A day in the life of an artist Mum
One of the main reasons I explored becoming a full time artist was indeed when I became a Mum. In 2019, I had my son and I knew that I didn’t want to return to full time teaching. When my friend asked me to draw her own sons dog for her, the idea of returning to my art as a side hustle, was born.
My kids have never slept well.
Pregnant with my son 2018
I can count on my hand how many times I’ve slept solidly for longer than 5 hours at once in the last 4 years. Let me tell you, teaching a class of 30 students on just 2 hours sleep is an effort to say the least!
Even now, my now two year old and four year old wake a couple of times a night and then they are awake with the birds somewhere between 530-6am generally.
Needless to say, this Mum’s day generally starts with coffee! Quickly followed, by coffee #2.
Once the caffeine has intruded the blood system, I’m hustling getting kids dressed, getting them some breakfast, organising lunchboxes and having them all ready to jump in the car at 820am for day care drop off.
They’re both at daycare until 230pm, so for those six hours I try to focus on things that I couldn’t do while they were home. Obviously drawing is a predominant focus, but some days my hours are filled with framing, packaging, printing prints, dropping things at the post office, writing emails (or this blog!), trying to schedule some social media content - although I’m often just winging this on the day! - and organising the other behind the scenes aspects of running a business.
It’s very true, I drink FAR too much coffee!
A few months ago, I was given the advice to have one day a week to focus just on the business stuff. So now, my Monday is my day to not worry about drawing but to get all the OTHER stuff out of the way. I write my emails, blogs, look at expenses, track my bookings, get my reference photos ready for the following days, sort of some social media marketing to try and get more commissions in (still learning this aspect!), package up and post any artworks from the previous week AND if I have any time, I sometimes actually have a bit of a break in there somewhere too! (realistically, this filters into some house work….#mumlife)
This leaves my brain free of all the admin, to purely focus on my drawing for the other days of the week. Most of the time, I am working on commissions, but this year I’ve also given myself the goal of entering a few art competitions so I’ve been working on honing my people portrait techniques and I’m really enjoying telling the story of everyday life within the portraits I’m creating. (You can check out my ‘Kiwi Kid’ original in my galllery or shop!)
‘Kiwi Kid’ - my first born
MOST days, by the time I’m picking the kids up at 230pm, I have finished what I need to do and I can switch off from work and be present with my kids. We chill out for the afternoon, 5pm dinner time, 6pm bedtime….one benefit of the early mornings!
SOMETIMES, I do have to catch up on a few admin bits in the evenings (or like today, daycare holidays, I write this while my 2 year old sleeps and my 4 year old is throwing his green toy plane across the lounge room waiting impatiently for me to finish this so we can go play outside!). This used to happen a lot more often, but now I’ve realised how important it is to have those boundaries and actually take a break when I can!
Work can wait, but my kids will only be this age once and although it’s taken me a few months to realise this, I think things are working well at the moment.
Well, my 4 year old is climbing the couches now so I best get going for some time in the sun!
Let me know if this is similar to your day in the comments below!