Early in my career I read a great book by an author named Julia Cameron. It was called The Artist’s Way. It’s full of lots of useful suggestions and practices that a working artist can engage in to keep the font flowing, keep the work productive and invigorating. One of the best practices was to give yourself “artist’s dates.” Find the time, schedule it if necessary, to go do some extracurricular thing that is going to feed your inner artist. This can be many different things. Maybe it’s rolling down to the local bookstore, grabbing a latte and a good book on art, architecture, design or music, and doing some reading. It might be finding a local museum, or, even better, some local gallery shows featuring the work of people you haven’t heard of, and stopping by to see it. Or it could be as simple as finding a unique vantage point in the local landscape where you can see the light of the sun moving across some distant hills or buildings, and then watching carefully… Channeling Monet, yet? You should be.
–From Bob Boniol's December "Art in Design" feature.
