Art Snacking
‘Art snacking’ is a phrase I’ve coined for myself after catching a snippet on ‘Exercise Snacks’ on Radio 4 recently.
Arty snack-attack!
It’s something I suppose I’ve always done (without giving it a silly name!), but something I’ve started doing more deliberately for my art practice/‘creative health’, if that’s a thing! since hearing the importance of ‘exercise snacks’ on the radio.
The concept of exercise snacking, backed up by research, is that mini bursts of intense activity can boost your mood, general fitness and cardiovascular health, especially if we have quite sedentary jobs and lives, and/or for people who don’t have the time or inclination to, for example, go to the gym (like myself!)
Examples they gave included running to catch a bus, playing with the kids indoors on a rainy day, taking the stairs instead of the lift…Basically mini ‘activity ‘snacks’ that you can almost effortlessly add in to your daily schedule.
On more sedentary days, my own exercise snacks tend to consist of short bursts of play with Cookie in the house and parking further away from places to give me opportunities to add more steps in to my day. I also rarely go up flights of stairs, so do always try to walk up escalators and do the whole taking the stairs instead of the lift thing.
Napkin doodles!
Anyway, I started thinking about these exercise snacks in terms of my art and realise that I’m already ‘art snacking’ - doodling on a napkin or receipt whilst waiting for my coffee order, jotting an idea down before bed…taking a photo of something I see in a shop or on a tv show and storing it in an album as inspiration for a later date, etc.
But now I’m trying to do ‘art snacking’ more purposefully as a way to improve the creative parts of my brain and boost art productivity and it’s had some unexpected benefits:
Words snipped out of a magazine can be a great source of quick arty inspo
Generating loads of new and often unexpected ideas
Decreases the pressure of needing to come up with ideas as I have a new ‘bank’ of random ideas to draw from
Allows me to indulge in the more random/silly/obscure art ideas that are unrelated to any project I’m working on
Opportunities for learning and research, prompted by these random ideas
A step back into my ‘90s childhood will always be a two-steps forward boost in my mood!
How I’m implementing art snacks into my days more deliberately:
‘Art Snack’ journal: Keeping a separate, dedicated sketchbook to draw/write in, or stick said napkin scraps into
Art Snack prompt pot: I’ve recently begun keeping a collection of words and phrases from newspapers and magazines, which I can pull out at random and use as an art or journaling prompt. Sometimes this ‘being told’ what to draw can be really great to spark artistic inspiration - it forces you outside your normal way of thinking or approaching art, encouraging your brain to come up with images or prompting you to do research into a topic you wouldn’t have otherwise
Set a timer: A five or ten-minute timer can work wonders for some carefree doodling
Intentional art + exercise snacking combo!: I’m trying to follow my art snacks with exercise snacks! I do a lot of sitting as an artist with a day job! And keeping my body active is as important as keeping my brain active. So, ten mins of scribbling followed by ten mins of stretching is better than doing neither!
Consuming/learning/research: If it’s been a drawing-heavy day or if I’m too tired from normal work, I might instead set a timer or make a quick coffee and just sit and dip in to one of my art books (that mostly sit unread on a shelf these days :( ) or Google some facts about an artist or movement or exhibition I’m interested in - I might make notes, or just pop a word or two down in my art snack journal, or just read and relax. Lovely!
If you give art snacking a try, let me know how you get on/send me your results!
Here’s an article on exercise snacking if you’re interested: www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8011zke7nko and here’s the radio chat I listened to: www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002q2jn
Bears, bears, bears…I feel some new stickers coming on