10 templates artists can use to be more productive

The idea of using templates in art sounds boring to us creative types since there’s no creativity involved.

Or so it seems.

What’s surprising is that templates actually help you find more time to be creative. They streamline the often-repeated tasks that can get old in a hurry, making them happen faster so you can get to do what you want sooner. Which in this case is the real creative work.

So what kind of templates can an artist use?

Inventing things is what creative people do. While creative-minded people want to reinvent the wheel every day, it’s not an effective use of their time. It helps to have patterns already in place that let you get to the creative work faster. So what kind of things can an artist make into templates, without killing the creative process?

1. Work Area You’ve no doubt heard the phrase “a place for everything and everything in it’s place.” When you have a consistent work area, you will spend less time looking for that thing you need.
2. Palette Setting up your palette the same way every time makes it incrementally faster to find the colors you are looking for. This also applies to Photoshop users who have their palettes customized for the work they do.
3. Marketing Schedule Having a promotion schedule already in place relieves you of the burden of figuring out when to do what tasks. Now you can spend your creative energy making those messages really awesome instead of wondering when to do them.
4. Routines If your morning routine or ritual is optimized, you won’t have to think about it so much. Making fewer decisions up front frees you up to make better decisions later. This is why Steve Jobs wore the same thing every day.
5. Blog Post Michael Hyatt has a fantastic blog post structure that he uses. I’m trying to adapt the same process as well. It works.
6. Plot Structure You learned about build-up, climax, and denouement in high school. It still works. “The Hero’s Journey” also works. These forms have worked for thousands of years. Figure out how to make your story unique in the way you tell it. Master the rules, then mix up the specifics a bit to make it more interesting.
7. Poetry Forms Shakespeare wrote sonnets. It’s a poetic structure that follows specific rules. There’s a place for free verse, but those structures have worked for hundreds of years for a reason.
8. Workflow I have a specific workflow for creating paintings. Doing it consistently can remove a lot of guesswork and save time.
9. Billing and Paperwork If there’s anything creatives hate doing, it’s billing and paperwork. I like Freshbooks for this reason. It makes it easy to track time on my freelance projects and billing is a cinch. You can bill people from your smartphone, even.

   This is also where promotional resources such as an up-to-date résumé, curriculum vitae (called a CV in art circles), or even an artist statement is useful. If someone asks for it, you already have it prepared and can quickly tailor it to the situation at hand.

10. Fee Schedule There’s nothing more awkward than being in a meeting with a potential client who wants to know how much your work costs while you silently try to figure out in your head how much your work costs. You should have this memorized, or at least have a simple way of calculating it without showing your hand. On my computer I have a one-page PDF that has all my rates for various design projects that I do. Hint: there are only about three price points, and the bottom price is about $1,000.

The key takeaway here is that nearly anything can be systematized and streamlined.

What are some examples of things you can rework into a template in order to speed up your creative process?

Photo Credit: Eric Fischer via Compfight cc