of ideas pouring out of you one after the other. However, when you're in a lull it becomes a lot of pressure just to produce anything.

Two wooden artist model figures sitting in a bathroom caddy on my studio wall.

One of the many photos I snapped.

Today I've been pottering around my studio for almost four hours. I've looked through old sketchbooks and past notes.

I've played my favorite music. I've taken photos of the interior of my studio from many different angles.

I saw a pink fairy out on the road, which almost inspired an idea (no really I did see that. I think there was a children's party happening and I caught a glimpse of an adult women dressed as a pink fairy - complete with pink wings). I've done maybe half a sketch for an idea that faded into 'I can't really get behind that concept'.

So, having produced nothing but a bit of a sketch and 44 digital photos of various aspects of my studio, I'm now writing this. Should any of this be counted as 'studio time'?

I could've done some more work on 'The Shortest Story' which is sitting on my easel once again. Somehow it just seems wrong to finish it. Maybe it's because in the end the baby dies? Or maybe it's because over a year and a half later I've moved on.

My last painting, 'The Lord Sings from my Window Sill', looks great but was so forced to create that starting a new work seems, well... like work. The whole point of doing what I do is because I enjoy it...right?

Sometimes I look through my back catalogue of work and think maybe my best work has already been done? Back when I really looked forward to painting, drawing and creating. I can still produce good work now but do I really want to?

Maybe I'm just doing time... Studio Time.

Comments

New Cat Art Collaboration: TET's Cats Paintings and OpenArt AI Model Workspace (Photobooth)

TET's Cats AI generated art trained on my own art style. Way back in the early 2000's I started painting stylized cat artworks to illustrate some cat themed poems I'd written, that I exhibited and sold online in an exhibition titled 'Sleeping Cats' in 2004. You can see all these early works in my Flickr Album . Many are also available to buy as prints in my RedBubble Store . Leading on from that I began selling my paintings on ebay where the cat themed works were almost guaranteed to sell over any other subject I painted. As a result I became some what known for my cat art to the point where people would commission me to create images of their own pet cats in my cartoony style. Flash forward a decade (almost two at this point) and I haven't painted any cat themed art in years. To be honest I haven't done any traditional painting at all in years. In the last couple of years AI image generators have really caught my attention. Specifically that they are able t...

TET Artwork Diary: Nansen The Cabin Boy's Cat of the Belgian Sailing Ship, RV Belgica, Trapped in an Antarctica Winter, 1897

Belgica in the ice. 1897. Photo: Adrien de Gerlache Y ou wouldn't ordinarily think of cats and penguins together in the same image but that's what I found myself creating when thinking of an idea for my next painting. I have painted penguins before as part of my Australian Animals series from the early 2000's, and I have a couple of cartoon penguins (that you can see in a very old post, Designing Formal Penguins ) I created for a Yeti skateboard graphic, so, I didn't just randomly think, 'penguins'. Recently I had a revelation about my art, in that I don't simply paint pictures of cats, I paint 'relationships'. Almost all of my paintings of cats feature two or more cats, or a cat with something, such as a butterfly, bird, fish, goat... and why not a penguin? However, I didn't want to just paint some random cat with some random penguin. I wondered if there was ever any real cats in history that may have a reason to meet a penguin? Turns out, on...

"Ya Mum Reads it..."

You'l find my own Photography in this blog too. Quite a while back I did a survey that tells you what kind of audience credibility your blog has. I'm not sure what the score was but I do remember the commentary which boiled down to "Your mother reads your blog regularly but you probably don't have much wider appeal". Fuck you survey! (Hi Mum, sorry for cursing! I do appreciate you reading, really I do!) I don't know how many regular readers I have, if any, but I do know, on average this blog receives more than 4000 page hits per month, much of it coming from search engines like Google. Perhaps of some interest is my new current top search entry point of all time, people looking for Bert and Ernie, who I wrote some commentary about when it was officially announced that the Sesame Street Characters were not gay . Which is quite a departure from Krippin Virus from a few years back when the movie I am Legend came out. The thing about this blog is t...

Movie Review: Project Hail Mary (2026) No Spoilers

T his wasn't a movie I particularly wanted to see even though it's right in my wheelhouse, realistic Sci-fi. However, after Project Hail Mary did so well in theatres it became a movie I wanted to check out once it reached streaming. In this case I watched it on Amazon Prime Video. It wasn't really on my radar because, on the surface, it's not anything I haven't seen before, even quite recently. Lone astronaut goes on some kind of mission, mission fails, astronaut tries to salvage the mission and somehow finds a way home. However, in my opinion, what makes this film different is in the detail. There are a lot of often seen tropes here presented in new ways, that may capture your imagination. The movie opens with science teacher, Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling), waking up from deep sleep on a spaceship, far from Earth, with no memory of why he is there. Presumably a side effect of basically being put in storage while the spaceship travels across vast distances. From the...

Movie Review: Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026) No Spoilers

T his is the first time in quite a while we've seen a live action Spider-Man that is, essentially, a fully formed, grown up superhero, fighting crime on his own terms rather than looking to mentors to guide him. In Spider-Man: Brand New Day it's four years after the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home . No one knows who Peter Parker is but Spider-Man has become a local legend, helping to keep New York free of crime. Personally, Peter is still struggling with not reconnecting with his former friends, whose lives are again put at risk when a new foe crosses his path. If you're a fan of Tom Holland's Spider-Man films, and the MCU in general this film should not only not disappoint, you may even consider it to be one of the best MCU films you've seen in a while. I really enjoyed all the quick cameos by small time Spider-Man villains even though I don't know many of them. Their inclusion really started to broaden the scope of the character, despite this installment ...

Review: ArtHelper - The All-In-One AI Writing + Marketing Assistant for Artists - 'ChatGPT for Artists'

ArtHelper prides itself on being all 'human-made' art. T he idea of an AI, trained specifically on art business marketing, that can not only offer advice on marketing your work, but also assist with creating all the content too, is certainly appealing. Especially to those of us who would rather spend more time creating our art than trying to sell it. ArtHelper does just that whilst attempting to be your 'home' on the internet. A destination for your profile and portfolio, a marketplace for your art, and a directory of artists as well, with one distinction - all the art must be human made. Which, for you AI artists, doesn't count the prompt for AI generated art - because the idea, according to ArtHelper's creators, isn't the art. Which is a fair point, in terms of promoting art 'made by a human', but can get kind of murky when you understand that not all AI art is generated from a single prompt... and 'found object art' isn't actually ...

Embarrassing Yourself with Doof Doof Music

Ever since Spinal Tap popularized the notion of turning an amp up to eleven audio systems have been rising to the challenge of louder, more awesome sound. In particular, car audio systems have embraced the notion of the bigger the noise the better the sound must surely be. What I'd like to know is, if these sound systems are so good, why do they make all music sound the same... Doof, Doof, Doof? You've all heard them. Pimped up cars, with audio systems seemingly worth more than gold, volume blasting way past eleven. Sound waves booming long before you make a positive visual on the car... Doof, Doof, Doof. It has to be the audio system right? Surely all these people can't be playing the same tune? Doof, Doof, Doof. Could it be that the more money spent on a car sound system the less musical range it will actually play? Maybe these people can't afford to buy music after purchasing the audio system so they all play the same demo track? Doof, doof, doof. In my own car I hav...

TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

Search This Blog