Finding balance between new skills and maintaining old skills

Something I find tough at times as a multimedia artist is keeping my skills honed while still trying to improve in new areas.

I sit here at 4am laying out a new outline for a Graphite sketch.

Why you ask?

Because I realized I haven't done a graphite in quite awhile. And as I am working more than normal this month 4am is my quiet solitude time.

On that note though finding time has been difficult. My list of things I want to do grows ever longer.

Why do I care if I haven't done one in a while?

Well I find that most skills because I do tend to spend a lot of time learning them are like riding a bike. I can still do them but I feel rusty like I have to knock the dust off and get back inti that groove. I might even fall off the bike every now and then.

I will have pieces that exist purely as practice that never get offered up to public. So if I'm struggling for time why would I spend time on practicing? Because it really ends up saving me time in the end. The more honed my skills are the fast I work abd the more confident I am that I can produce what my vision is.

So what do I normally do?

One thing I find helps is I always multiple projects on the go. Although it is usually because I have this weird thing where I can't get into certain things in certain days so I do always have different mediums set up. One of the benefits of having all the different mediums set up and ready to go is that it makes it easy to just pick it up and go.

I do tend to get absorbed when I am learning something new. Idk if you've looked at my Instagram lately you'll see a sea of watercolors.

So I constantly have to take inventory of what I need to be doing. I find for myself I have a simple list of pieces with what mediums I used is helpful as a quick reference. If I'm lazy and haven't written them down something like a quick glance at my camera roll is a great way to see what I should be doing.

What do you do? Do you find you get rusty like me?

Jackie♥️