Creating a Thriving Sketchbook Practice (Ep. 451)

Welcome to Art Ed Radio, the podcast for art teachers. This show is produced by The Art of Education, and I’m your host, Tim Bogatz.

Friends, the NOW Conference is happening. Literally next week, next Friday is the kickoff. So if you want to experience the best online conference for our teachers, just an amazing few days of learning, connecting, art making, come join us. I’ll give you the details in just a second.

But for today’s podcast, we have another one of our presenters from the conference, Abby Houston. She’s going to be here to talk about NOW, but also talk about her own art, making her sketchbook practice and her social media presence. You might know Abby as Abby Painter Art from Instagram. And if you don’t hit, the pause button really quickly, go give her a follow. You can search for Abby Painter Art on Instagram, or you can click through the show notes for a direct link. Go check out her work, follow her, see what she’s all about, and then come back to the conversation here.

Now, Abby’s presentation at the conference is all about how to get into the habit of creating, how to follow through on your sketchbook practice, how to carve out time for your own art making and your own creativity. And though she is a full-time artist now, she is worked as an art therapist, as an art teacher, and those experiences inform where she’s coming from. She knows what it’s like to be an art teacher. So, looking forward to hearing her perspective.

And before we get to the conversation, as promised, I want to give you a quick rundown with the details of NOW, everything that you can expect from the conference. So Friday, January 31st, it is the conference kickoff. Amanda and I will be hosting with games, prizes, a ton of giveaways and some art making sessions. Saturday, February 1st we have an entire day of professional learning just for our teachers. There’s more art making, there are more giveaways. And one of the things I’m most excited about, a keynote presentation from the amazing photographer, Carrie Mae Weems. Then Sunday, February 2nd, and every day after that that you want to revisit it for the next year, you have access to the After Pass, you can find extra presentations, more perks and prizes, revisit any learning that you want to and catch anything that you missed. All of that will be in the After Pass for you, which you can access asynchronously whenever you need it.

Everything you need to know to register and attend the conference can be found at theartofeducation.edu/NOW. But Abby is, it is time to talk to her. Let me bring her on.

Can we begin with an introduction? Can you tell listeners about yourself, your artmaking, how they might know you, and anything else you want to share?

I’m a former art therapist and educator, and a practicing artist, in the Portland area.

A few other tidbits, I’m a youth sports coach, I played collegiate soccer and really, that was kind of the first time that I came to terms with, am I going to be an artist or am I going to be in athletics?

Oh yeah. Yeah.

And I did both. But I do keep those very separate most of the time. But I feel like this is maybe a special listeners get to hear about, I’m kind of a super fan when it comes to athletics. And I’m glad to hear you’re into basketball too because I love basketball.

I was going to say, I feel like this podcast could go off the rails all of a sudden.

Let’s do it. Yeah, let’s do it.

Devolve into WNBA talk for the next half hour.

Oh my goodness. We could. We really could. And Portland is getting a WNBA team at the end of-

Oh, I know.

Yeah. So big deal. We’ll have to go to a game together when they come through. Come on out.

Okay, let’s do it. I am in. I am in.

Okay, great.

All right. Okay. Before we let it devolve though, let’s bring you back to your art career. And I guess I would love to hear just a little bit about your work in art therapy and art teaching. I mean, that is our audience, art teachers here, so.

Totally.

Can you just let everybody know about your experience, what you’ve done there, and just where you’re coming from in that regard?

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think a lot of us educators who are in kind of mid-career points, I had been teaching and doing art therapy practice for about 17 years when the wonderful 2020 pandemic hit. And that really caused me to, as a lot of us educators, it caused me to reevaluate what I needed to pay attention to. And for me, what it came down to is I have a partner, my husband, who also was working full-time, I was working full-time, and we had three kids at home who were doing online learning, and here in Portland online learning went on for a very long time.

And during that process I realized through a series of eye-opening events, we all had to reevaluate our commitments and our connections, and what I realized was that I hadn’t been creating art as an art educator or an art therapist for a long time. So I needed a prompt. I needed some sort of kick in the pants to get started. And I had a colleague at the time, a fellow artist who was starting The 100 Day Project. And if you’re not familiar with The 100 Day Project, you can Google it, it’s all over social media. And what she kind of encouraged me to do was just to take a little bit of time every day and create something. There are vast independent projects that come out of The 100 Day Project. But I kind of thought, sure, I’m up for a challenge. What else am I doing here at home, pulling my hair out, teaching online, going crazy every day with my family.

So I started small, and this is something I go into in my conference presentation too for the NOW Conference is that 100 days is a lot, but for some reason it hooked me because I kind of felt like, as we all did in the spring of 2020, I had the time and I didn’t know how long it was going to go. So I kind of felt like, okay, maybe I can make 100 days work. So I started small with just five minutes a day actually working on… A lot of my practice before I jumped into my sketchbook practice came out of working on paper, just kind of primed paper that I would take around with me in a clipboard and I would work on it here and there. I would use recycled pieces of artwork. I would pick up leftovers from my classroom. I would grab work that kids wanted to discard, and I would ask their permission instead of recycling, like, “Hey, can I repurpose this and use it for something new?”

And so that’s what really got me kind of away from my sole focus of teaching and really returned me to claiming myself as an artist and creating time and space to be that. So yeah, it took a global pandemic for me to realize that I was a little off balance personally, I was a little off balance professionally. At that time, I have had a private practice as an art therapist, I’m a licensed professional counselor here in the state of Oregon, and I’ve kind of put that to the side for quite a while because of the wonderful community that I worked in and the school that I worked in.

But yeah, so as that 2020 went into 2022 and I began to build my own professional creative habit, I realized that I wanted to document it. And so I might be kind of going off question here a little bit. But yeah, so that’s kind of how they started to layer together was I took my years of art therapy practice and actually just took my own advice, which was taking care of yourself by doing something healthy every day.

No, that’s awesome. Well, can you talk about though just that evolution of your sketchbook practice, how it just started in the sort of 100 day challenge, getting into that habit and how it’s turned into the point where you’re creating so many things and working as an artist. Is it a conscious decision of I need to make work and this is how I’m going to do it? Or is this just a practice that has kind of developed itself over time?

Yeah, I mean, I think it’s both. I like this question because I think it’s both for me. I have kind of two wheels that I always constantly intend to keep turning. And one of those is my daily… I’m pointing here because I’ve got my sketchbook in front of me. But, one of those is my daily sketchbook practice. And again, what I realized about that was that it was something that was just for me. And so I never sell my sketchbook work, I don’t scan it. When I’m finished with a book, I catalog it, I put it on the shelf and it’s there.

And so what I realized was that that was the most important thing, was creating something for my own personal growth and development, easing anxiety, helping me to ground myself, whether that was abstract color work or relying on items from nature. Whatever. So that was one part of it.

And then at the same time, I was really seeking connection with other people, and so in comes social media. Which, I love to celebrate and really think positively about how social media really encouraged me to set a daily habit of creating work that I was then sharing because of the platform at the time. In that 2020, 2021 time, it was before Reels, it was before a lot of video. It was still when a lot of people just made things and posted it. And for me, it was more about documenting the process and then allowing the development to come out of that. Because what we all know when we’re applying for a new job, when we’re putting a school resume together or we’re putting our portfolios together, you want to see progress from the work that you created then to the work you’re creating now.

What I really realized was that Instagram was a free tool to be able to do that. I had, for a very short time, started posting my work on my own personal account, which is oddly, which is actually just an Abby Painter account. So I realized that the name I was using for my personal account actually was what I should have been using for my professional account. So I just tagged art on the end of that, and it’s kind of ridiculous to this day, but it’s what kind of blew up after all.

It’s how everybody knows you now, so there’s no going back at this point.

Yeah, yeah. I know, yeah. People ask me all the time if my last name is painter, and I wish it was, but it’s not. But yeah, so I started, so it’s like The 100 Day Project, the kind of pull to pay attention to my own creative process. And then I was really feeling drained by, again, all educators feeling drained by that point in the pandemic. And what I realized was that my own kids were also getting to the age where they needed something different from me. And if I was going to champion my own work on focusing on community, I just felt like I could do something different than in the school system that I was in.

And so another big component to pulling away from my full-time and then part-time job as a teacher was that I realized I could create community and invite artists in that didn’t have to be in real life. And I think that the big, wonderful aha moment for me was that I could… And I still to this day, actually in this next week I’m offering, twice a year I do an artist trading card swap where I have about 500 artists send me their artist trading cards. And honestly, that is still the most fulfilling part of my quote, unquote, job as a professional artist is when I can offer space to create community and connection for people.

So I embrace the algorithm. I can’t say that I embrace it every day because it’s always changing. But I also try really hard to set myself up every day to continue to be curious. Whenever-

That’s great.

Yeah. Because it doesn’t get anyone anywhere to… I mean, in my experience, I guess I should talk about myself. It doesn’t get me anywhere to complain about how a free platform is or isn’t working for me. So what I instead choose is to be curious and try to better understand how my message of connection and creativity and community can resonate with other people. And so far, that has been a really awesome thing to watch build. That’s what people want is connection.

For sure. For sure. No, that can be a great place to find it. And this is actually fun because last week on the podcast, it was all about community and connection-

Oh, wow. I’ll have to check out that episode.

… and I talked to Joel Scholten who is an art teacher, and he has 100,000 followers just like you do. So this is a good follow-up. But I’d love to talk a little bit more about Instagram, if you don’t mind.

Yeah.

We talked a little bit about how you first got started with things. But, I would love to know when things flip for you? When did you notice your work kind of resonating with people or maybe your message of community and connection, when did you notice that resonating and how has that experience changed going from just getting started to now having 100,000 followers or whatever you have?

Yeah. Yeah, no. That’s a great question. And I love that because I really try to share as much as possible of what’s worked well for me and I’ve found it doesn’t work the same for everyone. And I think that what I always come back to is that, and I love and hate the word authentic, but I try really hard to be pretty clearly me, mistakes and all, ADHD and all. And what I like about that is that for some reason when I started to really notice that people, originally it was likes. So it’s like how many likes are you getting on a piece? And this is again, back in the summer of 2020, it might’ve been summer 2021. It was 2021. So I traveled for the first time in the summer of 2021 to an artist residency that was set up in a farmhouse in Tennessee.

That’s a long way from Portland.

So far away. And I love the team of artists who set that up, this particular residency. They’ve now moved it, and it’s now I believe in Indiana in a different place where these two artists relocated their practice to. But it’s this group of artists that created this residency called the Stay at Home Gallery. And so it was a gallery farmhouse where you could go and they had a separate art studio. You apply, pay a very small fee for the week and you get to go.

So oddly enough, I kind of answered that, I wouldn’t say call, but I kind of ran with it. I got accepted, was like, oh, cool, this might be good for me to do this solo. I ended up going with another artist who’s a friend of mine. And what we did was out of our comfort zones, created bodies of work that week. She was working on an illustrative children’s book. I was working on some larger canvas pieces. And during that time was also when I started to notice that I’d open up my Instagram and I’d have more inquiries, more messages, more engagement you call it now. But at the time I was like, oh, people want to know more about my work.

And the very first piece that I sold, still to this day is my bestseller as far as prints go, it’s piece called Round and Round. It’s on my website. And I remember the exact place I was when I made that piece of work and I photographed it, I put it onto my budding Instagram page, and someone wrote in the comments, is this for sale? And at that point, I hadn’t really thought about making any money off of the work I was doing because I was focused on my sketchbook practice. I was focused on my daily habit, my wellness routine. So at the time I said, sure, what do you want to pay for it? And this gal offered $35 for the piece. I was so thrilled, so excited. Still to this day, I love it when a small piece sells for 25 to 35 bucks because original art is going into the hands of people who appreciate it.

So at that time, I started to notice that that was happening. So I sold a handful of pieces in that fashion on Instagram, here’s the price, DM me if you want to buy it. And I think that’s a really good place for a lot of people to start because you don’t have to manage another website, you don’t have to make an Etsy page. You just kind of create a following by engaging with other people. And again, this is three years ago, because it’s different now because the algorithm likes different things now. But what I just noticed was that when I was the one engaging with people it gave them a personal touch to it.

So I started creating pieces, selling them, gradually realized that the need was there or the interest was there. And so I was able to, in my own time and space, in the after hours, this is when I’m coming home from my job, this is when I’m done with my kids for the evening I’m sitting up late at night and painting. And so what I just really realized was that as long as I was consistent in keeping up my contribution to my project, people were responding and it created this cycle of I would put a piece on, someone would like it, they’d buy it, someone else would say, what else is next? And so it just kind of created this feedback loop that was really positive.

And at that time, I hadn’t even started doing prints yet. That was kind of the next step for me, was picking a handful of pieces that worked well and offering them as signed archival giclee prints that I found a local printer to print for me. And again, like I said, still to this day one of my bestsellers is that original piece that kind of kick-started a lot of it for me.

Yeah, that’s cool. Now, I want to ask you though, getting into that cycle of people waiting and seeing and asking, what is next? Do you feel pressure to produce? Do you feel pressure to create work with that audience being out there or is this just work that you would be doing anyway, things you would be creating anyway?

Yeah, no. That is a great question. I happen to have a problem actually with overproduction, and I hope that doesn’t sound really like, no, no, no… But I think one of the things that people have said to me before is how do you find time to make so much work? Good friends of mine will say that. And what I do rely on is finding the little moments here and there. And of course, I do this full time now, so it’s like I have time now to create a body of work that I then am going to put out at certain times. But what it used to be like when I was first getting started was every night I would finish a piece, or the next morning during my coffee, once I was waiting to set up my classroom for the day after I had lesson plans done, instead of pulling my phone out to scroll for five minutes I would pull out my or my plastic folder and just get a few marks down on the paper.

And again, this process is pretty unique to the creative process when it comes to abstract work because there’s a lot less riding on what it needs to look like. And for me, I, a long time ago… I love color theory, I love studying different marks and movements and behind different pieces so for me, none of my work is too precious. And I feel like that’s something that I really fall back on because when I create something, there’s a part of me in it. There’s a part of my story in it, but it’s also intended to connect with someone who wants to bring it into their own home. And so I think that’s a big part of why I don’t feel a lot of pressure to turn over work.

And I do have dry spells. I absolutely have dry spells where I really lean into… I just created and finished a big body of work for a show here at a coffee shop that’s been a Portland icon coffee shop here for me for years. I used to go into it every day, always hoping that I could have my work up on the walls, and now it’s there. And I will tell you, I was busting out work an hour before I was supposed to hang that up. And I think that for me too is creatives are really frantic, and I love that part, that drives me in the process. And so even right before hopping on this interview together, I realized that, oh, I’m so excited, I’m going to start my artist trading card swap for the month of February. And I pulled out a bunch of paper and started swiping pain around. Now, was that what I should have been doing right before hopping on a call? Probably not. But did it get me excited and prepped then to talk about my creative process? Absolutely.

There you go.

So I think that that’s what I try and go back to is the idea that if the creative process is at the center of it, you’re going to consume less and kind, I don’t know, just have more opportunity to be a better version of yourself.

Very well said. Okay, now to kind of wrap things up here, I want to talk about your presentation at the NOW Conference. It’s about how to develop an art making routine or sketchbook routine. And I definitely don’t want you to give away all of your secrets here on the podcast. Can you talk a little bit about the presentation, maybe give some advice for developing a consistent routine or talk about some benefits that come with making artwork consistently?

Absolutely. Yeah. I think without giving too much away, I think a lot of it is based in materials and claiming what works best for you. And that’s going to be different for every single artist. I think about it in the sense of my 12-year-old, I have three kids that are 8, 12, and 14, and my 12-year-old is at a different point in her artistic development than I am. So she’s in this age of dawning realism and where she really wants to make everything perfect and she wants to make things that look a certain way. And I love that, I remember being in that stage as an adolescent. We’ve all been there.

I was going to say, all of us as art educators have studied those stages and we know exactly where she is right now.

Yes. You know where she is. And so it’s really fun to watch her sit down in my studio with me in the evening and she’ll pull out her, she’s working on this series of comics right now that are these little snippets of daily life, which are fricking hilarious. I love watching her be so prolific in that way. And that style of art making doesn’t interest me at all, but I love watching it ignite and illuminate who she is as a creative. So I think that’s maybe the biggest thing going into that presentation at the NOW Conference is that it doesn’t have to look the same for everyone.

And I guess one other little secret or tidbit that I don’t think I shared in the presentation yet, I can probably add it in there, is that I had a supervisor a long time ago who noticed really early on that I, as her supervisee, needed a little bit of corral. I needed a little bit of scaffolding around me as a clinician. She actually handed me this teeny tiny notebook, it was not all that different than the eight by eight inch square notebook that I currently work in now. So it was a bound watercolor notebook, but it was little, it could fit in your palm.

And what she invited me to do was to draw a circle in the notebook every day and somehow fill the circle in. And that kind of went back to mandala practice, centering, grounding oneself. And so I think that that’s another thing is just starting small with something that’s tangible, that’s materials based that you get excited about. And then, yeah, I mean, forming a habit and setting an intention is a big thing that I go into in my presentation for the conference. So I’d invite anyone to listen in on that and share other ways that might look different for you as an artist or art educator.

Yeah, I definitely am looking forward to that conversation because, you know and you talked about it a little bit, there are very few times through the day as teachers that we can sit and actually create things, sit and actually make art. And so I’m looking forward to the conversation at the conference to see how people do that, when people do that, and just being able to share some of those ideas should be good.

Great. No, I love that. That’s a really good point.

It’s different for you, and that’s going to be different for every single artist. I think about it in the sense of my 12-year-old, I have three kids that are 8, 12, and 14, my 12-year-old is at a different point in her artistic development than I am. So she’s in this age of dawning realism and where she really wants to make everything perfect and she wants to make things that look a certain way. And I love that, I remember being in that stage as an adolescent. We’ve all been there.

I was going to say, all of us as art educators have studied those stages and we know exactly where she is right now.

Yes. You know where she is. And so it’s really fun to her sit down in my studio with me in the evening and she’ll pull out her, she’s working on this series of comics right now that are these little snippets of daily life, which are fricking hilarious. I love watching her be so prolific in that way. That style of art making doesn’t interest me at all, but I love watching it ignite and illuminate who she is as a creative. So I think that’s maybe the biggest thing going into that presentation at the NOW Conference is that it doesn’t have to look the same for everyone.

And I guess one other little secret or tidbit that I don’t think I shared in the presentation yet, I can probably add it in there, is that I had a supervisor a long time ago who noticed really early on that I, as her supervisee, needed a little bit of corral. I needed a little bit of scaffolding around me as a clinician. She actually handed me this teeny tiny notebook, it was not all that different than the eight by eight inch square notebook that I currently work in now. So it was a bound watercolor notebook, but it was little, it could fit in your palm.

What she invited me to do was to draw a circle in the notebook every day and somehow fill the circle in, and that kind of went back to mandala practice, centering, grounding oneself. And so I think that that’s another thing is just starting small with something that’s tangible, that’s materials based that you get excited about. And then, yeah, I mean forming a habit and setting an intention is a big thing that I go into in my presentation for the conference. So I’d invite anyone to listen in on that and share other ways that might look different for you as an artist or an art educator.

Yeah, I definitely am looking forward to that conversation because, you know and you talked about it a little bit, there are very few times through the day as teachers that we can sit and actually create things, sit and actually make art. And so I’m looking forward to the conversation at the conference to see how people do that, when people do that, and just being able to share some of those ideas should be good.

Great. No, I love that. That’s a really good point.

Cool. All right, now before we go, do you have time to play this or that with me?

Yes, of course I do. So excited. I love games.

All right. Let’s do it.

Okay.

All right. Abby Houston, this or that with me, sketchbook edition. Since you are a sketchbook expert. First one, hardcover or softcover?

Oh. Oh, I love this. Do I have to ding in? Ding, ding, ding.

Oh, no. No, you can just answer.

Okay. Can just say it. Hardcover. Absolutely hardcover. I have one right here with me, hardbound sketchbook. I don’t know if I should go into the paper style. Heavyweight watercolor, cold press paper. Done.

All right. Love it. Love it. Okay. Pen or pencil?

Oh, that’s a rough one.

I know. It’s tough, isn’t it?

That’s a hard one. If it’s a really nice soft 2B to 4B pencil, I love working with graphite in that way. But I’d have to go with paint pen just because paint pens are my bread and butter. That’s what I base my creative stuff all on as paint pens.

Okay. And transitioning into the next one, paint or marker?

Oh, paint. Paint.

Always paint.

Always paint. Always the different… Yeah. And I don’t know. Markers I struggle with. I think because of the absorption factor, and I used to be really into Sharpies, but then found POSCAs, found Molotow pens and have never looked back the other way.

Okay, okay. That’s fair. Oil pastel or chalk pastel?

Oh, that’s a rough one. Can I say neither? Can I say neither?

I was going to say, you can go neither if you want to. Yes, absolutely.

Caran d’Ache or whatever those are called. I stay further and further away from oil and chalk pastels, I think that’s because of maybe a traumatic classroom situation. I bet our teachers can relate to that.

I was going to say, if you’ve ever stepped on one in your classroom you know [inaudible 00:31:01]-

Yeah, it’s all over. Yeah, the oil pastel is everywhere. The chalk pastel’s going in your nose. Yeah. Hard pass. Hard pass on both of those.

Fair. All right. Using texture or using pattern?

Ooh. Oh, early days, I’ll say Abby age 16 to 27 was texture. Before I knew about any other artists, I was in love with Vincent van Gogh in my early days. But now I’d say pattern just because I love repetition.

Love it. Repeating old ideas or trying new things?

Ooh. Ooh, that’s a hard one. If I’m being totally honest, I really rely on similar themes and ideas in my work, but I am currently also really open to trying new things. So maybe both.

No, that’s a great balance. That works. All right.

Yeah. Okay, good.

Final question. Waiting for inspiration for your art or just getting to work?

Oh, getting to work. Absolutely, just getting to work. And again, even if I just pick up a tube of paint and a random piece of paper and squirt some paint out, I know I have to do something next. As opposed to waiting for what that’s going to be like, I just have to go for it.

No, I love it. Great answer. All right. Well, Abby, thank you so much for the interview today. Thank you for playing this or that with me, it’s been a great time all throughout and really appreciate you joining us.

Thanks, Tim. This has been so much fun. I really appreciate it.

Thank you to Abby for joining the show and for being part of the conference. I can’t wait for you to see her presentation on February 1st.

We talked so much last week about creating connections and creating community, and it was so nice to hear some of those same themes come up with Abby today. Like I said last week those connections are so important. They give us a chance to find help. To find individuals that are going through the same things we are. Find a sense of belonging and find opportunities to support each other. So be a part of that community. Be a part of something that can support you and lift you up, and you can do the same for others that you are connected with.

Art Ed Radio is produced by The Art of Education with audio engineering from Michael Crocker. Thank you for listening to the episode today. Thank you for listening to every episode. Come join us at the NOW Conference next Friday, January 31st, next Saturday, February 1st, and next Sunday, February 2nd. You can find all the information you need and register at theartofeducation.edu/NOW. We will talk to you next week. Janet Taylor will be on to do our official NOW Conference preview.