Painting With Pals

why you need an accountability partner

I “met” my friend Ginger in an online art group. We each had signed up to have an accountability partner for a three month period and were randomly paired up. The idea of an accountability partner was to have another artist to meet with regularly to help keep both on track with your creative projects. It’s a sort of gentle art boss. Here are some ways an accountability partner can make your life better:

1. Increase Motivation

• Having someone to check in with can motivate you to stay on track: you are more likely to complete tasks when you know someone else is monitoring your progress.I know I am!

2. Improve Goal Setting

• An accountability partner can help you set clearer, more achievable goals by offering feedback and helping you break them into manageable steps.

3. Better Follow-Through

• Regular check-ins with an accountability partner make it harder to procrastinate, as you are responsible not just to yourself but to someone else. This is a big one for me!

4. Objective Perspective

• An accountability partner can offer an outside perspective, providing constructive criticism or helping you see blind spots in your approach.

5. Support During Challenges

• When you face obstacles, having someone to share your challenges with can provide emotional support and help you find solutions more quickly.

6. Increase Self-Discipline

• Knowing you’ll have to report your actions helps reinforce discipline, as you’re less likely to make excuses for skipping tasks or goals. Plus, if you do slack, they are likely to be gentle and make excuses for you: Ginger goes pretty easy on me.

7. Celebrate Success

• An accountability partner celebrates your victories with you, offering encouragement and recognition that reinforces your progress. It’s awfully nice to have someone smile and say “Yay, YOU!”.

8. Mutual Growth

If your accountability partner is also working toward their goals, you both benefit by learning from each other's experiences, setbacks, and successes. Watching someone learn and grow and get better over time is a fabulous thing to be a part of.

Ginger and I decided that video chats would be the best way for us to get together since she in in Alberta, Canada, and I am in North Carolina, USA. We did our three months per the original commitment, and then decided we enjoyed the process and one another’s company so much that we would just keep going.

That was about two years ago. We have supported, encouraged, and commiserated with each other through art courses, exhibitions, failed paintings and successes. We came to know that we share values and perspectives. We’ve shared our work and our struggles with it, and have built a trust that allows us to be open about how we feel about ourselves around our creative endeavors.

The one thing we had not done in all that time was to paint together! Tough, when you are thousands of miles apart, but technology makes that possible. So we prepared to meet at our usual time, but have some supplies ready to go. Also, though we hadn’t discussed it, we both showed up with a cocktail in hand: kindred spirits, my friend!

And so we painted! For about two hours! Freely and without expectation.

I reworked a couple small canvases that I had made a total mess of months ago and Ginger started on some new expressive work on paper. We had a ball and kept saying, “Why have we not done this before?”

Here’s how things went from her perspective:

“We’ve met many times online to chat and it felt natural to suggest we paint together. I gessoed a few sheets after first making marks, and got a bit too much in my head with this abstract piece. Once I switched over to a blind contour face, things felt more playful and not overdone. I didn’t want to plan too much on what I would work on but likely next time I will put more thought into it. Overall, I enjoyed our time together. It’s easy to say, I don’t really feel like painting today, but knowing we had a scheduled meet up with no pressure gave me the energy to paint the rest of the day.”

I love where she is going with these. I can definitely feel the easy, playful nature.

You’ve seen these two before, but they are the pieces I reworked during this time. I think I was able to make lemonade from those stinkers because I was chatting and laughing and not trying too hard to make something “good”.

We will for sure do this again.

How about you? What if you found yourself a like-minded partner to help keep you on track and hold you accountable for your commitments to yourself? You’ll probably even make a new friend!