Keep Your Eye on the PrizeWhen I began to return to my artistic roots, I started with drawing. I used colored pencils to describe my inner world, and that of others (with their permission).

This image is an example of one of those drawings; I called them Energy Essence Portraits. They were personal mandalas that “spoke” to me as I drew. I kept a notebook at my side & recorded words that popped into my head while I drew.

In the beginning, I needed total silence to do these drawings; even music distracted me. This work required my total focus. That is why I would get up at four AM to ensure peace and quiet in the house.

After a year of silent drawing in the wee hours of the morning, my circumstances shifted and necessity conspired with reality to create times when the presence of others while I drew was unavoidable.

Fortunately I had honed my focus by that time and could draw without being distracted by others.

By the time I’d moved to Honolulu in 2000, I realized that my focus had become so strong that I could paint in public. Nowadays I paint at galleries and fairs so people can watch the painting unfold along with me.

Over the years I’ve realized that the more intensely I focus on my painting, the less time I paint at any one time. As a result of focusing so singularly, I am able to accomplish quite a lot in a short amount of time. This allows me to schedule short blocks of time in which to work on a wide variety of projects.

Focus is focus. It doesn’t matter what you focus upon, as long as your attention is aligned with your intention, your focus will be strong and pure.

You can start to hone your focus by setting aside 5–10 minutes at a time, 2–3 times a week, to devote to one task. Choose something you have wanted to do, but haven’t been able to make time for doing. Ideally this task will be one very close to your heart.

Do this task for 5–10 min at a time, 2–3 times a week, for three weeks. I promise you will be amazed at how much you accomplish in those 30–90 minutes of time. Your new-found ability to focus with intention on almost anything will sneak up on you.

The really good news is that focus, once honed, follows you from task to task. Your ability to focus on almost anything is a skill worth learning.

You can read more about focus here: http://dreamheartsmartart.blogspot.ch/

The New Year has begun and so have weekly sessions of life drawing. Drawing a live model is one of the most energizing ways to invigorate a drawing practice.

Yes, I'm primarily a painter, but drawing forms the bones of most of my paintings. Drawing live models ensures I maintain fast eye-hand coordination.

Each class begins with ten two-minute poses. These warm-up exercises loosen up the hands and eyes, and train us to get the basic form drawn quickly.

Once we've gone through those poses (and taken a ten minute coffee/tea break) we draw ten-minute poses. The sketch shown here is from a ten-minute pose. The model, seen on the left side of the photo, is resting between poses.

Often my best drawings are done quickly, before I've gotten too involved with the outcome or concerned with how well I'm doing. Maybe the Ten-Minute Revolution is more pervasive than I'd thought. We really can get a lot done ten minutes at a time.

The idea of going out on a limb was never before so clear as when I saw these Palm trees growing on the lawn of a home in Honolulu.

Wow! What courage these trees portray! Can you imagine the strength it took for them to first grow parallel to the ground before deciding to turn up toward the sky?

Most palm trees start out reaching for the sun. I wonder what made these two trees grow differently (the tree in the middle is also supported because it too grew horizontally).

Yes, I anthropomorphize, but I feel a kinship to these trees and a deep sense of appreciation for the homeowners who took it upon themselves to lend support to these beauties.

There are times in all of our lives when we feel the need for support. Sometimes that means financial support, but more often than not what we crave is emotional support. We want to know our efforts are worthwhile; our lives are meaningful.

Here is a close-up of the supports for the palm tree on the left.

When we need support, it is important to ask for it, and to be clear as to what kind of support we seek.

When we see others in need of support, let's first be honest with ourselves to be certain we can be of support, and then, when we can, lend a hand to those in need. We will all benefit.

1. The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships.

Unlike much of the curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it is judgment rather than rules that prevail.

2. The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution and that questions can have more than one answer.

3. The arts celebrate multiple perspectives.

One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world.

4. The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem solving purposes are seldom fixed, but change with circumstance and opportunity. Learning in the arts requires the ability and a willingness to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of the work as it unfolds.

5. The arts make vivid the fact that neither words in their literal form nor numbers exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition.

6. The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects.

The arts traffic in subtleties.

7. The arts teach students to think through and within a material.

All art forms employ some means through which images become real.

8. The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said.

When children are invited to disclose what a work of art helps them feel, they must reach into their poetic capacities to find the words that will do the job.

9. The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other source

and through such experience to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling.

10. The arts' position in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young

what adults believe is important.

SOURCE: Eisner, E. (2002). The Arts and the Creation of Mind, In Chapter 4, What the Arts Teach and How It Shows. (pp. 70-92). Yale University Press. Available from NAEA Publications. NAEA grants reprint permission for this excerpt from Ten Lessons with proper acknowledgment of its source and NAEA.

Please permit me to add that the Arts teach these things to ALL of us at ALL ages. We are never too old to learn new tricks.