Finding balance between new skills and maintaining old skills

Skull candy lady

Something I find tough at times as a multimedia artist is finding balance between 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 noticed that it has been a long time since I last worked with graphite.Given that I am working extra hours this month, 4am has become my peaceful time alone.

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 into 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 and the more confident I am that I can produce what my vision is.

So what do I normally do?

One thing I find helps me is having multiple projects on the go. Although it is usually because I have this weird thing where I can't get into certain things on certain days so I 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.

I always need to keep track of my tasks. Personally, I've discovered that having a straightforward list of items along with the mediums to be used serves as a convenient and efficient reference for me. When I'm feeling unmotivated and haven't documented them, a quick look at my camera roll is a useful method to remind myself of what needs to be done.

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

Feel free to let me know in the comments.

Jackie♥️