Twelve-Dollar Motivation
The lighting in our apartment is terrible. Now, given my cave troll nature, it’s actually rather impressive that I would notice this and somehow also consider it worthy of declaration. Our old apartment at the former Covered Bridge Apartments was a dream of light. This place, however, has almost no outside light and only a handful of overhead lights. We’ve supplemented with an army of lamps, and while just fine for most purposes, it’s just painful for drawing and (I’m told by Allyson) painting.
Now the result of this is that I don’t draw every day on the weekend. I know it isn’t a true motivation problem because I draw for hours when we visit Starbucks. I also spend my whole lunch break drawing outside during the week. Here in the dungeon, drawing is just harder to accomplish.
Now admittedly I’m overemphasizing the lighting problem for narrative effect. I also only have one drawing surface in the house—the kitchen table. This problem, however, requires $150-300 for a decent drafting table. The light problem, it turns out, was an easy and cheap fix.
I bought a twelve-dollar adjustable clamp-on light for the kitchen table. Right now, I just have a regular CFL bulb in it, but I’ve already ordered a full-spectrum CFL to really nail the lighting. Even with the regular bulb, it’s already a tenfold improvement. I just did some blind contour sketches at the kitchen table and then sat reading a book there just because of the wonderful task lighting.
So, yes, there are probably things that will require much effort or cash to fix, but there’s usually a quick and dirty hack to keep you moving for now. Don’t mortgage your present artistic productivity for a future that you might procrastinate right out of existence.
Technorati Tags: Art, Productivity, Lifehacks, Light