I didn’t even know it, but today is Free Art Friday.

I won’t make the mistake of not knowing again.

It was a lark that I discovered this – I almost didn’t go for a jog during my lunch break, but I did. On my way back up Folsom Street towards the office, I saw a sign next to a table:

Free Art Friday

Of course I stopped to investigate.

Guerrilla Marketing, with food

The artist, who I soon learned was named Tracy, had a table set up offering a choice: a free hard boiled egg, or a free drawing of an egg. I couldn’t make up my mind (I was hungry from my jog), and after some conversation, she kindly offered both.

Tracy Grubbs offered fresh hard boiled eggs, or a drawing of an egg to every passer by

The whole interaction and experience was so pleasant and unexpected that I’m writing about it now.

I’m also writing about this because it shouldn’t be unexpected. I wish this was much more common.

The artist is Tracy Grubbs, a San Francisco painter. I asked about her art, and she told me that lately, she has been examining shape and space in her art, and in particular the empty space around objects as a subject matter.

(I hope I am remembering her words correctly)

As I was looked at the drawing I received from her (it’s down below), and thought about her words about space, I saw the empty paper as part of the composition, just as much as the ink. The unmarked areas are as much a part of the drawing as the marked areas.

I mentioned my own woodblock printmaking, and we discussed her “mercenary” marketing methods (my description). She sets up in front of her studio, on the edge of the Financial District. Folsom isn’t the busiest street, but there is a decent amount of foot traffic. Her location was a good balance between enough people coming by, but not so many that she would be lost in the hustle and bustle.

The real trick is to get people to slow down and engage, she mentioned. As I was talking to her, another guy stopped for a minute, and left with an egg. Two ladies walked by, but did not stop.

I thought the egg was the cleverest part of her marketing. In a strange way, the option to take just an egg made the entire interaction much more light-hearted, and lifted any pressure that may have been part of an interaction.

The art and the egg

The Eggs I received from Tracy. The hard boiled egg has since been eaten.

I ate the egg for lunch. It was delicious.

As I write this, my egg drawing is attached to my calendar at work. I’ll bring it home with me tonight.

I encourage you to take a minute and check out Tracy’s site, it is right here: www.tracygrubbs.com

She does striking paintings of impermanent automobiles. I’m going to leave it to you to click through to her site to see what I mean by that; I rather like them. You won’t be disappointed.

Go check her website out now, I’ll still be here when you get back.

I’m in

“Free Art Friday” has a nice ring to it. I think I will participate.

The aspect of Tracy’s set up that I liked most is that she was taking the time to get art into people’s hands. Art does not have to be something stuck in galleries, only appreciated by people “in the know”. Tracy took her art to the streets – literally – and people went home with art in their hands.

That is cool, it is inspiring, and I think we could use more of that in our culture.

I have to spend my Fridays chugging along at DayJob, so I’ll have to set up a virtual table for people to visit. Look out for my own FreeArtFriday posts next Friday on my Twitter account. I’ll probably have drawings of fire hydrants to give away, or something like that.

Want in? Follow me on twitter here: @BadDeacon.

My DayJob takes it out of me. Especially this week, I am filling in for a co-worker that had to leave for a week and a half on a family emergency, in addition to my normal workload. My job isn’t that physically exhausting, after all I sit at a cubicle for 8 hours, but it is mentally exhausting.

It actually doesn’t matter how busy I am at work, I still get home exhausted. Just being somewhere and having to have my brain turned on and ready to think for 8 hours is tiring.

I’m not in good shape when I get home. The work day leaves me tired, unfocused, and hungry. This is a problem, since the evening is when I work on my art. Being worn out, tired, and looking to sit down, eat dinner, and relax is not a productive way to be.

I don’t have much of a choice, however. Great art does not make itself, and I will not be a great artist as a weekend warrior, only working on Saturday and Sunday. The weekend may work for those of you that are hobbyists, but I do have aspirations to be a professional artist. That takes time.

In fact, I consider art a second job. The difference between my art career and my engineering career is that my art career is completely dependent on the amount of time that I spend working. My engineering career requires pretty much just 8 hours a day.

If you are building a small business of any sort, or getting serious about a creative passion, you probably run into the same problem that I have, finding the time. In hopes to help, here are 3 things that have had a major impact on my ability to get to work, after work.

First, Take A Break

If you work a long day, the first thing required is a break. Last night, I arrived home from work at 6pm. I put on some left over home-made chicken soup on the stove, and put some bread in the toaster. I changed into warm, comfortable clothes (it is unusually cold in San Francisco this week), sat down with dinner, and read some comics.

Eating dinner and reading comics is an activity that relaxes me. I can get absorbed in the activity, without it requiring too much thought. After an hour, I felt refreshed and ready to work on something, much more so than if I hadn’t taken the hour off.

My activities during this break effect the rest of my evening. When I spend an hour on my computer, or watching a TV show or 2, I don’t feel quite relaxed afterwards. Reading relaxes me, and is different enough of an activity that I don’t feel like I am still working.

The key is to do something you enjoy for an hour. That may be reading, spending time with family, talking on the phone with people, folding laundry, or just about anything. I know what works for me, and I’m pretty sure what works for me won’t work for everybody, so this requires some brainstorming on your part.

This hour is my transition hour, and I take full advantage. I relax, eat, take care of chores like dishes or laundry, and remove distractions.

Removing distractions has been so important it gets an entire subsection. Look:

Remove Distractions

There is no greater enemy to productivity than my computer. This is strange to say, because my computers are indispensable tools for everything I do (this is an internet business after all). My entire sales, marketing, and success plan depends on both me and you (my customer) using computers all the time.

My computer is incredibly useful, sometimes. For others, like making art, it is a distraction. When my computer is on, I usually have iTunes open, my email running, Twitter open, my RSS reader waiting, and if I am a real glutton for punishment, I’ll have Facebook fired up.

Being so connected keeps me from getting anything done.

In fact, when I sit down to write in the mornings (like I am doing now), I don’t fire up any applications other than text editors. I know that if I even glance at my email, I have lost time. My attention shifts to that, and it takes time to get it back, if I get it back at all.

My computer is my Number 1 source of distraction. I know I have to remove this to get anything done. Your distraction may not be a computer. It may be television, a family, the telephone, or even that pile of unfolded laundry that you keep thinking of.

During your relax time and your work time, get rid of distractions.

Facilitate Work with Cleanliness

I have been stopped stopped dead in my tracks from working on my art by a big mess.

I have two main work areas in my small studio apartment. The first is in the main room, I have a work table set up. This is where I do my printing, and anything else that requires a lot of flat surface space. When I work at that table, I usually use my coffee table and surrounding floor as a staging area, and secondary storage.

My second work area is my desk next to my kitchen area. My apartment is quite small, about 450 square feet. Pretty much everything in here has to pull double or triple duty. This desk is my work desk, kitchen table, and drawing table all wrapped in to one. When I draw or carve a block, I work at my desk.

Both of these areas are often overcome by one of my less desirable habits — I am messy.

My apartment is entropy in action, slowly changing shape from order to chaos. I have to continuously work to keep it clean. I take stuff out, don’t put it away, move stuff around, and generally make a mess.

When my work area is a mess, I am far less likely to get any work done, because I know I have to clean up, and I rather dislike spending time cleaning up.

When I constantly put a little diligence into keeping my work areas clean, it is far easier to come home after a long day at DayJob and get to work for the evening.

If you can dedicate an area of your home just to working, that is best. You can make that space be the “work only” space, and not use it when you are not building your business part time. If you have to use your every day areas of your home, keep them clean, and it will be far easier to get to work.

What About You?

Are you building a new business part time? Using your hours after work? What do you do to maintain energy and focus after a long day at work? Let me know in the comments.

Something you can do today is more important than everything else you will do.

Jack Daniel's Bottle Sketch

There is one activity, one thing, that will help you to get what you want, create your masterpiece, or advance your career.

For me, this is drawing.

Despite all of the marketing I may be able to muster, the success of my art is going to depend ultimately on the quality of my art. Since I am not an abstract expressionist, I need to be able to draw (though I would argue that even abstract need to have strong drawing skills).

Drawing is the primary skill that all of my artwork flows from. Without drawing, I can not make art. I would then have nothing to sell and nothing to market.

I need strong drawing skills.

I have recently started a habit of drawing every day, for around an hour. Implementing a habit takes time, but I know that I need to implement this habit as a non-negotiable habit. It is, after all, the most important thing I can do.

I have started very simply. I draw things that are around me. A couple nights ago I drew the desk in my office. Last night, an empty whiskey bottle. What I draw isn’t as important as just doing it. The ability to transform lines into an image, and to recreate what I see on paper is a fundamental skill.

I will not succeed without it.

Everybody has a “most important thing”

This idea does not just apply to artists and drawing.

Whatever you are creating, one thing is the most important thing to do today. If you are a blogger, writing is the most important thing for you to do. If you create iPhone apps, writing code is the most important thing to do. If you are dieting, then exercise is the most important thing for you to do.

The people who succeed are the people that do their most important activity every day, no matter what.

What is your most important thing?

What is that most important activity?

It is the one thing that you cannot have success without.

If I did not have this website, my email newsletter, and mobs of admirers, there is a chance I could succeed on skill alone. It may not be likely, but it is possible.

The successful people are going to be those that do whatever they need to do to succeed, every day. If you do it so much it becomes habit, all the better.

Overachievers are ok too

I lied. I actually have two most important things. One is drawing. The other is writing.

I have two jobs. One is as an artist. The second is as a marketer. The success of each is supported by success of the other.

As a marketer, my most important activity is writing. I’ve written about my morning power hour elsewhere, but maybe I’ll bring it back up here one of these days.

My alarm goes off at 5:45 every morning, so that I can sit at my computer from 6:00 to 7:00 am and write. I write blog posts, email newsletters, sales copy, etc. The important thing is that I write. Sometimes I have no idea what I am going to write, and that’s when I produce that blog post that kinda sucks.

It is more important to write something badly than to not write at all.

I separate my two jobs into morning and evening. In the morning, before I go to DayJob, I am a marketer. When I get home from DayJob, I am an artist. Each of these times has its most important thing to do.

What is your most important thing to do? Leave me a comment and let me know.

I had a busy weekend.

I redesigned this site, and I wrote the first draft of a number of pages on this site that will be the lifeblood of sales.

I created a checkout cart and a gallery of art. The foundation is in place to actually make sales.

I signed and numbered the 101 Woodblock Series. That itself is a lot of work.

I have spent an unholy amount of time in front of two computers all weekend. In fact, when I was going to sleep last night, I had some some great ideas for the sales copy I have to refine this week, and had to wake up, grab a pen and paper, and write down the ideas.

I shouldn’t be sitting in front of my computer again this morning.

The prints that I have been making and discussing on this site are going on sale this week to Insider Newsletter subscribers. Selling art on the internet takes a whole lotta work. Who woulda node?

There are some changes coming down the line to BDD.

The best content, and new, better, multimedia content is going to be moved to an Insiders Only area. Don’t get me wrong, there will still be good stuff here, but the best stuff will be Insider-Only.

The newsletter is available to everyone, but you have to want it. That’s the key. This is a two way relationship, and you have to want to build a relationship with me as much as I want to build a relationship with you.

Now may be your last chance to sign up for the newsletter on the old, not very good sign up page.

You see, I showed the signup page to a friend of mine that is actually good at writing sales copy, and he revised and tweaked the copy on that Newsletter signup page. I haven’t changed it to the new and improved copy yet, but let me warn you: the new copy will force you to sign up. The new copy is so good that you will actually lose control over your free will when you read it and sign up for the newsletter.

Once I use the new copy, that is.

The old copy leaves it up to your free will to sign up. Free will is pretty cool. I guess.

Click here to sign up for the newsletter.

So anyway. I may be writing more on this blog about the sales and marketing of art and the culture of art, in addition to just the production of art.

This should be a nice resource for artists, collectors, and most of all, folks who just like art.

Best,

Deacon