Art Life Plan Podcast

Sometimes the next direction in your work is already there. You just have to notice what keeps showing up.

This week on Art Life Plan, I’m talking about paying attention to the ideas, materials, and visual patterns you keep returning to, and why repeating something does not always mean you are stuck. Sometimes it means there is still more there to explore.

Question of the week: What keeps showing up in your work that might be worth following a little further?

Chat with me on Substack or Patreon. Instagram too. You can also chat with me at the ALP website, too.

You are allowed to outgrow your own work, and that can include a lot more than the art itself.

This week on Art Life Plan, I’m talking about what happens when your work, website, brand, teaching, goals, mediums, or audience no longer fit the way they used to, and how to start making changes without treating everything that came before like a mistake.

Question of the week: What part of your creative life have you outgrown, even if you have not quite admitted it yet?

Your website for your art/design should do more than hold your portfolio. It should feel like a place that actually belongs to you.

This week on Art Life Plan, I’m talking about artist websites, why they can start to feel weirdly generic, and how a little more personality, context, and current work can make your site feel more like an actual extension of your practice.

Question of the week: Does your website feel like your place, or does it mostly feel like a place where you put your stuff?

What are you making right now? Not what you’re planning to make someday or what you think your art practice should be doing. What is actually sitting on your table, open on your screen, or half finished in the studio?

This week on Art Life Plan, I’m talking about how the work you are already making can tell you a lot about your process, your energy, and what is actually holding your attention right now.

Question of the week: What are you making right now?

(the sound is a bit weird in parts...sorry!)

Getting back into the studio is a lot easier when you do not have to figure everything out from scratch.

This week on Art Life Plan, I’m talking about a few simple ways to leave yourself an easy way back into the work, like writing down the next step, setting materials out, or stopping while you still know what you want to do next.

Question of the week: What could you leave ready in your studio today that would make it easier to start next time?

Have you ever made something that is technically fine, but you just do not care about it?

This week on Art Life Plan, I’m talking about those pieces that work on paper but still leave you bored, what that can tell you about your process, and how to figure out whether the idea needs a different approach or whether you are simply done with it.

Question of the week: Is there something you keep making because you know how to make it, even though you are not particularly interested in it anymore?

Do you have an art supply you’ve been saving because it feels too nice to use?

This week on Art Life Plan, I’m talking about the good paper, expensive paint, beautiful sketchbook, fancy block, or other material that somehow became too precious to actually make anything with. We’re getting into why we save supplies for “someday,” why using them badly still counts as using them, and how to get past that weird pressure to make something worthy of the material.

Question of the week: What art supply have you been saving for “someday,” and what could you make with it now?

It’s easy to get caught up in audience numbers when you’re sharing your work online, but a bigger audience and a stronger community are not the same thing.

In this episode, I’m talking about the people who keep showing up, why that matters, and a few ways to make more room for actual connection without turning your entire art practice into content.

Question of the week: Who is already showing up for your work, and what could you do to make a little more room for that connection?

Let's chat! I'm on instagram and also https://artlifeplan.com

A studio routine can work really well for a while and then suddenly stop fitting your life. Schedules change, energy changes, work gets busier, and the time you thought you had for making art starts disappearing.

In this episode, I’m talking about how to adjust studio time when your routine changes, why flexibility matters more than finding one perfect schedule, and how staying connected to the work can look different from week to week.

The start of a new semester always feels a little like the studio version of a fresh start. There are new routines, new people, new ideas, and a lot of things you cannot really know until you begin.

In this shorter episode, I’m talking about what fresh starts can look like in an art practice, why beginnings do not need to come with a complete plan, and how starting something new does not mean starting from zero. Sometimes the most useful thing you can do is make the first thing and let the rest develop from there.

Question of the week: What would a fresh start in your studio actually look like right now?

Episode 100?!?!!!

Studios collect more than supplies and unfinished work. Over time, they can also fill up with things we keep because of guilt, obligation, habit, or an older idea of what our art practice was supposed to be.

In this episode, I’m talking about the emotional clutter that builds up in a studio, from abandoned projects and unused supplies to old work we feel strangely responsible for keeping. I also talk about how noticing what still belongs in your current practice can make the studio feel more useful, more active, and more connected to the work you actually want to make now.

Question of the week: What’s one thing in your studio that you’re keeping out of guilt, obligation, or habit rather than because it still belongs in your practice?

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This week on Art Life Plan, we’re talking about why saying yes to everything can slowly pull you away from your own work.

We’ll look at creative boundaries, the cost of automatic yeses, how to pause before committing, and why protecting your time, energy, and attention is part of having a sustainable studio practice.

This week on Art Life Plan, we’re talking about why process documentation matters, especially when the middle stages of the work are easy to forget once the piece is finished.

We’ll look at process photos, sketchbook records, noticing patterns in your work, and how documenting the changes can help you understand how your creative decisions actually develop.

https://artlifeplan.com
https://www.instagram.com/cookiereddingart/

This week on Art Life Plan, we’re talking about learning to pace yourself in your art practice, especially when creative energy comes back and suddenly you want to do everything at once.

We’ll look at the difference between momentum and overextension, why sustainable rhythm matters, and how to build a practice you can actually return to instead of burning through all your energy in one big sprint.

Visit me on instagram or at https://artlifeplan.com

This week on Art Life Plan, we’re talking about seasons of growth versus seasons of maintenance, and why not every part of your creative practice needs to be expanding all the time.

We’ll look at how maintenance supports the work, why slower seasons still matter, and how to tell whether your practice needs more output or more care right now.

https://artlifeplan.com

https://www.instagram.com/cookiereddingart/

This week on Art Life Plan, we’re talking about how scale changes meaning, especially when you move from small daily work back into larger pieces.

We’ll look at what changes when the work takes up more space, how scale affects the body, the viewer, the materials, and why making something bigger is not just enlarging the same idea.

This week on Art Life Plan, we’re talking about the “ugly stage” of creative work, which is that deeply annoying part where the project looks wrong before it starts making sense.

We’ll look at why this stage is so easy to misread, how to tell the difference between a failed project and an unfinished one, and a few ways to keep going without turning the whole thing into an identity crisis.

This week on Art Life Plan, we’re talking about the role of play in studio practice, and why play is not separate from serious creative work.

We’ll look at low-stakes making, curiosity, material tests, weird experiments, and how play can help loosen your practice when everything starts feeling too tight.

This week on Art Life Plan, we’re talking about the role of rest in creative work, and why rest is not separate from the practice.

We’ll look at creative depletion, different kinds of tired, how to tell the difference between avoidance and needing a break, and why rest helps make a creative life more sustainable.

This week on Art Life Plan, we’re talking about the pressure artists feel to be visible all the time, especially when sharing the work starts to feel like another job layered on top of making the work.

We’ll look at what parts of your practice might need more privacy, how to create a visibility rhythm that actually fits your life, and why being findable does not have to mean being constantly available.