Easing Your Creative Process as an Artist With Better Thinking Habits

1. Introduction: Hello everyone. I'm Emily. And in this lecture I'm gonna be talking about mental health management for artists. 2. Manage Expectations: The first thing I'm going to talk about is management of your expectations. The two main things that I want to highlight are what it takes to reach your goal or goals and what you are capable of. Let's say for example, you want to learn how to draw full body of a character or a character design. That's a lot of stuff. Let's say, for example, when I was little, I started with drawing stick figures. Then when I started getting pushed to taking art so seriously that I'm doing it in a very disciplined manner with the help of my dad pushing me a lot. He started with first he had me drawing cartoons. And then after drawing a lot of cartoons, went into realism. With realism, I started with the individual facial features. Let's say for example, you draw a whole face. That's a lot of different parts. And the first thing that I did, I think was the eyes, not even the eyebrows yet. The eyes are already a lot. They can be a lot. Even if you're going to draw them in a cartoonish style. If you want a very easy, easy ramp, then sure, you can start with the eyes, you can start with the nose, the mouth, the ear, or even the head shape without any facial features. You could start with the full body with no face but just police the head or have a circle for a head. You can approach character design from any, any different direction. You could start with clothes. The most important thing in the beginning as an artist is to be able to draw from observation. If I put something in front of you, an object, some other artists piece, you should be able to copy it. And you need to train your artist's eye. You don't have to start with people. You don't have to do what most people might expect to view, like an art schools. If you're not planning on becoming a professional. If you're not planning on going to school for art or anything like that, you can start from whatever you want. Everything pretty much does require the skill of drawing from observation most of the time, unless you're doing abstract art, in which case, it's really whatever. But in the case of drawing things that are concrete like real objects or something, that probably the average person could connect to. Usually something, objects, people, animals, environments. The best thing you could do as a beginner is to literally just be able to draw anything. Even simple shapes like could even start with squares and circles. They don't have to be perfect, but you have to get the gist of how to put those things together to make. For example, 3D shapes. And 3D shapes are pretty important for just being able to draw anything that exists in the world. So back to what it takes. This doesn't just apply to the artists worlds, the supplies to any field of expertise. What I like to tell students is if you want to quantify or measure the level of progress, you need to become an expert. Shoot for 10 thousand hours of the activity that you're trying to get. Become an expert at. You don't have to become an expert though. I mean, if you want to become an expert, then shoot for trying to become trying to get 10 thousand hours under your belts asap. Let's say for example, those kinds of ours, like Olympic champion, kind of ours, like some four-year-old or five-year-old that starts going gymnastics training to three hours a day every day or 14 to 20 hours a week, or 40 hours a week during the summers if they're not in school, something like that. By the time they're 14 or 15 years old, in their teen years. Perhaps they are competing in the Olympics. Now it's not to say that you need that necessarily, but you can't really expect to become an expert if you're only putting in 30 minutes a month or something like that, how much you practice is pretty important. That's kind of what it takes. Putting in your hours is a good guide. What will make your progress speed up even more is if you follow some really good tips, guess he can. There are plenty of resources online these days. And if you take lots of shortcuts, then your progress is gonna be a lot more efficient. If you're really, really focused with all the hours that you put in, then you are perfectly capable of improving very quickly, especially in the beginning or when you're trying something for the first time, you just have to keep at it. So what I will say is where there is the largest discrepancy between expectation. What you actually end up with. I have had many students come to me and go like, I want to learn animation. I want to start my own studio. And the vast majority of my animation students become way too tired to try to pull off even a few frames of animation or continue with. Most of them end up becoming my drawing students. Not trying to say this as a discouraging thing. It's just an example of something about the art world where there are very high expectations, like kids or teenagers or whoever watching anime or some kind of animation. Whatever cartoons or video games or something like that. And they're like That looks easy. And it's like the art world's animation, especially for movies and TV. You should see that more as running a marathon. Or I was drawing individual images. Like just being an illustrator is much more like a sprinter. Most of us would rather do shorter sprint then a long tiresome marathon. But that's okay. There are methods of gently ramping up into becoming an animator for TV or movies if you want or perhaps if you want to do a short film, you can start by simply doing two frames. Because if for example, you can't even do like one complete image or you break a huge sweat from doing one image, then how can you expect to do like 30 of them or more of them when there are thousands of images and each episode of animation or tens, tens of thousands of frames of drawings in animated films. These are some more extreme examples like they're not that bad, but it's not so bad. You can still fall back to comics or video games. For if you want to do storytelling with a bit less drawing. I don't think that, I don't think people should feel too bad about it. I've fallen through, fallen into that trap myself actually, where I expected myself to make an animation out of my own original characters. And it was like it was so much work, it requires so much patients. And I was incredibly tired and not energized from that project. It was just sheer discipline. I fell back to comics, which I think is actually quite common. When you find that the grueling work of animation is so bad, you end up just falling back to being a comic artist, which is pretty much what I'm doing. That's okay because comic art is still a ton of work. But you have to think like what, what is your goal here? Like if you want to tell them more story in a shorter amount of time, then comics is a good way to go. But anyway, yeah, expectations versus what you are capable of. And the last thing I will mention is think of the bell curve. As in on most days, like if say you practice a certain amount of days per week or certain amount of hours per whatever, or certain amount of days per year. There's gonna be an average, your average level of performance. Then you're going to have your highs and you're gonna have your lows. You cannot expect yourself to always be hitting a new high every single time you go and do the thing. Again, that's part of managing expectations. But remember that your average and your highs getting higher and higher as you put more time into your craft. So try to remember that most important thing is practicing. Basically 95% of the drawing world is just grinding and grinding at drawing or whatever it is you want to do drawing, painting, animation. To reduce the amount of pain that you experience from possible disappointment. Manage your expectations. 3. Training Structure: I'm gonna talk a bit about training structure, your overall structure of your training regimen as an artist to have a good balance between making sure that you improve or you achieve your goals and also keeping your sanity. One thing you could do is set big goals, like big long-term goals, and then also set smaller goals like shorter term goals. You could do that by taking your big goals and breaking them down into smaller pieces. For example, the example that I talked about before, if you want to do character design, that's a pretty big, broad goal. You can break that down into smaller pieces. You could start with drawing eyes. Maybe one day you draw eyes or you can focus on ice for a week. The nose and next week, the mouth, the next week, the head, the different body parts or the overall figure wherever. And you will notice a lot more improvement over a shorter period of time if you focus on fewer things at a time. Because if every single day you're doing something different, like one day you're drawing a dog, and other day you're drawing a tree, and another day you're drawing an environment. You have a higher chance of not being able to quite see your progress. You could do that if you're happy doing that. I'm not going to discourage that. You train that way by doing whole bunch of different stuff. The benefits, I can see there are benefits to that. You go from 0% as in you've never drawn those things before. And then you have a huge variety of things you've tried before. And so, you know, about a lot of different things. Like you went from 0% to one or 5% in your knowledge on how to draw those things. If you enjoy that, by all means, you can do that. But if you want the highest rate of improvement over a shorter period of time, then what I would say is you should focus on one subject and probably the one subject that I advise the most on to obsess with for awhile is hands drawing hands because almost every single student I have had is deathly afraid of drawing hands. You should probably have obsessed with hands for a good few months. So that you can think of this, think of it this way. If you obsessed with drawing hands for a few months or a whole year, you could draw other things in addition to obsessing over hands for a year or whatever. But after you've gotten so comfortable with hands that you're not afraid of them anymore. Then you're comfortable with drawing hands for the rest of your life. You're only just getting better and better at them like, but you don't have to be so comfortable with hands that animating them doing, doing a bunch of different like crazy stuff is a cake walk TV. You don't have to get to that level. But I think that everybody should get to the level where they're not so afraid of drawing hands, for example. The other way of breaking down your structure of training. I would say you should balance between, as I said, you should balance between making sure that you improve and making sure you keep your sanity. I think that students or artists will become demoralized if the only place you're spending your time in is outside of your comfort zone. You don't have to torture yourself by only doing things that you've never done before, or only doing things that are very, very challenging to you because then art might become not fun for you anymore. Why does anybody do art if you're not doing it too upset yourself? I mean, hopefully you're not doing art, so you could just be better than somebody or prove a point or something like that. To me, at least. Like people do art to make themselves happy. I think it's a great medium or a great outlet for what's going on in your head. I think it's supposed to be soothing to your mental health. The thing that's supposed to help your mental health is actually damaging it, then you're probably doing it wrong. So whatever ratio of learning stuff to doing things that you enjoy, you figure out what ratio works for you, whether it's 5050. Doing something really challenging, then doing something that's, you're really good at already and you're doing it to enjoy yourself. But also my teenage years, I would tell myself, I shouldn't draw people so much anymore. I should keep doing other things that I'm not good at. Or perhaps try different angles of the face and stuff or I kept thinking to myself, Oh, I'm too good at drawing the front view. But actually, even though I was most comfortable with drawing, let's say the three-quarter view of the face or the front view of the face? Actually, I don't think there ever a point where you can draw literally anything too much. You could actually fixate on one thing, like only portraits are only front view portraits. Your entire portfolio or a collection of word can just be that. I don't think there should be any problem with that. It also depends on your goal. If you're trying to get into accompany or something, or you're trying to get into an art school, then perhaps there is a problem with that because they probably want to see some kind of diversity. But I've seen artists who only do portraits and I have never seen a full body peace in their portfolio. But they are super popular and they're looks like they're making good money off of their YouTube channel and it's fine. That's okay. If that brings you joy, then go do that. Have a good balance between challenging yourself but also keeping it fun and interesting for yourself so you don't drive yourself nuts. The other thing is, I would say, I would say do something like half and half drawing from observation and drawing from your head. Especially if you're not that great at drawing from your head, you're probably going to be really self-conscious because it's something that's coming out of yourself and it'll feel really awkward, but you should just focus on the fun of the process. The fact that drawing pictures is so amazing because it's a window into what's going on in your head. It's a window into someplace that does not exist anywhere else or in anyone else. Only you can show these things to people. Only you know, like whatever it is, the story or the character of the make-believe character that you're creating is supposed to be like if your portrayal of whatever it is that you're making is not up to your standard, then you keep training at whatever you need to do to better visualize whatever it is you want to create. That's more or less a brief bit of a lecture on your training structure. 4. Art Slumps: I'm going to talk about art slumps or art block. I think that if you spend a ton of time on anything doing anything, there's a pretty high probability you're going to have pretty bad days and you will have your good days and you'll have your bad days. You should remember that anytime that you put into your craft union, if you're having a really **** poor day, even if you are feeling really bad about the work that you're creating. It's still counts towards your improvement. It's still counts as training time. What goes on in your head? Like psychologically or your, your, your feelings or your mood. It's different than the part of your brain that is benefiting from the practice that you're putting in. A lot of the times when you're having a really bad day. For example, if you really don't feel like drawing, but you do it anyway. I think that'll just help to just give you gets you into the habit of doing something even though you don't feel like doing it. This is mostly, I think this is mostly important if, for example, if being an artist is your job or if you want to become an artist as a professional, I bet a lot of people will fall until like a pretty, pretty bad mood. If, for example, you put something out there or you publish a new piece of artwork and people aren't receiving it as well as they did for some other piece you've done, perhaps the last SPC did. You have to remember that? For example, musicians, not every single song that they release is going to be a big hit. Actually. Think about any creative, I guess, mainly musicians, I can think of or, or perhaps actors. Usually these people are known for a lake. Or musicians are known for one or a few songs. But they've made a lot of different compositions, a lot of which you probably have never heard of. And as an artist, you are no different no matter what Caliber or what skill level you are, whether you're you're world-famous or you're an amateur, nobody's heard about it. It doesn't matter. You will have your highs and you will have your averages and you'll have your lows. That's everybody. Everybody has that. All of your work stuck somewhere on the bell curve. And most of it of course is gonna be somewhere in the middle, in the average. But again, over time, your average, your best or even your worst, is going to get better and better. Let's say your training as an artist for some five years, your worst artwork that you do after five years of training is gonna be way better than the best year ever did in year two. For example. Worst-case scenario with an art block. I've heard of art blocks that last years. Perhaps more than ten years. It's not a reason to beat yourself up in any way. I think I have heard of an artist on social media who had an art blog or didn't do any art for a few years, perhaps. It was something like four years. I don't know what he was doing in that time. You can always pick it back up. It's as long as you're still alive, you can still pick it back up. For whatever reason if you drop it. You don't have to beat yourself up for needing to work yourself. Work your way back up to whatever you had before. It would take less time for you to get back into it because When you practice than your brain knows, it's just like you're carving these paths in your brain or your paving these paths. And then over time, you don't use those paths that much, then they'll just be a little overgrown, but they are still there. I've done this with piano, for example. I played a ton of piano as a kid all the way through to the end of my teenage years. And then throughout my twenties, I've pretty much not played almost any piano every now and then. If there was a piano around, I might play on it a bit. But I pick it up way faster than a beginner. I still remember a lot and I still enjoy it. Actually, I would say I kind of had an art block in my twenties. It's not an art block to the point where I wasn't drawing anything. I was actually still drawing a lot. I was freelancing. I was doing a lot of video game artwork, graphics. I also started teaching in my twenties, but most of most of that stuff was just like I would still call it art block. Because I knew that my artwork was so much better than what I was actually delivering, if that makes sense. Like I would see my artwork that I did for clients. And I'm like, I'm so much better than this. This is definitely not my best. Then of course, for students, if I'm doing artwork for instruction, I never ever think of it as, oh, this is gonna be my best artwork. Because the primary purpose of my artwork in classes is to instruct not to show off. Usually when there's other people involved for me, if there's other people involved, whether there's an audience at the time I'm I'm drawing, or if I'm being commissioned, or if someone hires me, or if a teacher gives me an assignment, my artwork is gonna be terrible. And took me awhile to realize, pretty much took my 20s to realize that things like freelancing just does not work for me. I noticed that the artwork that I did for myself, my personal artwork is the best that I ever deliver out into the world. I guess like whenever I put my new personal artwork out there, like clients would come flooding in. Like I would get a new client or at least a few new clients every time I released a new piece or a new painting that I did for myself. What I'm trying to say is that you have to get to know yourself. The best conditions for you is to work for a company or be a freelancer or whatever the conditions are, then then go with that. But I think that people I mean, if you can make it work, if your best condition for making your best work is not at the workplace, are not in the classroom. Then. Perhaps it's best that you keep doing more personal work. Maybe it's the fact that you have an audience. Having no audience works for you. Then, then do that. I think that a lot of people must think that it all comes down to how you put brushstrokes or pen strokes or pencil strokes on paper. But actually, a lot of this has to do with what's going on in your head. Lot of it has to do with getting to know yourself and figuring out what are the best conditions for you to deliver the best work that you are most satisfied with. With art slumps. Their duration definitely ranges from a day to a bunch of years, possibly more than a decade. Of course, how detrimental that is to you, I guess depends on whether you're a professional or to what extent you are a professional. But in my experience, the problem was my anxiety issues and also just finding a way to make it work. Instead of freelancing. I teach for income, and it works, it works well for me. There's definitely a much lower level of anxiety, what I am teaching someone. Then the rest of the time that I have, I just do work for myself. You should figure out what's going on in your life and in your head, instead of only focusing on just the actual artwork itself, the actual process of creating. One tip, I will give a practical tip. If for example, you have a really tough time getting back into the habit of just drawing every day or every other day or however often you want. You could just try setting your goal so low that it's just as easy as possible, five minutes a day. It's likely that if you get to five-minutes, you'll end up doing more time, but just don't expect yourself to surpass five minutes. If you end up doing something that you're not doing before, like in the past few months and you're trying to pick it back up and you're able to do five minutes a day for a few days in a row or for a few days in a week. Don't feel bad. You should just feel good about that because you hadn't been doing it for months or however long you haven't been doing it for? So just be happy that you did it. Don't be like, Oh, well, because I not practicing as much as I did before. Well, I should be ashamed or whatever. So your art slumps or your art blocks don't need to be so bad. Those are my tips for dealing with arts lumping art block. 5. Self-Discipline vs. Obsession: I'm going to talk about discipline versus absorption. The distinction I would make between the two is with discipline. I think of it as like you don't feel like doing a thing, but you make yourself do it anyway. And then obsession. To me, it's more ideal to be obsessed because you're not driven by like, Oh, I have to do this, I need to do it. You're more driven by like you're having so much fun. You're really enjoying the thing, like knowing the art-making so much that it's especially I think, a sign of obsession. If you think about whatever it is you're obsessed with like all the time, I guess that by definition is obsession. Well, I guess that could be said about discipline as well. But I would say obsession is more like a positive thing. The way, I guess the way to think of discipline is that to an extent, at least to an extent somebody even yourself is forcing you to do the thing. Now the reason I mentioned that is because I know of a lot of people who perhaps even for cultural reasons. Let's just, let's just say we're talking about hobbies or things that are not necessarily you would expect to get good at for the sake of making a living off of it. Let's say, for example, for some of you this might get to real, but I grew up in a, not the most traditional, but kind of a traditional Chinese households. And stereotype for us is that we have to play a musical instrument. I was lucky because I had a grandmother who just so happened to be a professional piano teacher. And I was forced to play the piano. As a kid. I actually practice piano and drawing alongside each other and I probably spend an equal amount of time on each. I would say I drew a lot more, but I got pretty good at piano. But I was also definitely forced to practice a lot. Actually with both. There's quite a bit of a difference in your performance if you're doing the thing and you're forced, forcing yourself to do it. I've seen people would be really good at something. And I think that there are a lot of people who can be really good at something and they were forced to do it. I mean, whatever the source of motivation, you can become really good at something like sea lions or dolphins at an aquarium. I mean, those animals are literally starved and it's literally starved to death or jump through hoops. It is possible to be really, really impressive at something through sheer discipline or just forcing yourself. I guess for better or worse. For now, I suppose I have framed it in a very negative light. But there are some benefits, of course, to being able to train out of discipline. For example, I've had at least one student who absolutely despises drawing people. And she kept complaining like, why do I have to draw people? I hate drawing people. She understands that in the world of comics were very interested in seeing people. Should, could've, she could have avoided drawing people all together, but she she felt like she had to back to my piano and drawing discipline thing. I was definitely enforced into playing the piano. The way I started drawing though, was. Actually started drawing on my own. And my dad saw that I was drawing and then he pushed me. My journey of becoming a better artist as a kid was a lot we infinitely more fun than my journey of becoming a better pianist. At a certain point though, when I reached my teenage years around when I was 1213 years old, I actually became quite self-motivated for both low, I would say I was mostly self-motivated for art throughout my life, even when my dad started pushing me. But there were times when it was pretty unpleasant. One time I remember, I must have been like eight years old or something and I drew this picture of this old man. I think he had wrinkles or he was bald or something and it was in retrospect, I realized that it's a different it's a subject matter that is quite different from the rest of the stuff that I drawn before. My dad saw the drawing. And the only thing I remember him remarking, you have not improved at all. And I remember that because I was crying so hard With my head on the desk over that picture. I don't think I was slacking off on it. I think I was pretty frustrated with it, but I worked really hard on it. Then he said that to me. As you can probably tell, my dad is not the most easygoing person, but I'm not going to denounce that kind of upbringing completely. I would say that huge reason why I'm so driven is because he pushed me so hard. Even though that journey was at times it was painful. But it pays off because now I, I would say that I am pretty self-driven now. When I became self-motivated for piano, it turned from, you have to, you have to play piano for 30 minutes a day or at least one hour a day. And instead of counting the minutes, looking at the clock all the time, instead of doing that, it was more like I need to nail this part of my music. It went from like, I have to practice this piano piece for 30 minutes, like this Tchaikovsky piece or this Beethoven piece. That was also just something that someone else told me to do. And nobody gave me a reason to to like it all that much except I suppose during family gatherings we would get to show off with our cousins. But that was never like actively on my mind every time I was practicing. The thing that made it so that I became really self-motivated with piano, was discovering sheet music to my most favorite video games. As a kid. That was the first time I sat through my longest piano playing piano practice session for two hours. I was trying to practice. The world map theme to Final Fantasy seven on the piano. Was like, I really got to get good at this because I love this game. And I got to show what a diehard fan I am. I would say that there are some things that will require discipline, but they will pay off in the end. You should lead with something that you're really interested in. Something that you would have a lot of fun with in drawing. It was about, Oh, I really want to finish this drawing. Also, I'd had started showing off my artwork on Deviant Art when I was around 12 or 13 years old. That was another source of becoming obsessed, was that I guess there were more people who could see my artwork and I was able to show off a lot more easily because of the internet. Because before I became that self-motivated, actually every day was before I could do anything else, before I could do anything fun for the rest of my day. As a kid, I had to practice piano. I believe it was either 30 minutes or one hour a day. Every single day. Then for art, I had to draw a picture every single day. And my dad would freak out if I missed any day. And he would say you're gonna go backwards. If you miss a day? That I would say was discipline. Because I mean, it didn't help that nobody told me to have fun. It was more than I had to do those things as Childers. I mean, sometimes these things are chores. If what's standing in the way is your skill of, let's say, as I mentioned, drawing hands for awhile, it'll be a chore. But eventually, when you get all the basics down and it becomes easy to use, then it often becomes fun. I think it has become that for my student I just mentioned who complained and complain about drawing people. She might still complain about drawing people. I had another student who years ago, just a few years ago, he hated rendering his paintings like with painterly brushwork in his illustrations. And I told him, Well, if you don't want to do and you don't have to. But he decided to just push himself for awhile. And now he's quite good at rendering his illustrations with the painterly brushstrokes and he loves it. I think that discipline absolutely requires you're building up your stamina. If you were pushing yourself to the limit with each illustration or each drawing you're doing. You should see that as a sign, that it's a good sign that you are really pushing yourself. You should notice that you're drawing faster or you're able to draw more in a shorter period of time. Let's say months ago, you're only able to draw an eye in 30 minutes and months later or a year later, you're able to draw a whole full body anatomically correctly in 30 minutes? That's I would say that that is a clear sign of improvement. I've seen that level of improvement before. It with your obsession. In order to make it more fun for yourself rather than George work. Just do things that you're interested in. My teaching method revolves around asking students, what do you want to do? Whatever it is you want to, do. You want to draw cars, you want to draw people, want to draw horses. You want to draw a horse portraits all the time. Let's do that. If it makes you happy, go and do that, you should be more driven by your interests rather than whatever it is that you think that other people are expecting of you. It also depends on your goals, whether you want to get into a school or get into accompany or when a competition, then I suppose those things will have to be adjusted accordingly. But I will talk about in the next segment, ways of motivating yourself and how to deal with external sources of motivation from things like social media, potential appointment, schools, and competitions. 6. Job/School Apps and Competitions: I'm going to talk about external goals. By that I mean, like in contrast with what I was talking about in the last segment where if you're doing fan art, for example, you're just like a diehard fan. Or you really want to express yourself. You make either fan art or you are making your own artwork. Your own original character, or a scene from your own original story. I would say that's like internal goal or an internal source of motivation. So what I mean by external goals or external sources of motivation is things like social media, employment, schools, and competitions, stuff like that. I think that if you have a goal of say, getting into your dream job at a company or something like that. You need to make sure that that is truly what you really want for the right reasons. I would say that at 1, that was my goal to work for a big name company. I mean, technically I have before, but not in like an animation studio or anything, but technically has an artist I have, but I don't think that I was at enthusiastic about that job. But having the big name was pretty cool. But it's still like I think that my idea of why I wanted to be in a big company was not a good source of motivation for me. I realized over the years that I wanted a job at a big company because I thought that was what was expected of me. If you're going to be an artist. To me, being an artist is about doing it for yourself, doing it for your own enjoyment. And just creating all this stuff, translating things that are only, that only exist in your head to whatever art form you put it into. I think I was pretty obsessed with flexing and being competitive. I realized that being competitive was actually huge turnoff to me because there's only so much room in the world for first-place winners. Then, where do the rest of us go? I don't think that we should only think of the world as either you win first place or you're worthless. I mean, probably a lot of you don't think that way, but I feel as if I was raised with that mentality. But with this class here, then I'm lecturing about This seems pretty appropriate to mention. There are very few artists positions, especially the very desirable ones, ones that are actually fun, and workplaces that will hopefully treat you well. Whether they give you full benefits, they pay you well. And you can get a lot of clout for working on whatever project. I mean, the jobs are there. But of course, as you can imagine, it's extremely competitive. If you're a competitive person, by all means like who might have stopped you from running that rat race? Let me put it in a better way. If that's what you want to do, go do it. If that's what makes you happy, go do that. But for the rest of us, like myself, who kind of shuts down at who? The rest of us who shut down at the thought of competition. The way that I think of the art world. In order to just allow for there to be room for everybody. In the art world. I think of it as you're climbing your own letter. You're the only one who's got the stuff in your head to put onto the world, whether it's your original characters are your original stories. And also even if you have the story in your head, that's like a romantic comedy or another action thriller comic, or another platform or video game. And it looks strikingly similar to somebody else's go and create it anyway. Because for example, there's a bazillion superheroes that all have like super strength. Perhaps there are lots of people going like, Oh, another superhero who has super strength. But look, that doesn't stop people from creating even more superheroes who have super strength. The fact that you're the one who has created it, or it was creating it, is reason enough for you to just go and create the thing. Even if it's been done a bazillion times. Let me talk about employment and schools and competitions. All of those involve judges. I'm going to say social media is a separate thing. I'll get back to that later. With employment in schools and competitions, they're all kind of the same thing. You have a set of people who are going to be looking at your artwork, you have to expect that you're gonna be rejected a lot. You just have to. I've been told by professionals when I was very young that you have to be relentless and this is true. You absolutely have to just keep putting your stuff out there. You have to keep applying, you have to keep trying. And if you were truly determined, however many times you get rejected is not going to matter. You shouldn't care. Or if you really are obsessed, you wouldn't care. Because the grind and getting better. And no matter when you get your dream job, whatever hard work and blood, sweat and tears that you're putting in, it's all worth it to you. You don't care when you get it, whether you get it two years from now or ten years from now, you're going to still work so hard for that. It might take that long, but that would be impressive for anybody. I thought that I really was bad at what I did just because I didn't come out with a job immediately after graduation. I think that when I looked around me with my own classmates or colleagues and then my own students when they came out of college, they didn't all have a job straight out of college. They might've taken a year, six months, a year, a few years to land the first job. With the art world. Maybe you need to work on your portfolio more. If your portfolio wasn't ready for a job out there, then you just need to work on your portfolio. That's it. It doesn't it doesn't mean that it's over for you. I don't think we'll have to be so judgmental if we didn't come out of graduation with flying colors with our dream job already. I think that most people like if you're trying to get a really good job, there is probably going to be a ladder that you have to climb. And especially for companies, your artwork is going to have to look a certain way. It's going to have to look the way that they wanted to look. You want to look at the style of whatever project that you'd be recruited into. Also remember that if you're trying to get into like a larger company, that you're gonna become coworkers with people who are already working there. So that's another example of managing your expectations. Don't feel bad if you get rejected. If they give you feedback, that's even better. Like definitely take their feedback and don't take it as a cue for you to beat yourself up. I mean, I've I've received feedback from years ago. I did get feedback on my portfolio from the hiring manager of Disney animation studio. I mean, I was so perfectly positioned, but I did not realize how incredibly smug I was at the time. But also what I learned was my style was just not a good fit. So it's not even only about whether or not you're good enough, quote unquote, good enough. Good enough, I would say is that your work is, shows high level of skill. It's professional, it's polished. You have a good collection of work that is complete and cohesive and shows that you are at a professional level. The other factor is you're fit. You have to look at the style of the artwork, the company or, or the project that you're trying to end up working in. If it's not a fit, then that's not the job for you. You shouldn't think of getting into companies as an artist as well. It's a matter of working for the best. Because this is the top company of the world or in the country. You shouldn't think of it that way. You shouldn't think of it more as is it a fit for you? Because I personally do not think that I would work well in accompany. Really hate when I am in a workflow. And I get interrupted by co-workers or my boss while I'm doing the thing that I'm being paid to do. And they tell me We have a meeting. And especially when the meeting has nothing to do with me. I'm just being there to be a cheerleader. I mean, it makes me look really bad by saying these things. If you were to say those things about corporate culture, I don't think you should be seen as a bad person. It's more like, is it a fit for you? If that kind of environment is not for you? There are other ways of getting buy or making it in life. Let me go back into judges. With potential employment. There's hiring manager or whoever is looking over your portfolio with schools, It's admissions. Who's looking at your portfolio and competition? The judges. Again, they all have different styles, like tastes in style or whatever. And again, it's basically the same thing. Like I said, there's how developed your work is and then there's your style. I am also not into art competitions because when I was in high-school, I believe I entered this local competition, which I still feel better about because there was just so much anticipation because I really thought that I was the best. I painted. This guy wearing a trench coat and sitting on ledge like a cement ledge. And he was playing the viola. Because I played viola. I thought it was probably the best work that I had done at that time. I spent a really good amount of time on it. And upon walking around and seeing all the entries with my dad, he actually thought that mine was the best. However, I really didn't know that much about the art world. When I saw who won, I was so bitter. I was incredibly just I was so mad. My dad, he saw there was a table all setup with all this food as a reception to this competition, the announcing of the winners of this competition, this local competition in my school district. When all all the winners have been announced, I was expecting to be one of them. And my dad who has these pretty strict standards and is not shy about criticism. He told me himself before they announced the winners, that he thought my work was the best out of all that he had seen. I'm pretty sure he was looking forward to eating with the rest of the families of the participants. But I was so mad. He walked over to me and it was like, you want to you want to eat something from here? And I was like, No, I want to get out, I want to go home right now. I feel so bad because I kind of wish that I allowed my dad to grab some food before we got out of there, but I was just so upset. My dad does not usually utter kind words just in general. But as we got into the car, there was silence and he was probably thinking pretty hard about what to say to me. By the way, the the entries that were like landscapes that were very impressionistic, like impressionistic, more fine artsy kind of stuff. Whereas my artwork looked more like much closer to video game concept art. Anyway, as we got into the car and we're starting to drive home. The first thing that my dad said was, I think that we need to understand is that art is subjective. I think this is one of the things that my dad said to me because under normal circumstances, most other times, if, for example I failed my road test, he would probably just tell me, this is your fault or like they don't take you seriously because you look like a kid or something like that. That's why you failed. Like the bottom line, oftentimes would be that, oh, it's my fault. Then again, on other things where he clearly I did my best, he would tell me that he's proud of me, but This time, he might've been told me he was proud of me, but what he did end up saying, it was surprising to me because it was actually comforting to me. He told me that artists objective. And this is like the biggest takeaway you really need is that it's not the only, it's not the only factor that you have to be good at anatomy or you have to be good with lights in shadow and color theory and stuff. No, it's not just that. It's also your style. And who are the judges, who are the Admissions, who is about to hire you? And what is the image of the company you're trying to work for? Because if, for example, you were getting hired to be a storyboard artist for SpongeBob. Then why would they hire you if your artwork looks like your artwork has a bunch of soldiers in it, they will all look realistic. Like you don't belong on a team full of cartoon artists. Realized that I should probably talk about social media in a separate segment. 7. Social Media: Alright, social media. It does belong in its own category, I believe, because now the judges are out of the masses and it's kind of like just, I would put it like you're cutting out the middleman. You're you're not even bothering with people who are kind of like gatekeeping or like employers. Because ultimately employers wants to release your work to an audience. And the audience. Usually if you worked for a company, It's the employer's business or the higher ups business. It's their business to make sure that your artwork translates into money. And as an employee, that's not so much your business. Whether or not you care about that. That could be another topic. Anyway, social media. Throughout my years, I have heard of students who just quit it altogether. When I hang out on Twitter as an artist, I had no idea how rampant. Like the expression of just the sense of hopelessness and the, the apologies for not updating every day and I'm just not going to draw today are just not feeling good about, about this or that or hopes it looks like this drawing just flopped. Social media is a whole different animal. It's fast, it's instant, it's massive. It's all kinds of things. And there's huge potential in it. In both ways, the good and the bad. The good is that. Sure, you can become viral. You can, you can become an overnight sensation. You have access to your potential source of capital or supporters who might want to support you just through donations, just because they love you. And it could be that you have 0 deadlines. Nobody's making you do anything. It's whatever you say. You can just release a thing, you can drop a thing and they can go wild over the thing you just dropped out of nowhere, or you can announce things and then you can make your own deadline. The bad thing is, you can end up tying your own mental health to your numbers, your number of likes, your subscribers, your followers, and your retweets. I want to address that. There are so many, there's so many moments when I am on Twitter with artists. And there are so many people who get so down on themselves that I am tempted to just stop and tell them exactly what they need to hear, but there's just so many of them and I have other things that I got to do in life, what to do on social media. Let's start with that. I would say that social media and the Internet has made it the easiest in the history of humanity to be an artist. Because the most overlooked skill, I think as an artist is your skills of presentation, Bridging your artwork to an audience. Even when I went to art school. I mean, it was a fine art school, but still, I don't think there was much emphasis put on getting fresh eyeballs on your artwork. Sure, their gallery showings, but the Internet, people could be sitting in their beds, on their couches or at their computer at home and from the comfort of their home and become instantly in love. Your work is just literally at your audience's fingertips. They can become your fan. They can tell you what they think just instantly for better or worse. But in my experience, people have been overwhelmingly kind. I don't know, perhaps I'm biased because I don't know. People like my work or my artwork has enough overlap with the kinds of people who are on social media. Anyway, what to do? Get your work out there because I don't really know as of right now. I don't really know how to instill a sense of motivation for you to just get your work out there. Because what keeps ringing in artists heads is my work is not good enough. My work is not good enough. Or people might be nasty to me. They might tell me I suck. In my experience. And just from seeing the comments on people's artworks. Overwhelmingly, just like nobody who's that mean? Like the only times that they're really, they really become like just mean or abrasive is if this is a whole subject in itself, is if you're in two nf teas or if you don't know, make something offensive, something like that, even then, people are usually pretty quiet about it. But in my experience, overwhelmingly people are very supportive. I'm going to say one of the other things to do, grow a thick skin. That's not just for social media, definitely applies to if you're gonna compete or apply for jobs or apply for schools, you got to get that thick skin and not allow for the fall of rejection to hurt you so bad. When you release new artwork, for example, on social media, I think common trap to fall into is expecting that it's going to receive a lot of interactions, likes or more subscribers or whatever. I would say, you can soften your fall in case it happens. You don't have to really prepare yourself most of the time. You do not have to prepare yourself for success. You work hard and hope for the best. But I think that there is more preparation required in probably the more common case, which is the which is either apathy or just not the kind of reaction you are expecting. So don't, don't tie yourself worth to the numbers on social media. Because there are lots of factors I mentioned overlap with the audience. What I'm saying here is that I'm not, I'm not going to say that, Oh, well, they should always absolutely love your art work no matter what it looks like. That's just not the case. The audience on social media is probably different from that of people who go to museums. I don't know though. I mean, I myself have not seen fine art on social media. Well, perhaps if you count out of t's, I don't know. It's different. There's a lot of different kinds of artwork in the circles that I hang out with. It's mostly like digital painters or comic artists, character designers, illustrators. That's the kind of circles that I hang out with. More commercial artist rather than a fine artist. Fine artists being an artist who creates artwork and sticks in a museum, more and more like that or more abstracts, highbrow kind of stuff. So I don't, I don't do that. I think that works pretty well on Twitter, for example, is concept art or video game or TV show, movie fan art. Especially if video games really hot at that time, then then probably like you will probably get a lot of interactions if you do Fan Art of something that is hot at that time, Like, I don't know, gentian impact or Hades or arcane. You can, you can surf that wave of height if you want. So for fan art versus original content, you're gonna go the fan art route shirt. You can get a ton of interactions for doing fan art. But you have to remember that you're kind of piggybacking off of someone else's popularity. It could also depend on how you've executed your artwork. I guess it depends on your style. Perhaps if it's unique or just really hits all, all those, all those items on the checklist for people, perhaps they would be more interested in your other pieces of artwork. But otherwise, it is very likely that if you Submit a bunch of fan art on social media, and then all of a sudden you do something original. Then it's very likely that people aren't going to interact with original content as much as they have with your fan art. In my experience, building your platform or building your popularity off of original content is definitely harder because you have to get people from knowing nothing about your stuff, too. Loving it enough to interact with it. This is why I say you need to get on social media and keep promoting your work. Especially if you're trying to get some traction with your original content. Then over time, you need to keep grinding at exposing your work. On Twitter. It's most acceptable to repost your work over and over again. It only works if you know how to get into into circulation. I'm not going to do like an exhaustive tutorial on this right now. But a keyword that you can search up on Twitter is art. Share one word or two separate words. You don't have to do the hashtag, you can do with the hashtag or without. You should get on those threads and reply to those threats. The archer threads, especially when they are fresh like day of fresh, like three hours fresh. And then reply to that art share post that says our chair, please post your work or your links and tag people. You don't have to tag people, but if you have art friends on Twitter or on Twitter, then you can tag them. Ideally if their mutuals with you and probably if they have a smaller follower base. You attach your artwork, you introduce yourself or you put out your links, your website or your store or whatever. And then that's how it gets into circulation because a lot of people are looking through these Archer threads and often are looking for more artists to follow. And that is how I've been building my Twitter account very consistently. You should remember that. Just because you don't, you're not very popular right now. It doesn't mean that your artwork is bad. There's a lot of good artwork on the Internet that's just sitting there basically in a dark dank basement. Because the artist has not consistently put their artwork into circulation. It's basically like leaving yourself and your artwork in a coldest sack and never getting out onto the highway. If you do that. You're gonna be wondering, why am I not popular yet? And it's like you're going to maybe you might feel like you sock or something and it's like no lots of brands or lots of companies or whatever. The things that are ubiquitous just like everywhere. Whether it's Geico commercials or McDonald's or car commercials. You hear about them all your life. Especially things like Geico, because the commercial is always showing on TV or wherever on ads. You hear about them all the time. They don't, they don't care if people who already know about them get annoyed because they're trying to make sure you're reminded. Existence. And brand familiarity goes such a long way and it's very, very important. While they are doing the thing, they pour so much resources into advertisement. I don't think this has emphasized enough, at least in my art education. Definitely not in Lake middle to high school. Nobody said like, Oh, you have to promote yourself a lot, know, you, you, this is the advantage that you have to take with the Internet. You need to put your work out there. And you also should be interacting with people with meaningful interactions. If you want to be real sincere, I would always try to be sincere. If I see artwork that I like, I will say something about it. I will say something nice. You got nothing nice to say. Don't say anything. The worst thing most likely that you're going to experience is apathy, meaning nobody's going to interact with your stuff. I mean, you could look at your stats on Twitter and look at how many impressions you have, just to get a feel of how many people are seeing your posts. But again, you need to get your work into circulation. And if you really want to build an audience, it is a separate grind. You can't just focus on the artwork itself. You need to get it in front of fresh eyeballs all the time. And you also have to remember, not every single one of your followers is on Twitter all the time. If you come up with a new piece of artwork, you might need to re-circulated over and over again. Because also not every Twitter follower or Twitter user is going to be that active all the time. You might even become inactive for weeks or a few days or whatever. And people are like that all the time. Not everybody is dedicated to every platform. As a user with managing your mental health around social media and things around the Internet and dealing with it, you should really try to understand the bigger picture and just be aware of the larger context and social media. You need to remember why are you doing your artwork? You're not doing it for the numbers primarily. Numbers can be a guideline as to how much you can possibly capitalize on your, on your audience, but also the numbers themselves doesn't tell everything. Sometimes people might just hit the like button and that's it. Not every like is equal. Some people might genuinely like, really love your work and some other people are just like, Yeah, this is cool. And that's it. You should also set aside time to do artwork on your own, knowing that it's possible that nobody will ever see it or be okay that nobody's ever going to see it. Because you need to ground yourself again, like why are you doing art in the first place? It's possible that you're doing it for the wrong reasons, like numbers on social media. I don't want you to feel bad for any artwork flopping or whatever. And because it happens to like, it seems like it just happens to so many people. And I have seen even really, really big popular artists express some intense self-doubt. If you feel any of these negative feelings, you're absolutely not alone, but you can soften the fall or you can curb your bad feelings. Life doesn't have to be so bad. Yeah. Posts on social media. If, if that's your thing. And if you really want to commit, it's going to require a very long grind. People get popular over the course of years. It's not just like do not expect to be an overnight sensation or make viral posts. That's usually the more rare thing. If you get a viral post, congratulations. Again, usually have to prepare for the worst. That's not exhaustive, but sort of a brief, brief in 20-minute rant on art, on social media. 8. Marriage Proposal vs. Fishing: One really cool way to think about the process of putting your artwork out there and how you react to the outcomes of every time you put your artwork out there and wait for some kind of outcome. Want to think of it as marriage versus fishing. I saw this on Twitter from some kind of account that gives out really good advice to artists. I thought this was really profound. I think most artists think of the process of putting their artwork out there or submission, or applying to schools or jobs. They think of it as a marriage proposal. That is why people get so miserable when they get rejected. Because they think, oh, this is it like, or if I get rejected, I am gonna feel so bad about myself and my artwork or whatever. But the better way to think of it is fishing. I don't think it's proper or like realistic for a fisherman to feel so terrible for not catching fish with their first bit of that they put on their line and cast out into the water. You're not going to get your first whenever the fish are called sea bass? I don't know. I'm not a I'm not a fishermen. Anyway. You're definitely not going to catch a huge fish your first time around. I mean, maybe you will, but it's not very likely. It's not the most likely thing. Again, if you do good for you, you didn't really have to prepare for that. Or perhaps you trained really well or you're really lucky. As an artist, you have to keep constantly recast, casting and recasting your line. And seeing if you get any bites. Shouldn't be thought as much like a marriage proposal. It was marriage proposals. You don't want to be doing marriage proposals like you're casting your fishing line. But don't, don't treat it that way to treat it more as you're just putting yourself out there and increasing your likeliness that you will lend something. I think that is a better way of thinking of the process of putting your artwork out there. 9. Inner Dialogue: I want to talk about your inner dialogue. I'm going to go off of the kinds of things that I have probably told myself many times. Things that I hear my students saying to themselves or me, or things that are, have likely been going on in their own heads as they're going through this process of trying to become better artists. A few things are like, I'm not good enough, do slow or I'm really slow or I got worse. I should be better at this. Better than this by now, stuff like that. Or if you put something on social media and you tell yourself, I thought this would actually perform better on social media. You really thought that what you did was really great, but other people end up not liking it so much. There's all kinds of things that you could be thinking while you're doing your artwork. Whether you're actually doing the drawing or you're in the process of showing it to other people. For certain, there is a ton of empty space in your head. That empty space is plenty for all kinds of negative thoughts. You should replace them with positive ones. I realized over the years. My brain is so often filled with me thinking back on the most embarrassing moments of my life and trying to a replay them. And the man I should've said this and that. I mean, that is sort of related. Because if you're gonna put yourself in a worst mood and probably you're not going to perform as well. But as with the dialogue that is more pertaining to what you're doing in that moment. Like while you're drawing. Like if you say, I'm slow, I think that artists complaining that they're too slow, I actually still think that I'm too slow. Drawing a lot of the times. I don't know. Why do I think I'm slow perhaps because I'm so used to watching so many time lapses. And it's like if you're comparing yourself, the pacing of your drawing and you're more of a beginner or intermediate, and you're comparing the pace of your drawing to professional, or especially if you're comparing your piece of drawing to a time-lapse, that's completely unfair. And you should be more realistic about again, your capabilities. How long does it take for you to draw a portrait? How long does it take for you to illustrate a full body of a character? Because if after 30 minutes, you're still not done with your portrait or whatever. And you tell yourself, man, I'm slow. You should time yourself. How long does it take for you to do something, anything drawing, I draw a face or full body and environment. Time yourself for each of those things. If later on, you should write it down somewhere. If later on you go like, Wow, I'm really slow. That just you're feeling or did you actually measure? Like however, whatever you can measure. When you're when you're saying like, oh, I'm, I'm slow. Compared to what? Compared to whom? Slow. You can measure is time, your own performance, perhaps your own state of mind. I don't know, even if you are slow. So what I think that the bottom line of all these complaints is like, okay, what are you going to do? Most of the time I would say, I'm gonna keep fighting, I'm gonna keep going. I think that a lot of people feel so slow in there. I don't know making comics. Like I do feel slow when I make comics, but then you try to align your own feelings or what's going on in your brain with real data. You think you're slow with comics. First of all, how long have you been at this field of expertise of making art? How much time are you putting into it? How long does it take for a professional to make a page? And how long do other comic artists take? How long do they take to put out a page? Let's say like on web tunes or topos or whatever comic website. From what I've seen in slink, one-page a week, maybe two pages, perhaps more if their style is really, really simple. Your inner dialogue. If you find yourself saying something that's negative, you should figure out what, what is that based on? What is your goal? What are you truly focused on? And I think that there should be more focused on how much progression you're making. In order to do that, put the date on your artwork. If you're doing digital artwork, then I guess the date is going to be on your file info. But I would still write it down because anytime I have written the date on any of my artwork, I've been really happy that I did. Anytime I didn't. I always regret it. Again, The good enough or I should be better than this by now. Whatever. If you compare yourself to others. Well, if you ever wonder Lake what it must be like to be an artist who keeps cranking out really, really popular pieces. Well, perhaps it's that they don't, they're not doing, they're not dealing with as many obstacles as you are, maybe mentally, or they have more positive energy like they have more curiosity or this fixation, this obsession against the obsession discipline thing. Perhaps you are too focused on comparing your work to that of a professional. And being, especially if you look at your artwork and you go like, wow, I hate this. Or while this looks bad. Again, you want to approach it in a more logical way, in a more like just not, don't leave with your feelings with that. Go ahead and feel what you feel. But work towards a mentality that is more conducive to being more productive and constructive. Key thing is constructive. You need to train your artist I, and you need to look at your artwork. If say you're copying something and you look at the reference you're copying or whatever it is you're copying. And you look at your own artwork. Break it down by smaller pieces. One common mistake with artists. They draw one I larger than the other. I used to, I pretty sure I used to do that all the time, but realistically, all of us have one eye that is bigger than the other. Nobody has a completely symmetrical face, but that's besides the point. If clearly there's some proportional discrepancies or you need to move something around on your drawing. Just look at smaller parts. Just identify what are the issues, what are the discrepancies between your drawing and whatever it is you're copying. Then figure out the solution and then execute on your solution rather than staring at your drawing and being like, I hate this and I don't know why, but I know that I hate it. Don't sit in your negative feelings towards your own work. Instead, focus more on finding the solution and executing the solution. I'm not saying do not at all acknowledge your mistakes or your shortcomings. That's still important. But I think most people are more inclined to sit and stay in their negativity, which most of the time it's not particularly constructive. Focus more on being constructive. Again, this inner dialogue is really important. I think it's really important for me to articulate that. Because I don't even know if most people realize that you yourself as a person, you yourself should be treated lake another person. One way to put it as like, well, would you say this to other people? Would you tell them that they're too slow or that they're somehow inadequate. Or you look at their artwork, are you going to say that it's sucks? If you're not, then don't do that to yourself. Instead, if you're gonna be a good friend or if you're gonna be supportive. If you're going to be kind to them, you should be kind to yourself. Because it's very old school to work off of. I'm going to crack the whip and tell myself or tell someone else that they're not good enough and that should motivate them or that should motivate you. I don't think that's really sustainable. There are better ways of approaching improving, improvement and honing your skill. And that is with more positive energy. I don't mean like unrealistic optimism. I mean saying things and thinking things that are constructive and that are not draining your emotions or your mental health. I don't have an exhaustive list of all the kinds of things that artists tell themselves when they're having a tough time or if they're giving themselves a hard time. But also you will need to train yourself over time because you're not going to get rid of, if you are struggling with this, you're not gonna get rid of it overnight. I have discovered this about myself upon becoming a teacher. And when I've been teaching my own students, and I see that they are beating themselves up so much. I'm trying to hold their hand back from hitting themselves mentally and emotionally. If I give them advice, I find myself thinking or realizing that I do this to myself. And if I'm gonna be a good leader, I need to follow my own advice. Do not continue or do not practice. Self-abuse. It's unnecessary, it's completely, it's unfair. Perhaps another thing, another way you could think of it is think of yourself as a kid or just embody your problems in, let's say, just an imaginary child. I think this is a psychology technique. I pretty sure I didn't invent any of the stuff that I'm talking about, but I just thought of it. If you wouldn't say these horrible things or negative things to a kid, then don't. What would you say to a kid who had your problems? You might be surprised, you might come up with very kind and also constructive things. You might find some kind of constructive things to say to that kid. And if you do, you should say them to yourself. You also will need to catch yourself in this constant loop of negativity. I've had to do that. It is difficult, it requires effort. It also helps if, if there are other people who are around you who are reinforcing this negative attitude. In my experience, I have needed to avoid those people because they've only fed into that negative voice in my head. And I just needed my head to quiet down enough to replace the negative thoughts with more positive ones. Another thing, when you are practicing or you are drawing. For your own enjoyment, you have to set aside time dedicated to just doing whatever you want, no judgment, and just allow for your drawing to be whatever it is going to be. Shut down that negative, abusive voice in your head. I think that is good practice. And also again, you should set aside time just for enjoyment, no judgment. It's not about being a high achiever or making your next masterpiece. You need to just draw and just allow yourself to be an, allow your artwork to be what it is and be okay with it. Because you got to pave some nicer neural passageways in your brain so that you get into the habit of doing things that are more conducive to getting more things that you want, getting your more desirable outcomes. 10. "I will never be that good.": You ever gotten intimidated when you looked at some artists work, whether it's an animation are really great game graphics or really great painting or really awesome line art. And perhaps your thought immediately goes into thinking these self-defeating thoughts. Or just the sinking feeling that you're just never going to get there. I still feel that way. But I think that it's just the thing that happens when you watch a magician perform all these tricks. Whatever those artists that you admire, like if you see there are work and they've kind of intimidated you or you, your perplexed and you just, you're just thinking to yourself, how did they do that? Well, at a certain point, like if you discover exactly how the magician did it, then it becomes so obvious that it's, oh, well, now the magic is gone. But probably most people in the world are never going to actually know how to do the magic trick or what's the secret behind the magic trick? After you've found out what is the secret to the magic trick, then it's your turn to go ahead and trick all the other people. What I would say to do, if you get intimidated or a, you see an illustration or you find an artist in your leg. Now we're going to be that good. Like I feel that all the time. Now I'm trying to train myself to again, it's more inner dialogue stuff. First of all, I download their art piece that I am intimidated by. And I name it the name of the artist out of respect for the artist. Because I'm sure, I'm sure that everybody who's good at something probably deep inside really glad that they're able to intimidate people, that they're able to flex and feel like they're, they're better than you perhaps, but I'm sure that's not been the primary energy that they've been living off of is the fact that they're, they're able to intimidate you. They probably created that piece of artwork out of joy, out of some good energy that you should probably hone in on for yourself? Yes. Downloading the image, collecting it, whether it's I don't know, I guess you don't necessarily want to put on your Pinterest if it's gonna get taken down for copyright stuff, just download it. Knowledge the artist, Bye. Making sure that you know what is the name of the artist and have their name then perhaps or username, whatever. As I've been saying, you need to train your artist. I just like as I said about finding discrepancies between your own artwork and the reference that you're copying from. This the same idea. You need to be able to discern colors, lighting, what's going on with the composition and all that stuff. If let's say an artist's palette, like you're amazed at the color selection or the level of saturation, how rich the colors are or how muted the colors are. Lucky. You have to first describe what is it about the artwork that fascinates you? For example, I will I don't know if I'm ever going to make artwork that is so soft, like when it's really low contrast and the whole pallet is like muted or pastel. Let's say I have like all these pastel colors in this artist's painting. And it feels so soft and it's bright, and none of it ever gets past the halfway point on the gray scale, from white to middle gray. It never gets past. So that it's on the gray-scale closer to the black end of the grayscale. I think that like a shortcut you can take in breaking down how they did it. Let's say, for example, with color as I've been saying, take their image, open it in your image editor, and do a swatch. Color, pick all the major colors. In their illustration. And then look at world. The colors appear either on the color wheel, and especially also in the shade triangle or square. Because you will, because that will reveal to you how close to grayscale, how desaturated or saturated the colors are, the colors that they're using. And also look at where do they put these colors? What are the ratios and what are the shapes that they are painting? Basically, what I'm saying is that you want to break down what they've done. And it's not even like the magician can tell you what they did. There. I'm sure there are plenty of tutorial videos or artists with their time-lapse, you can probably slow down their time-lapse and see that way exactly how they did, what they did. They can literally tell you through their tutorials, however they break down the process, you could do that. But if you can't find those things, It's all there in the image. Mostly I think you can still glean or you can gather a ton of information from just looking at the image. Because again, it goes back into how when you look at your own artwork and you go like I ate it and I don't even know why. You can go the other way with that. Wow, this artist is awesome. I love it and I'm intimidated and I don't even know why it's so good or how. Like, what's the difference between my artwork and there's an how do I make it more like theirs? You can do the color picking thing if you're most interested in their palette, for example, another thing you can do is just their artwork and literally copy it as a study for yourself. I would say that you probably don't want to publish that, but you can if you want, but if you do publish that, like on social media or something, be sure to credit them and make sure it is known to your audience that you copied it. That it's just a study. Out of respect for the artist. You can do direct studies. You can. If you don't want to go as far as like doing study, you can look at the composition. There are lots of things like a pose of the character, how the artist arranged the clothing. People love S-curves, people love things that glow. People love shiny things. People love pastel colors or Cyberpunk colors. I might be projecting, but I like those things. The answers are there. You don't have to sit there and wonder and then just feel so self-defeating or think self-defeating thoughts. You can go and just make stuff happen. Make more stuff happen, rather than feel like you're just gonna stagnate now. Instead of remaining intimidated and perplexed, there's a way forward. Just continue to admire those artists and don't feel bad. Go and pursue. Turn that negative experience into more positive and constructive one. 11. Relationship With Failure: I'm gonna talk about your relationship with failure and mistakes. Perhaps I've sort of talked about them extensively already, but I will talk about them specifically now with the actual art-making itself. Let's say in drawing, absolutely do not be afraid to make mistakes, especially if you're a digital artist. Because in digital art there's no such thing as a mistake that you can't fix. I would say that like on paper or with traditional media, there is a bit of a limit with your materials. Even then though like you shouldn't be so attached that oh, you were so afraid of erasing. Don't be afraid of racing. The limit output there or the boundary I will put there is if you're about to rip your paper open, then leave that mistake. You're gonna get better at it. Anyway, I literally had this student who was a teenager at the time I was teaching her who erase the mouth so many times that she put a hole in the mouth area of her paper. She actually put duct tape on several of her drawings because she erased the mouth so many times just as a habit. But the good thing was that she had the willingness to erase almost an infinite amount of times. Now, the other end of the extreme is someone who are racist too much. Erasing too much probably means that you're having a hard time moving forward. Then usually manage your expectations with your drawing. You should work off of what you already have when you start out at drawing. You're just sketching. Don't expect it to be perfect by any means. I mean, there are artists out there who don't just skip the sketch phase altogether. Sure, like Kim Jong-un, he's pretty amazing. He's been added for so many years of not sketching whatsoever and going straight to the, all the perfect line strokes with his pen brush thing. You could do that, but as a beginner, you should not expect that. You should not expect to have the most perfect lines in the very beginning of your drawing. Instead, you should practice just exploring and expect that you're going to have a bazillion mistakes with your initial sketch. The important thing at the beginning of your drawing is that you have something to work off of and something to fix. Because at least at the very beginning of, I guess most people's process of drawing, if they go through the sketching phase, is they will be fixing and readjusting a lot of things. Whether it's to get better proportions or to erase an arm to change the pose of the arm or the hand, stuff like that. You shouldn't expect to have a perfect sketch or linework. The first go round or even the second go round. You should be okay with all your mistakes. And if you're more beginner, then yeah, you're gonna be having a much higher ratio of time spend on fixing and fixing and fixing. That is, if you want a better results with your artwork, but you are actually allowed to. Well, what I would say is there is kind of like a balance that you can strike between being perfectionist and completion list. So if you're a perfectionist, I think often the trap that you fall into is not finishing your work and you're not moving forward with it because you think it has to be whatever, you're not fulfilling your prerequisites. Like if you're drawing a face and you start off with the eyes, you're not going to move down to the nose because you haven't perfected the eyes yet? No, I would say you should work throughout all the time. Work a little bit here and work a little bit down here. And just keep going back and forth so that everything is developing at an equal, relatively equal pace. If you're a perfectionist, just keep, keep moving forward. You want to be a little bit more completion is more forgiving of yourself. You're more completion just like you. I would say that completion or a little bit more preferable. Especially if you want to become a professional. Because if say you have a lot of wantonness in your illustration and you want to be a professional. But your artwork is complete, you are more likely to be hired. If your artwork is complete and polished, even though there's a bunch of wantonness like you're still you still have not gotten the hang of. Painting hands. I think there are actually people like that who will literally, there are artists who get a ton of gigs, but they're painting of their hands are noticeably substandard compared to the quality of the portraiture that they paint. But it's not so detrimental that they don't land the jobs. I was actually the perfectionist that had a portfolio filled with a bunch of unfinished, not very polished work. You should lean more towards being completion and being forgiving of things that are a bit less, less than perfect. Perfect is a very dangerous word. I would say that yearling to completion. If you're rushing, rushing, rushing through your drawings and you're not even looking back and seeing how you can improve and implement any tips or ways that you can change your methods to make your artwork improve? I have seen that before, but it's not, it's not that common. I would say that You've probably still learning a lot, even if you are cruising right through a bunch of different art pieces. But at least you have complete pieces. You probably still did learn something. If you at least push yourself a bit, you don't have to push yourself 100%. You push yourself a little bit and you will improve. Now also, during my art block, during my twenties, the main thing that was keeping me from making new artwork's a lot of the times, I guess in my childhood this, this was happening as well, was the fact that there was a pile of artwork that I never finished. There was nobody around to push me and say, you absolutely need to finish your artwork. It's so paramount. I only realized how important it is to finish your artwork only after college. There was not really anybody in college telling me how incredibly important it is to finish your artwork? If you want to be a professional. During my art block in my twenties, I thought that there was a series of art pieces like my comic series. There was this comic series that I started, and then I left it on this infinite hiatus. And I felt so guilty about it that it stopped me from making new RPs or I was still making new art pieces, especially for clients and students. But for myself, every time I was doing new art pieces, I was feeling extremely guilty and that was like Just trying to, I don't know, skate on sandpaper, just created so much friction. In my process. I realized that you're better off with a bunch of unfinished artwork. Still making more artwork, then feeling so guilty about your unfinished artwork, that you end up not doing anything or you're feeling miserable when you do anything. What I would say about any artist who regularly has unfinished artwork, first of all, I think that's actually quite common. I think that any artists can increase the ratio of finished work, increase the amount of finished work that they have versus their unfinished work that can be absolutely worked on. It's painful. It can be painful. For me, it was pretty painful. I really had to I've really had to learn how to push and push and push myself. What I realized is that all I really needed to do was just sit there and just keep working, working, working for hours or budget a certain amount of hours for this character or the environment. I noticed that what all my art pieces have in common that had been finished. And the ones that I've clearly shown that I push my boundaries is that, well, I push myself, I forced myself to sit there and put in the hours. And eventually now I am the kind of artist to finish most of what she starts. Pretty much do finish most art pieces that I start these days, except for RFPs that I'm doing during lessons, which mostly I'm just doing it for demonstration. And also don't have all the time that I need for them with unfinished pieces. I would say. It's okay to have unfinished pieces if you've learned a lot in the process of making that piece, even if it's not finished, it's not so bad. Because again, you've probably learned a lot. And if you're really, really not feeling it and it's becoming sheer torture, like, like really, really bad. Then just start a new thing. Probably what you should do is scale down on your level of ambition. It used to do all the time was I would do sketches all the time. Always do lots of sketches. I would doodle in school. I would doodle on my sketchbook. I'm always drawing in my sketchbook. Alongside all of that. I was also always working on some digital illustration like a painting, digital painting. You should enjoy the satisfaction of completing those smaller sketches or smaller drawings while you're trying to work on the big thing. Through multiple sittings or multiple days or however long it takes for you to complete that larger, more ambitious project. You should work gradually on your way to more ambitious pieces or projects. Like if that's what you want to do. Like let's say you want to make a comic series. Start with one comic page first. Just like I've been saying with animations, if you want to do a short film, try doing a two frame animation, or try doing a bunch of two frame animations. First. From there, you can always do two frames of very polished finished line art. Like a character moving. It can be waving or they could just be turning or something like that. Whatever. Do it fully colored. And you can feel how long it takes for you to do each of those frames. Figure out a style simple enough that it's sustainable for you to animate at that style and level of detail. There are ways that you can control your chances of success. You will have a higher chance of success if you start with a scaled down version of your most ultimate goal. If you want to do a comic book, then do a one-page comic, or you could do one-page due to 510 and so on. Do we very, very, very short story. Whatever it is, perhaps, if you want it fully colored, start with one that isn't colored at all. I don't know, Just make it work. If you have such an ambitious project from the get-go. And then you're kind of surprised or really disappointed that you didn't even get through page one out of a 100 scale down. It's not I don't think it's particularly kind or to constructive or useful for you to feel down on yourself or punish yourself for just realizing that the project you set out to work on is in fact a little too hard. That's fine. With your failures and mistakes. You should have a healthy relationship with them. You should not try to avoid them all the time. The failures or a little mistakes that you make on your journey, whether it's within your project, or whether it has to do with how you've planned your stuff. Just be honest with yourself. Is there such a thing as a journey to becoming an expert without mistakes? I don't think there is. I think that it's very old-school to think, well, if I make a mistake on my first trial, then I'm just effective. Know. And also like this idea of talent. I personally don't believe in talent. Talent is a word or shorthand word that we give to people who have this skill. A high level of skill. And just seemed like the plant is just aligned for them, whether they were perfectly inspired or they had the support that they needed from their parents or the resources they needed. They've been privileged enough. Mental health was good. All that stuff. I mean, I guess that's what people call talent. But you take somebody who had a huge head-start, but doesn't work hard versus someone who doesn't have talent. But they worked so many hours. The person who worked super hard is going to have a much, much higher chance of succeeding at whatever their goals are. I have heard people say that they think that artistic ability is innate. And I'm just like, No, it's almost, I would even venture to say that it's almost an insult because that could mean that like, oh, my thousands of hours didn't mean anything. The reason why people say the word talent or prodigy or something, I don't know. Maybe prodigy really is a thing, genetic thing, I don't know, but talent, pupil, use the word for, use the word talent because they did not watch. See the frustrations that people go through, the hours and hours of trial and error and the hours of repetition, repetition, they only see the success. And think that that's the only thing that's going on with the person who is talented. That's a thing that you want to remember, like that you would have to go through. I don't think I know anybody who became great at something without the many hours of practice because you go to, I remember when I was little, I went to a school assembly, saw somebody like wild out on the violin or something, or an orchestral performance or school play or something. And I assumed that the way that they got so good at what they were whatever they were performing was they just woke up one day and they were really good at whatever it is they were doing. But I think that's acceptable for a kid or if you didn't know that before. Well, now you should know. Again, I said 10 thousand hours. That's the kind of hours that Olympic champions put in. It's not like, oh, well, they do, they did it for an hour every week and they were just really hitting out of the park every single time? No. They were probably practicing due to four hours a day or when they're really professional as adults and they're still doing or maybe they practiced 810 hours a day, whatever it is. And of course they built up to that over time. In my experience, anything that I've been so proud of and happy to have in my life, whether it's a good relationship or a good job, my my good portfolio, a fanbase. All of these things. I have gotten out of a grind, out of grinding and just hard work and doing the hard. But right thing, right thing. That is conducive to getting my desirable outcome relationship with failure and mistakes should be that they're just part of your journey and they help you. You should soften the fall for yourself every time you experience them. You should not see it. See them as your enemy or a reason to hate yourself or anything like that. You should just see them as opportunities to figure out your next wave forward. You can just simplify it down to that. Just another way to figure out your way forward. 12. Closing Thoughts: If you're a truly committed artist, you'll always be creating and improving. No matter no matter when, no matter how old you are at a certain point. Age is just another number. At least for me. Art is about It's something that I do that I need to do. It's part of who I am. If that's the case for you, then then go do that. You're never done working on your portfolio. If it helps, you don't have to think about it as your portfolio. You just, it just becomes a collection of work that you happen to have made while you're alive. And you think about the artists who have passed. I think about deadlines. For example. The ultimate deadline to me is death. Because death is one of those things that is truly unstoppable. Everybody is going to die someday. At least for me. My goal in life is to put out there as much art as I can possibly put out from up in here. Remember that you're the only one who can see what you see in your head. Whether it's your character or story you want to tell or video game or interactive experience you want to put out there for your audience. And it's sort of a sad way to think of it. But I've been raised by pessimists, but that window into your head, that window closes when you die. That's the honest truth. Yeah, I do think that's sad. But it also motivates me to really just enjoy, enjoy being alive does kind of make me feel worried. But it also makes me feel really motivated. Because it makes me start doing some math. Like, how long does it take for me to do an illustration? If I do just one illustration per month, that's 12 illustrations per year, then how many years left do I have? How many drawings can you make? How many illustrations can you make during the rest of your life? Is it a 1000? Is less than a thousand. If you're an animator, you probably going to be drawing thousands of drawings. I don't know. Probably. I mean, some of the hardest working ones, the ones that probably die from their job like 15 hours a day and they can crank out. I don't know, maybe a new drawing every 510 minutes or something like that, depending on the level of detail of the animated frame, their drawing. Is it about the numbers or is it about the quality? Is it about telling your stories? Your comic artist? And you want to tell your story then. And it's a long story. Then, dial down on the level of detail that you do on each of your comic pages. Because you probably have a limited amount of sanity for doing a ton of detail for every page. Perhaps. Get a team to work with. You have some assistance. Lot of professionals do. Or if it works with your deadline or if you're fine with it, then go with that. If there is sort of a dream project you have like a comic book series or a series of illustrations, video game graphics, concept art. Fear dreaming of becoming a professional concept artist for some company or some movie company or studio. You don't have to drill all the time. You don't have to sit there drawing a bunch of cylinders all the time or draw a bunch of You don't have to exclusively just do portraiture studies or something like that. You don't have to think of it as like, well, I can't move on to that unless I fulfill these prerequisites. You can just go ahead and try to pretend you're filling the dream role or job that you want to fill in the future. And go ahead and just try it. If you want to be an indie comic artist and you've got your ideas already. Go ahead and just do the thing. Do your concept art for your characters, do some environment design, or just do the comic pages themselves. Worst-case scenario, like maybe you need to redo them later when you've, if you want your older pages to be updated with your new level of skill. Because if you're really bored of the dryness of drilling and just studies, studies, studies. Then just, again, just do the thing that is like your dream project or dream job, whatever dream role, go and do that. Because you will get better anyway. If for example, you want really complex camera view for your illustration or your comic panel, you're going to have to do that anyway. You're going to have to try to execute that on that anyway. You don't have to treat your life like a rehearsal all the time. I think that one of them satisfies moments that I kept experiencing when I had art block was I felt like I was waiting and waiting and waiting for the planets to align for me, for me to feel this muse to come on or two, just have this revelation out of nowhere. This epiphany out of nowhere, that I'm good enough now. That woman never came. Like, especially for me. I am a bit more of a pessimist. I'm pretty neurotic. I am often self-defeating. Two, you have to just move forward with the thing. You just have to go and push for the thing. I felt so bad every time I found myself treating my life. It was a hurt rehearsal because it's just like I lived through my twenties before I knew it. It's over. That's it. Yeah. Well, I feel such a huge sense of regret in many ways that I didn't spend my twenties working on my dream project or move my mentality in that direction of just really trying to work on what I really, really want to work on. That's it. That's my 20s. You should think about like, ideally, what do you want to feel when you look back? Did you make the most of the time that you had? And I think in my opinion, the best way to make the most of your time as an artist is to work on the very thing you really want to do. If there is a big old project you want. If you've never drawn this really challenging thing before, I go and try it. You probably don't really need as much preliminary preparation. Like if I want to draw a character doing this sick skateboarding trick at a cool angle. Go ahead and go try it and then see what kind of challenges you come across. You can also break that down and then just, you can work backwards from there and see what are some more easier ways of doing that same thing. Perhaps change the angle to an easier one, or start with an easier pose if you're into figures that skateboard, for example. I mean, that basically goes back to how if you've got a project idea or view God, whatever. If it turns out that it's too ambitious than scaled down a bit, and then work your way up. Try to make sure that your project is really interesting to you. I think that requires just getting to know yourself better. Think about anything that really inspires you, your favorite video games or perhaps even music, your favorite movies or TV shows or comics or illustrations. Put them together or put a bunch of them together that makes whatever makes sense to you and work off of that energy of your fascination for those things. If you're doing a character design and you find a boring, figure out how to make the character interesting or start from scratch, perhaps even take a character that already exists. This is apparently thing that people do. Like I've seen variations of Sonic the Hedgehog and I was like, Wait, people could just do that. And then they changed him into a completely different character, even though I still wanted to call the character Sonic the Hedgehog. But it's not. You could do that. But I mean me personally, I prefer that if you're gonna do that, you change it enough that it's not exactly recognizable, but I guess it can be recognizable enough that people can see the reference. You can start with that. You can keep, keep changing your favorite character that already exists into something that's almost unrecognizable. But you keep the essence of your favorite character there and just make it your own. Now it's your own. Anyway. I hope that you found all these tips and my lecture to be helpful to you. Thank you so much for watching.