Airy-Fairy Woo-Woo or Just Good Sense?

When in doubt, I re-align my compass by following joy. I let go of making AutoBio Comics and self-publishing my books and going to comic conventions. I let go of what I thought was going to be my for sure creative path for my life because it didn’t feel right. I let it go to make space for what was coming next.

And then I shut up and watched for the joy-o-meter.

Now. Right Now. There is Joy.

Yes. Of course there is. Look for it.

In my daily job there are pockets of joy that I began to recognize – helping an artist find exactly the right product to solve their art problem. Explaining a technique that has been a stopping an artist from moving forward in their current work. Teaching artists about social media and online marketing and how to build an email list… Discovering systems online to automate business communications… investigating audio and video broadcasting options online – being constantly and consistently rendered speechless by the global AMAZINGNESS of the internet! These are my joys.

Joy is a signpost telling you which way to go*.

Then You Need to Give Yourself Permission To Go

Yah. Permission. I’ve had a small amount of time online to build a small following who have a particular view of who I am and what I do. There was some resistance within myself in going ahead and changing what I did online in case I disappointed those already looking and caring about what I did.

But that’s crap.

Not that my audience is crap – you guys are amazing. But I can’t make decisions rooted in fear of disappointing you, or worried about whether you’ll stop caring.

If my readers stop caring about what I’m doing then it’s better if they move on because they’re not really for me anyway.

It’s like dating – it’s better to be wholly and totally yourself and attract the right person, then try and be who you think they want and end up living a half life where no one’s really satisfied or feeling much joy.

Let’s go for joy.

*(I talk more about joy as a signpost in my free eBook “I Wish Someone Had Told Me”. Click to receive.)

Fail Quickly. Fail Often.

Just make a big god awful mess and get it over with. Go ahead and ruin 3 sheets of paper in a row with horrible slicks of mud and back wash that make cat sick look gallery worthy. Waste a half tube of yellow ochre making baby shit brown in an attempt at a field of flowers. Go ahead. Hurry up and fail.

Now… how do you feel?

Did you die? Did you get bitten on the butt by the poisonous fail beetle? Did all your friends and loved ones reject you in an art fail  intervention? Did you get mocked repeatedly by strangers? Did you lose your spouse and your house and your family and your life savings when you wasted the half tube of $6 paint and ruined the 3 pieces of $2 paper?

No. No you did not. None of that happened*.

Sure, you felt stupid for a bit and you thought, “goddamn, that’s an awful piece of crap…”

But that’s okay, ‘cuz you’re new, and we’ve all been there. Failing quickly and failing often will just get you used to the big fat ‘no big deal’ that is screwing up a painting.

The quicker you fail, the quicker you get to the good stuff because you’re learning about what’s not working. This is just as valuable as learning what does work.

Plus, you never know when you’ll want to paint a big mess of mud and back wash.

Failing doesn’t mean you suck

*(If anyone does mock you for your attempts, they’re an asshole and should go eat paste. In the backyard. By themselves. Because they’re a douchebag and probably have scalp fungus and no friends – ignore them)

Get the rest of the hugs and encouragement when you sign up for our mailing list:

Where we talk about Letting Go of Perfection…

…and being brave enough to just go for it, even if it’s terrible.

Wuuuuuurds:

Hi and welcome to Art A&A, Art Answers and Ampersands with Lezley Davidson and Peeling-Onions.com.

Today I want to talk to you about another sticking point in art that can get in the way of moving forward. Its something that I encounter again and again in the classes that I’ve taught – it’s letting go of perfection.

Okay, you can’t know everything there is to know about painting or a particular art technique before you try. You can’t hope to gather up all the information and know how to avoid making mistakes before you go ahead and paint. You cannot try to avoid mistakes by trying to learn what to do in every scenario before you begin you only learn by doing.

You only learn by doing.

You must paint in order to learn how to paint you must sculpt in order to learn how to sculpt. Art isn’t a theoretical exercise. It’s not anything that you can work out in your head first and then hope to apply it perfectly. It just doesn’t work that way.

Let go of the idea of gathering up all the “what ifs” before you begin and don’t let it stop you from trying.

Okay – if you like this head over to Peeling-Onions.com or lezleydavidson.com to pick up the full ebook; “I Wish Someone had Told Me” – 18 Ways to Grow a Pair. Check out the blog, you can also leave a question for the podcast on the website. There’s a little form to fill out and you could submit a question of your own to have answered on the podcast. Okay thanks and we’ll see you next week.

Jason Edmiston

My whole life I’ve been jealous of those who knew exactly what they wanted to do and went after it with full commitment. Jason Edmiston is one of those people. He was committed to becoming an illustrator for as long as I’ve known him (grade 9), and I assume from much earlier than that. The classes he took and the decisions he made were always in support of his final goal of becoming an illustrator.

We used to work together and he brought art to our job so that he could work on it during breaks. He knew what he wanted and pursued it. As you can imagine, now he’s emerging at the top of his field.

Stupid Interesting Things

Not me. Nope. I couldn’t possibly become dedicated to one thing. Oh no… too much of interest in the world. Writing AND drawing AND admin organizing stuff AND online marketing AND physics AND web apps AND teaching AND audio/video publishing AND… and…and… Dammit.

Dammit.

..and I’m good at a lot of different things. Not to brag – I’d relish some focus… it’d be nice to suck at a bunch of stuff and then be left with the one thing I was REALLY good at. But no. Multi-talented… and I know there are a bunch of you out there that feel exactly the same way.

Renaissance Souls

That’s what Margaret Lobenstine calls us in her book “The Renaissance Soul”, and it’s something I can relate to. There are a lot of people in my life that fall into this category – lots of passions, lots of skills, lots of talents – no focus.

I’ve always managed my passions with the simple adage to – follow joy.

Where we talk Google + and Tumblr.

The fastest growing free social media broadcast sites for anyone working with visual images.

The Alphabet in Various Combinations:

Hello and welcome to Art Answers & Ampersands also known as Art A&A. I’m Lezley Davidson and today I want to talk to you about your marketing options as an artist.

There’s a couple new-ish type of social media sites online that you may have heard of you may not have. One is Google+. It’s pretty new – released in the summer of 2011. After Google’s failed attempt at Google Wave and Google Buzz and everything they’ve got Google+ which is a total win and it is fast attracting a tonne of artists and fashion designers and photographers and other purveyers of visual media. It’s very visually motivated and they have some really fantastic extra features that put it ahead of Facebook really. Guy Kawasaki has predicted that in 2012 Google+ will overtake Facebook with number of users online. I don’t know if that’s true and I don’t care to wager – but Google+ is very cool.

There’s no wall per se, you have your own posts, no one posts directly to you but you could organize really well all the different people that you’re following into ‘circles’. You can organize who gets to see what posts you put up. So if you want to focus all of your art posts or your photography or whatever with a particular group on Google+ you can do that. Then you can share you know you’re more fun stuff, like your videos of cats… oh wait… that me….videos of cats – mrrr… with only the people that will really enjoy your videos with cats. Google+ is really targeted for marketing your message.

Like I said it’s really visual they have a light box function for viewing art which is really beautiful in comparison to Facebook’s ugly McUgliness. When you click on an image it opens a lightbox in a beautiful black background -and  it’s large! It’ss a large image viewing area – you’re not looking atweeny little thumbnails, and you can share albums.

They have these added features like hangouts where you can invite just certain people, orhave an open hangout and have people join and it’s basically an online Web conference. Everyone’s hanging out with their WebCams – you can share art, talk to people… I don’t know – it’s really cool. It’s got a real advantage over Facebook I think.

They have just opened up the ability to make fan pages, sorry, not fan pages, pages – like business pages. Like Facebook so you can basically hang out with art friends or have a group discussion, get feedback on your art critique I have most of my comic friends hang out and do hangouts on Google+. It’s a really really cool. It’s really suited for artists and there’s a lot a lot of artists on Google+ right now.

The second is Tumblr. Tumblr’s been around for a while (since 2002) but it’s fast up and moving ahead of all the blogging platforms, the free blogging platforms for artists because of the viral way that images can be shared. It’s a really really simple interface and you can quickly, like ‘one click’ share images and images can be shared amongst thousands of thousands of people really really quickly. So Tumblr is definitely the blogging platform of choice I think in the future

That was really quick I thought I had more to say about Tumblr, but I really don’t.

Check it out they’re good options, they’re free options. If you don’t have a website to begin with those are two really good options for getting your work out there -!! nice telephone call-!! they’re really great for sharing your art and getting your art in front of a bunch of eyeballs.

Okay so that’s it for today if you like this podcast head over to iTunes and subscribe or give us rating or leave a comment or head over to our website. Peeling-Onions.com or a lezleydavidson.com and leave us a  question.  Okay great we’ll see you back here next week.

Let Go of Perfection
You can’t know everything about painting before you start. You cannot try to avoid mistakes by trying to learn what to do in every scenario before [read more...]

Image stolen courtesy of Kyle Clements.

(also – I didn’t know how to black the whole site, so this will have to do)

Here’s my Yupo paper test. It’s pretty cool.

And here’s the final scanned so you can have a closer look.

The Yupo was pretty fun.