Winter Cleaning

While we know it's still technically winter (and gosh, the weather most definitely agrees), we decided that we needed to do a major clean of our studio/apartment. While we are not super tidy people, there gets a point where clutter, reclaimed art supplies that were never used, and various other things make it difficult to work.

We actually believe that your workspace should fit your own working styles and levels of tidiness - if you're a super neat person, then keep your space that way. If you aren't, then let those paint spots go uncleaned and do your thing. While we don't believe it's necessary to keep a super-clean-white-glove-passing workspace, we do believe in cleaning house once and a while in order to allow for more work and new inspiration to move in.

Going through piles of sketches and preliminary drafts, even stacks of finished paintings, can be very interesting. We actually found some fairly old drawings, and it was interesting (and reassuring) to see how far we've come since we first started pursuing art seriously. While some of our old work we're definitely going to keep, we've also made the decision to recycle a lot of it.

If you end up hanging onto your old work, it's hard to move past it. There is a definite fear that perhaps you might never never do a sketch that good again, or that you really did a great job getting a likeness down. However, as an artist you should always be looking forward, and you should strive for having your best painting always being the next one you're working on.

By cleaning out a lot of older work, you're making both physical and emotional space to create more. Besides the physical constraints of not having all that much space to paint new things (or to store finished paintings), if you still are holding onto a lot of old work, you're going to have a hard time to move on and really let yourself go in your next work.

Monkey + Seal will also be having a sort of house-cleaning super sale on a lot of their old studies and paintings from years ago later in February. Don't get us wrong, we love these paintings and some we would love to keep, we just don't have enough space for new ones. This is probably one of the rare chances to score original Monkey or Seal paintings at an affordable price. Stay tuned and we'll definitely keep you updated!

Anyone else doing some winter/spring cleaning? How do you keep your workspace fresh?

Making Space and Congrats to Monkey

First off, we'd like to announce that Monkey also received word yesterday that he got a piece into the School of Illustration's Spring Show! Yay! Seal also got a piece in for Illustration as well! Double-yay!

Second, the Monkey + Seal studio has been quite cluttered and busy these past few days as we've been cleaning up and going through old work and organizing our studio. We bought yet another rack for our art supplies (we already had two 72" x 36" x 20" racks, now we have three), and a nightstand for our printers.

Some of you might be all tidy tidy, but we're both (especially Monkey) pack-rat-ish, and we're always stocking up on different mediums, surfaces, and paper, so with all of the stuff we have going on, a perfectly tidy apartment is not the highest priority.

Although it's a time consuming process for us to move everything around and clean up (especially when we both could be doing more things to directly bring in money), it is a necessity for us. As artists, we have to constantly make space for new creations, new art, and new phases in life.

Purging old things that you no longer need doesn't just clear up physical space but also a psychological space. Old clothes can be donated (or repurposed), and we find that when we get rid of old stuff that "doesn't feel like us anymore," it allows us to think about stuff that does "feel like us" now. Although we're still not there yet, the moves and new fixtures have already made the space much more spacious, and we can already feel the difference in the energy level of the apartment. It is a much more conducive space to creating, and we hope to keep it that way for the year to come.

Are there any tips you'd like to share on making space? We're more interested in the metaphorical than literal, but if you've got some great cleaning tips we'd love to hear those as well!