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S2E8: DIY Art School Part 5 (Workspace and Equipment)

• To understand the basics (perspective, anatomy, cross contours, rendering, etc.) all the equipment you need is a pencil, paper, and an eraser. Or a basic drawing tablet with basic drawing software. ↳ Even if you want to be a painter, it's much easier to learn the fundamentals with a pencil and not paint.

• You don't need all the tools you see experts using. ↳ Just because you see a race car driving riding around in a $500,000 car, it doesn't mean they learned to drive in it.

• Even if you're a filmmaker, you can get started by standing up in front of a group of people and trying to entertain them. It only costs as much as the clothes you're wearing. You don't need fancy equipment to learn storytelling.

• Painting can be expensive. You can start with a wash, walnut ink, watercolor or something cheap. You can learn a lot about lights and darks, being comfortable with a brush, etc without spending a ton of money. Even using just white and burnt umber which are cheap colors.

• Some limitations make you more creative and you learn to adapt. One of Marshall's students didn't have a car and took the bus everyday. He brought his sketchbook, drew people, and became a great observer.

• The library is a great place to get work done.

Mentioned: • John Sell Cotman • Stevie Ray Vaughan: Legends • Hollywoodism: Jews, Movies, and the American Dream • Transformational Leadership: How Leaders Change Teams, Companies, and Organizations (Michael Roberto, The Great Courses)

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S2E7: DIY Art School Part 4 (Community)

• In Steve Martin's MasterClass, he recommends getting together with your best (or smartest) friend and talking with them about the history of your art form or genre. ↳ What do you like about it? What don't you like? What has nobody done so far? Spend days thinking about this. ↳ Marshall's class on genre has a similar exercise: "Now, at the end of a semester of me teaching a genre class in which the first half of the semester was to adopt your genre, study your genre and complain about your genre. And then at the midterm, you make a report and you come up with some ideas of stuff you want to work in. The second half of the semester is to evolve your genre; see how you can make it better." ↳ Stan: "I mean, I went on several road trips or camping trips with my friends from art school where we would go plein air painting, we would stay at like a cottage, we would have our art books and we would argue about why this is good this is bad and you know, different types of art and what's important; like why are we artists... We'd have these discussions that are really important in our development and you can't get that by yourself."

• "[Led Zeppelin have] worked really hard, done the tour. Now they go to this cabin and they bring records, and they bring new musical instruments and they mess around and they play. And they rediscover themselves."

• Try to be in 'the room where it happens'. ↳ A lot of people get opportunities because they're in a space where they can make connections with people who can help further their careers.

• There can be a sense of belonging and connection between people who are alumni of certain schools. But this connection can go beyond schools. ↳ Being a member of the same forum or subreddit, or participating in any art community brings connection. Knowing people in common strengthens that bond.

• "I think there were five guys in one one-bedroom apartment that each had their area where their sleeping bag. But the thing is, they spent 16 hours a day at the studio, walking distance to where they would only use the apartment for showering and sleeping, and then the rest of it was going to the museum's together, hanging out and having opinions about art together. I went down there and watched movies with them a number of times and it was a community that again, as I've mentioned before, it was the fastest trajectory to mastery and to professional opportunities that I've ever seen in the history of my teaching and that was a big part of it. There were a couple there that were always there working and so, if you weren't always there working, you sort of felt like I'm the slacker by comparison."

• "He told me something about dogs, that you get a good set of dogs in the house that know what the rules are and know how to make it happen so that there's harmony, and he said you could bring in a wild dog and it's gonna pick up the vibe of those dogs and become like them. And I thought, that's what you want in a community, that you say, these people are the people that I want to be like and so to go in, like a dog would go in and say "teach me how to be like you" is a great way to submit for your own strength."

• Taking part in competitions is a good way to get your work out there and make connections.

• The Z-Boys were a community of skateboarders who had a spirit of competition, innovation, and excluded skaters who weren't up to their standards. They were like underdogs and the attitude of "watch us do it better than anyone else" helped strengthen their connection to each other.

Mentioned: • Steve Martin's MasterClass • Brandywine School • Jama Jurabaev, Ron Lemen • Dogtown and Z-Boys (2001)

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S2E6: DIY Art School Part 3 (Mentorship)

• There are 2 major things a teacher or mentor can provide. ↳ Help with the technical stuff. AI will probably take care of this soon. Computers are much better at judging the accuracy of perspective and proportions. ↳ Emotional support and general advice. AI probably won't replace this human aspect of teaching.

• Getting into a feedback loop is vital. ↳ You should get feedback fast and often. Don't practice something for days without measuring for accuracy. ↳ If you're practicing your free-throw and miss a shot, you get feedback instantly. With art, it can be hard to notice your mistakes and that's where a mentor can really help.

• Check Patreon for artists who provide mentorship. There may be Facebook groups for people looking for critiques.

• Be mentorable. Take advice, don't be annoying. Maybe there's something you can contribute to your mentor. ↳ "I put 40, 50 hours into a drawing that was a terrible drawing, it revealed in my ignorance, that I cared. This is a person who cares about the drawing. And this is also a long-term person. I knew an illustrator who told me ... "I have never in my life spent more than eight hours on an illustration" ... That is another thing that you see in the work before having been mentored. It is like a Rorschach test. It is like a litmus test for what this person's temperament is. Where they are going to go with it. And you can say, I want to invest in that. If you have got that much patience now we need to take that good quality, patience, and move it away from just putting in detail and apply it to what it is going to take to put a cross contour around it and invent a light source."

• Designing your art curriculum and your workspace are creative activities. Choosing your mentor is one, too. ↳ Obviously choose someone who's work you want to emulate, but after a while branch out and learn from people who work in different styles.

• Marshall says you can be your own mentor. ↳ "And in order to be your own mentor, a therapist told me this, that if you have got stuff going around in your head you can get all tangled up in your own thoughts. And one of the best things to do is to speak it out loud. That there is something about when it comes out of your mouth and goes into your ear and you hear that I actually said that, that was my real thought, it objectifies it. And you are more able to judge it fairly than when it is all inside you. And that is one of the roles of the whiteboard. When you have got it out there in your environment, you are regularly seeing it, you are putting up the things that you are working on. There is a million ways you can design a whiteboard, but the idea is to get it out of your mind and onto a surface so that you are regularly, on a vertical surface, seeing it every day. And that is one way to get the feedback loop from inside you to outside you and then back inside you and then back outside you as you dialogue with it and change it regularly." ↳ On a slight tangent, Charles Dickens used to get up in front of a mirror and act out the dialogue he wrote to see if the characters were coming to life.

• Friends can be mentors. Marshall says that he sees the fastest trajectory to mastery when friends study with each other and keep each other accountable.

Mentioned: • Stephen Bauman's Patreon • Cornelia Hernes's Patreon • Scott Flanders • Handprint watercolor guide; Handprint color guide

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S2E5: Advice on Quicksketch, Pencil Control, Bargue, Style, and Teaching

📞 Voicemail Question: For the 1-10 minute poses, should I study the figure as much as I can during that time? Or should I save that for the sessions where the model poses longer?

Stan: If you're a beginner, you shouldn't be studying anatomy. You should be studying gesture and structure. 1-10 minutes gives you enough time to do that, not draw out things like tendons and bones. You could pick one thing to focus on during those poses like value, form, gesture, etc. If you are at the stage where you're learning anatomy, you could focus on fleshing out one body part for those short poses.

Marshall: Put a good deal of energy into the whole figure, focusing on proportions. The next step up from that is studying foreshortening, how those proportions change as the body moves in space. If you learn that, your poses would look accurate but probably stiff. Learn where the weight, tension, and stretching is. Form is another good thing to learn during these short poses, so draw cross contour lines. You need to be able to see compositions as an abstract pattern of light and dark. When you are doing a value study from a figure, think why certain parts of the body are lit like that. Think which planes are facing the light, which planes are casting shadows, etc. Don't just mindlessly shade in the dark areas.

📞 Voicemail Question: I know how to draw but don't know what to do with that skill. I feel like I don't have my own style and just copy other artists. I want to impress people with my work but that doesn't seem like a good motivation.

Marshall: Everybody wants to be liked and admired. If we deconstruct this feeling too much it can lead to a negative spiral of self-consciousness that makes us do worse work. If you can bring yourself not to care about impressing people for a certain amount of time, you free yourself to explore, play, and figure out what makes you happy as an artist. Pour your attention into artists that you love. Notice what they do with outlines, overlaps, edges, simplicity vs complexity, etc.

Stan: It's okay to want to impress people. You have to impress people to make it as an artist. Choose your demographic, though. You can't impress everyone so decide what audience you want to make happy. Copying other artists is how you find your own style.

📞 Voicemail Question: What are your thoughts on Charles Bargue's Drawing Course? I want to get better at observation but I don't want to just draw from photographs.

It's useful if you want to improve your observational skills. You can develop that along with drawing from imagination. Bargue will help you get better at shape, edge, value, and rendering.

📞 Voicemail Questions: Do you have advice for anyone who want to become an art teacher?

Get a degree. Choose a school where you admire the other teachers. They will help you be a better teacher. You can choose "teacher parents" like you would "art parents". Make a list of art teachers that you admire and read their works, watch their videos. Reverse-engineer their thought structures and delivery. Record yourself teaching. You could be coming off cocky and not realize it, for example.

📞 Voicemail Question: I'm having issues with my pen pressure and my grip. How did you guys get better control of your pen/pencil tip and get the lines that you want?

It takes a while to get comfortable. You've only been drawing for a short amount of time. Asking this question is like a new basketball player asking why they're uncomfortable dribbling and why the ball doesn't always go in the hoop when they shoot. Just keep doing it. Choose artist that have great line quality and study their work. Mimic their lines.

📞 Voicemail Question: What do you think about breaking out of a certain style or type of art? I only draw one type of character and am trying to branch out.

Choose what style you want to experiment with, choose art parents, copy them, pick the parts of their art that you like the most and combine them to create your own style. It's a good idea to broaden your horizons and get good at drawing in different styles. Look at your palette of styles and arrange them in stylistic matrixes. "This is my cartoon style, this is my approach to realism, etc."

Mentioned: • Drawing Course (Charles Bargue) • Artist Anatomy (Paul Richer) • Rockwell on Rockwell (Norman Rockwell) • Thomas Eakins, Bill Elder • Rendering in Pen and Ink (Arthur Guptill) • How to Draw and Paint Anatomy (Imagine FX)

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S2E4: DIY Art School Part 2 (Structure)

• Everyday you have to make a decision: will you do the easy thing or the hard thing you said you would do? If you're motivated, you're more likely to chose the hard thing. But motivation isn't consistent. ↳ You need to remove friction and make it easy for you to form the habit in question. Pair the habit with a reward. Go to the gym and listen to an audiobook. Buy new coffee beans and make yourself a cup before drawing in the morning.

• Be creative when trying to make these habits enjoyable. ↳ Listen to the Hitman soundtrack at the gym and pretend you're an ICA agent staying fit for his next contract, for example. Works for me, even if it's stupid. ↳ Choose a uniform. Actors often say that when they put on their costume, they find it easy to embody that character. Choose a particular shirt, hat, outfit, etc and make a ritual out of putting it on before you engage in whatever habit you're trying to ingrain in your life.

• Don't binge watch lessons or informational videos. ↳ Absorb them, take notes, do the exercises that are recommended. Treat the lessons like an actual art class and go above and beyond the exercises that you're given. ↳ Use what you've learned and apply them to things that you want to draw, like your favourite character. Find a way to make the lessons your own.

• There are process classes and product classes. ↳ Process classes won't leave you with finished pieces to impress people with. You'll be practicing boxes, cross contours, etc. ↳ Product classes end with finished pieces. ↳ It's important to balance the two when you are structuring your training.

• Create your own deadlines.

Mentioned: • Hidden Brain podcast, Creatures of Habit episode • Animator's Survival Kit (Richard Williams) • The Natural Way to Draw (Kimon Nicolaides) • Eddie Fitzgerald, moderndayjames • Radiorunner's curriculum for the solo artist • The Signature of All Things (Elizabeth Gilbert)

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S2E3 DIY Art School Part 1 (Knowledge)

• Listening to DVD commentaries is a good way to learn more about the creative processes of filmmakers.

• If you're studying on your own, it's difficult to know what you should study and which resources you should us. ↳ Look for mavens. A maven, according to Malcolm Gladwell, is someone who loves a subject so much that they pour a whole bunch of time into it and are happy to share their knowledge. Marshall is one such person and he has a bunch of book reviews on his website. ↳ Look at school websites and go through the courses that make up a program that you'd like to take. Follow the course outline. Check their reading list and pick up those books. Look at multiple schools and see which topics and resources pop up the most.

• Drew Struzan said that there are 3 big disciplines in drawing. ↳ Technique: pertains to how well you can use pencil, pen, etc. ↳ Draftsmanship: anatomy, rendering, perspective, anything to do with control of the form ↳ Composition: how to emphasize certain subjects and emotions

• Gossip can be helpful. Listen to interviews or listen to artists at conventions who complain about art school students. If art students are lacking certain training or have poor attitudes, you can make sure you don't fall into the same pit.

• Look at job postings. See what employers are seeking and what kind of software they want artists to be proficient in.

• Work backwards. Try to decide what kind of career you want and then determine the steps you need to take that will lead you to that point.

Mentioned: • Getty Museum, Norton Simon Museum • Power over People: Classical and Modern Political Theory (Dennis Dalton, The Great Courses) • MasterClass • Drew Casper (film historian), Tex Avery, Aaron Blaise • The Monty Python: Matching Tie & Handkerchief

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S2E0: Working from Home

Mentioned: • Wim Hof • The Daily podcast • Aggie.io

S2E1: 8 Benefits of Going to Art School

• "The two most important qualities necessary for becoming the best at something are what sound the dullest; patience and discipline. I think to become a real artist you have to have the patience to be ignored, even ridiculed for years to persevere quietly with only the joy of working and the faith in yourself to sustain you. You need the discipline to spend years on the unimaginative uncreative aspects of art such as mastering anatomy and painting techniques." - Mara McAfee

• There is a ritualistic aspect of going to art school. ↳ Going off to college is ceremonial and can be emotional. It's likely the first time that you will move away from family and have to start being an adult in the real world. Going to school is often celebrated, whereas hunching over your computer in your room and learning online isn't. The ritual of going off to school can encourage you and help you stay disciplined.

• Gaining knowledge is not an advantage of going to art school. There are so many online resources and books where you can learn things for much cheaper. Mentorship and community is one of the pros of going to art school.

• Networking begins from day one at school. You're going into a field where it's going to be hard to make a living and your network is going to be very important.

• Art schools have equipment and resources that you can use. Tools, art supplies, models, etc.

• Going to art school provides you with structure. ↳ Learning to manage your time and meet deadlines is vital. Sometimes art teachers won't give homework, though. Then it's up to you to get creative and make up your own projects.

• Some art companies won't give internships to those that aren't registered in school.

Mentioned: • Don't Go to Art School (Noah Bradley) • Stay Out of School (John Stewart) • Art School Confidential (2006)

S2E2: Don't Go to Art School! Here's Why

• Parents often care about degrees. Schools want your money so they care about degrees. The US government wants to see a degree for you to be considered for any visa program. If you want to teach at an art school, they'll often only consider those with a degree. Some companies who hire artists will, too.

• People like Gore Vidal and Frank Zappa famously said that studying art and music was a waste of time. ↳ What the podcast hosts don't mention is that Vidal came from a wealthy family that pretty much guaranteed good connections. Most of the people who laud themselves for "making it on their own" without going to school are rich brats who already had the connections they needed and all the private tutoring their parents could afford. They even mentioned Elon Musk who falls under the same category.

• Going to art school won't guarantee you a career.

• Don't go to the most expensive art school. Start with the internet, community colleges, or ateliers if they're worth the time. Look at reviews.

• Get creative to build your career. Design your training if you don't have the money for art school. ↳ There's a wealth of resources out there. $20 usually covers a few hours with a model in a room full of other artists. There are library books, online course, Youtube videos, etc.

Mentioned: • William Stout • Rebel Without a Crew (Robert Rodriguez)

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S1E27: AI vs Artist (or AI + Artist?)

Mentioned: • Edmund Dulac, T.S. Sullivant, Arthur Rackham, Preston Blair, Nicolai Fechin • Masterpieces of the Imaginative Mind: Literature's Most Fantastic Works (Eric Rabkin, The Great Courses) • Utopian and Dystopian Literature (Pamela Bedore)

S1E28: Season Finale Part 1

• Advice from commenters about getting disciplined: unplug and eliminate distractions from your work space, set a timer or do timeboxing, plan what you're going to do tomorrow, just start and do it for 5 minutes, take breaks to recharge, keep your space clean, use quality tools, take a few minutes to prepare and get everything you need before you start practicing, surround yourself with inspirational stuff, listen to music or podcasts, work in silence, pretend to be disciplined until you actually are, wake up early, meditate, exercise, light your work space well. ↳ Have an idea of what you're going to do in the morning so you're not looking for things to do on your phone. Don't let external forces decide what you're going to do. ↳ One of the first creative tasks you have as an artist is to design your space. Keep this place sacred and dedicated to your art. If you watch TV or scroll social media endlessly while in bed, then your brain doesn't view your bed as just a place to sleep. So it's harder to fall asleep. The space you design for your art should be dedicated to art, so as soon as you sit down your body knows what you're there for.

• A good method for learning to analzye is to first describe things as objectively as possible. "This is paper. It's flat and thin. It could deteriorate. It's..." Then switch to subjective mode and describe how you feel about this thing. Freeman Patterson describes a similar exercise.

• Having a preparation ritual can help get you in the mood to sit down and create.

• Arrange your living space in a way that galvanizes you to do the things you want to (or should) be doing. ↳ "A huge help to me was a few years ago when I noticed that half my living space was dedicated to my Xbox. I had my games and my TV all set up but I drew on the bed like a hobo. I also played video games way too much. So, what I did pack up all my video games and my TV which was hard because I just started are Arkham City and packed it deep in the closet vowing not to touch them for a month. By the time my month was up, the addiction was beat and I wound up giving the TV away. My Xbox is set up in another room and I only play once or twice a week at most. I have a draft table and a computer desk where my gaming setup used to be." - Will Morrow

• Try to incorporate a "heartbeat". ↳ Keep a sideblog where you post your daily practice drawings. Keep a physical calendar where you write an X on each day you practice. If you miss a "heartbeat" it gets your attention, and if you miss several then it's a problem if you want to be serious about your art.

• Advice on how to draw more from commenters: get enough sleep, draw on the bus to work, draw during lunch breaks, minimize time on your phone, have your tools laid out to reduce any friction and make it easier to start drawing, meal plan and cook twice a week, learn and honor your most productive times, set a reward for after you draw ↳ "My lunch is for drawing. I leave my desk, go outside and eat my sack lunch on the way to a spot where I draw. Bam! There's 20 minutes if it's a half-hour lunch, fifty minutes if it's a full hour. Changing the scenery is important to me even if it's raining, I'd walk to my car or walk to a nearby Starbucks and get the cheapest thing on the menu and draw there". - Daniel Quat ↳ Your most productive time may be in the evenings. If so, there's no need to wake up early and draw, schedule it for the evening and do all of your other tasks throughout the day.

Mentioned: • The Tipping Point (Malcolm Gladwell) • Akimbo podcast (Seth Godin) • Fundamentals of Photography (Joel Sartore, The Great Courses) • The Human Figure (John H. Vanderpoel) • The Practice and Science of Drawing (Harold Speed) • How to Draw Portraits in Charcoal (Nathan Fowkes) • How to Draw; How to Render (Scott Robertson) • Revisionist History (Malcolm Gladwell) • Building Your Resilience (Molly Birkholm, The Great Courses) • The Writer's Journey (Christopher Vogler) • This American Life podcast • Making Stress Work for You (Kimberlee Bethany Bonura, The Great Courses) • Darknet Diaries podcast • Cornelia Hernes, Steven Baumann, Zoe Dufour

S1E29: Season Finale Part 2

• Additional habits for artists that were suggested by commenters: take breaks, draw from imagination, play around, have fun, use references, keep a sketchbook where you can doodle and make mistakes, join drawing competitions and challenges, practice deliberately, keep your workplace sacred. ↳ Drawing from life builds your visual library. Drawing from imagination makes you more creative and hungrier to learn more when you draw from observation. ↳ A lot of people get into drawing for the fun of it, then get bogged down by learning the fundamentals. Some people think that they can't start drawing what they want to until they've learnt perspective, shading, etc. Start drawing your favourite characters or whatever while you're learning the technical stuff and keep it fun. ↳ Some artists think that every page in their sketchbook has to be a finished piece that they can show off. If you want a sketchbook like that it's fine, but keep one where you can play around, explore, and make mistakes.

• Favourite drug alternatives from the commenters: meditation, coffee, music, sex, exercise, sleep deprivation, shamanic breathing, massage, sleep, kids and baby animals, showers, recreational reading, keto diet, fasting.

• Marshall would go to art museums, get pumped up to draw, drive home, and be too tired to make art. He started carrying a sketchbook with him to museums so he could make use of the motivation as soon as it struck.

Mentioned: • Murder Party (2022) • The Mona Lisa Curse (2008) • Chris Sanders, Eliza Ivanova, Jeremy Lipking, Nathan Faulks, Lucas Graciano, Artgerm • Flatland (Edwin Abbott)

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S1E24: What Artists Should Know About Conventions

• Don't focus a lot on marketing yourself. Observe, make friends (or at least acquaintances). Keep a notepad and write down names and companies that you'd like to follow up with. Even if you think nothing will happen, send them an email and just say "hey, nice meeting you." Do this several years in a row and you start to establish yourself, especially with people who are on your level.

S1E25: Having a Secret Identity as an Artist

• If you do NSFW art and SFW art, it would help to do the NSFW stuff under an alias. If you want to be hired for your SFW art, some companies will discriminate against you because of your raunchier stuff.

• Shel Silverstein did cartoons for Playboy and created children's books. Kim Jung Gi did art for Adidas and other companies while also doing erotic art.

Mentioned: • The Book of Genesis (Robert Crumb) • William Steig • Darknet Diaries • Utopian and Dystopian Literature (Pamela Bedore, The Great Courses) • Feed (M.T. Anderson) • Little Brother (Cory Doctorow)

S1E26: How to Learn Perspective

• The most common way to start learning perspective is with depth measuring tricks. ↳ You typically learn to draw something like a fence going back in space. It teaches you diminution, which is the fact that things get smaller as they get further away.

• One point perspective is when you're looking right at the face of something. If it's a picture of someone looking straight at the camera, it's one point perspective. As soon as they turn their head it introduces a second point. If they tilt their head up or down, it introduces a third point.

• The foundation of understanding perspective is to understand the cube. You can put any object inside a cube. You can draw ellipses on the faces of the cube to get the angles right.

• Once you know about line, sections, and cross contours, you can predict how light will fall on the object you're drawing.

• Drawing long, straight lines is a valuable skill. You can use instruments like T-squares, but drawing freehand is ideal. It doesn't need to be 100% accurate. Practice perspective enough and you should be able to put your lines down intuitively. ↳ Using a ruler or T-square is like a musician using a metronome. It's good for practice but you should get to a point where you don't need it to perform.

• Marshall says it takes around 20-30 hours to get your head around perspective. At least 100 hours to master it. ↳ "Treat learning [perspective] the way you approach a crossword puzzle. Crossword puzzles take energy, people spend hours doing them and they improve their vocabulary a little bit or their knowledge of cultural trivia, but this is to do it so that you have command of something that most artists avoid and if you immerse yourself in this enough to say, 'I'm gonna get a grip on it', then by the time you're done, you are in a category of very few artists who know this and can put it to use in their work."

Mentioned: • Perspective Drawing Handbook (Joseph D'Amelio) • Perspective Made Easy (Ernest Norling) • How to Use Creative Perspective (Ernest W. Watson) • Perspective! For Comic Book Artists (David Chelsea) • Framed Perspective (Marco Mateu-Mestre)

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S1E22: Delegation, Staying Organized & Line Quality

• Stan's team uses the SCRUM method to organize their tasks. ↳ They have a backlog of tasks that are rated by priority and every two weeks they go to the backlog and move things into the "sprint" based on what is the most important or the most time-sensitive. Each task is assigned points based on how complex it is. They know that each team member can handle a certain number of points per day.

📞 Voicemail Question: Any tips on improving line quality? • If your lines are wobbly, put down two dots on your page and try to connect them with one straight line. If you're putting down too many lines and want to make more confident marks, try drawing with a pen. This teaches you to think and be deliberate with your lines. Circles to get your shoulder and elbow warmed up help with making dynamic lines. Draw lines that go from thin to thick, and vice versa. Copy lines from your favourite works of art. You can do these exercises for 15 minutes before your drawing session, they don't have to take up the whole session.

Mentioned: • Rendering in Pen and Ink (Arthur Guptill) • Learning gesture with Tim Gula Part 1 / 2 / 3 • Meditation for artists with Tim Gula

S1E23: Advice for Artists with Kids

• Some of the best children's book authors didn't have kids, or had them after their works were published. When you have kids, you focus more on maintaining order. Without kids to police, there's a different energy, like "it's you and I against the grown-ups". Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein have that kind of subversive quality to their work.

📞 Voicemail Question: Is there good and bad practice, or is all practice beneficial? • The best practice is prescriptive, deliberate practice. Prescriptive means that you've identified a problem and you're aiming to fix it. Deliberate means that you've set goals and have a way to check that you're hitting those goals. Let's say that you're having issues with drawing torsos that have proper proportions. Your goal is to draw 10 torsos that are slightly shorter (or longer, depending on your faults) and more accurate. You give yourself feedback by pasting the reference photo onto a layer beneath your drawing and seeing how your proportions compare. Dr. Eddie O'Connor said that practice does not make perfect, practice makes permanent. So be careful how you practice and make sure to get into a feedback loop.

📞 Voicemail Question: In "The Art Spirit", Robert Henri says to paint from life and don't worry about learning how to draw before you paint. How wise is this advice? • In Stan's experience, artists that paint but don't draw are usually worse. It's easier to learn the fundamentals with pencil than paint. You can't really render until you have a wireframe, and that's where drawing comes in.

Mentioned: • The Wyeths: A Father and His Family • The Art Spirit (Robert Henri) • Paper Moon • The Florida Project • What's Up, Doc? commentary track

[providence-notes]

S1E20: Drugs

• "I would wake up in the morning and I would write in my journal for a half hour to an hour and the first thing I would write is what I just dreamed... The edge of a shadow is called the penumbra, where the shadow ends and then the light begins. And most people when they wake up quickly to an alarm and then have to get right to work, the shadow is hard edged; I was asleep, I am awake. But if you take the time when you wake up to soften that shadow and look back at what you've been doing for the last 20 minutes or 10 hours that you've been asleep and actually write it down or tell it to somebody and then doing that hundreds and then even thousands of times, I found out... that I was able to tap into the high mind instantly by opening up my sketchbook, moving my pencil around and I could find within 10 seconds, it wasn't as intense as a chemical drug, but it was certainly as real and then I could come out of it instantly if I needed to and then go right back into it."

• Taking drugs is a quick way to release inhibitions and get into a creative state. But there is often a price to pay later. There are other methods you can use (like exercise, meditation, or fasting) that are difficult at first but pay off later.

Mentioned: • Tim Gula ↳ Does meditative drawing • Axe Cop ↳ A comic series written by a child; an example of how creative children are because they don't have inhibitions like adults do • Egon Schiele, Wallace Smith • Modest Mussorgsky's "Pictures in an Exhibition", Saint-Saëns' "Carnival of the Animals" ↳ Examples of visual elements being turned into music; the first was based on Victor Hartmann's art, the second on animals.

S1E21: Becoming More Creative

• Creativity is the ability to produce new and innovative ideas, or to make connections between seemingly unrelated concepts. ↳ It helps to start broad and then narrow your ideas down. ↳ For example, choose a broad category like 'bugs'. List some: spiders, ladybugs, bedbugs. Choose a sport: boxing, scuba-diving. Combine them. What about scuba-diving bedbugs? Maybe the bed is a waterbed. ↳ Another creative exercise is called forced juxtaposition. Take two things that seemingly have nothing to do with each other and brainstorm ways that they could relate. ↳ The true creativity comes in making these sort of ideas work. ↳ Putting limitations on yourself is another way to foster creativity. Try using different shades of just one color for your next painting, for example.

• Cross-training can help you be more creative. If you learn about many different things, you have more knowledge that you can connect from one medium to another.

• The more you learn, the more problems there are to solve so getting better at being creative involves developing your techniques. You do need to do the (sometimes tedious) work of drilling technical information into your head in order to be more creative.

📞 Voicemail Question: It's been said that people who are obsessed with art will be more successful cause they work at it more. How do you become obsessed like that? I feel like I'm missing out on other things by sitting at my desk all the time. If you want to go traveling or skydiving, then do it. Why does art have to be the thing, or the only thing, that you're passionate about? Go with your gut. Trying new things like skydiving could be the thing that brings a unique aspect to your art. Doing novel things builds your library of references.

Mentioned: • Sterling Hundley ↳ Artist who teaches ideation. • Finishing the Hat; Look, I Made a Hat (Stephen Sondheim) ↳ He looks at songwriting like preparing a dish. Metaphoric thinking is a big part of creativity. • Step-by-Step Graphics magazine • The Naked Cartoonist (Bob Mankoff) • The Art of Fiction (John Gardner) • Rebel Without a Crew (Robert Rodriguez) • Being Human: Life Lessons from the Frontiers of Science (Robert Sapolsky, The Great Courses) • Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows (Martin Scorsese)

[providence-notes]

S1E19: Tracing, Cheating, and Imposter Syndrome

• If you're drawing trees, for instance, the idea is to take inspiration from multiple trees and create your own tree based on that inspiration, rather than simply copying a picture of one tree.

• Photo bashing, or compositing photos, can be a useful tool, but it's important to consider legal issues and make sure you have the rights to use the photos if you are profiting from them. ↳ The focus should be on making good decisions about how to arrange and light the subjects, rather than simply bashing them together. ↳ It can be helpful to start with photo bashing and then gradually move towards creating things out of imagination, rather than continuing to rely on reference material.

• If you're a professional, you can trace to save time on a commission or other project. But if you're a student, tracing isn't advisable. ↳ Instead of tracing proportions, you can be improve by dividing a subject into halves, thirds, or diagonals and practicing this repeatedly.

• Study tenebristic composition. ↳ Tenebrism refers to the separation of light and dark values in a way that creates a powerful and dramatic pattern in the composition. Do value sketches of great works of art to help you understand composition and develop hand-eye coordination to control the shapes. ↳ Some students will use a filter to separate values in Photoshop. It's quick but they're not gaining any skills by doing that.

• Imposter syndrome (self-doubt, perfectionism) can hold people back from taking risks and trying new things. Don't take things too seriously. ↳ "Watercolor can be scary because the water in the color is going to have it do its own thing... It may be that when you're doing watercolor when you're six or seven years old, you don't have any fear but when you get older you're like "Uh, this might do its own thing and be bad". A lot of it is getting past that fear by doing a whole bunch of little watercolors over and over and letting them do what they do. But we had a student... who did remarkable little watercolor comps and they were so effortless, they were so daring and the students would look at what he did, "How did - how do you do it?". And he said, 'Well, I figure what's the worst that can happen?'" ↳ There are four categories of imposter syndrome: confident and work is good, confident and work is not good, afraid work is bad and it is, and afraid work is bad and it is not. ↳ It can be helpful to have someone in your life, such as a mentor, friend, or teacher, to help you determine which category you're in.

• There are four stages of learning a skill: unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence, and unconscious competence. ↳ Unconscious incompetence is when we don't know how to do something and don't even realize we don't know. ↳ Conscious incompetence is when we become aware of our lack of skill and may feel pain or discomfort as we learn. ↳ Conscious competence is when we have to think about what we're doing, but can still do it. This is a "grown-up" feeling and a step out of imposter syndrome. ↳ Unconscious competence is when the skill becomes so ingrained that we don't have to think about it and can focus on creativity.

📞 Voicemail Question: I'm doing the Proko figure drawing course. How do I know when I'm ready to move on to the next level? • Stan: Go through the whole course, even if the first stage (gesture) isn't easy yet. If you wait until things are easy before you move on, you'll be drawing the same thing for years. Do the sections on the bean, robo bean, mannequinization, and balance. Then go back and do it again. Keep doing the exercises. No art course is going to make you a master, so you need to keep studying and practicing for years. But don't stay stuck on one element. Spend a maximum of 2 weeks on each lesson. Sometimes the next level will help you understand the previous one. • Marshall: There's an area where you're really comfortable and an area with challenges that will tear you apart. Where these areas overlap (with enough comfort to feel like you can do it and enough challenge to make you a bit scared) is where growth takes place.

Mentioned: • Maxfield Parrish, Clare Torry (Dark Side of the Moon) • Mindset (Carol Dweck)

[providence-notes]

S1E18: Too Old to Start Drawing? Cosplay Fashion Design? Voicemail Marathon

📞 Voicemail Question: How do you know when a painting is finished? How do you know when to stop rendering? • You should have a vision for what your piece will look like. Stan has an idea in his head of exactly what he wants and when he reaches it, he stops. You could do more but would doing more make it better?

📞 Voicemail Question: I want to do fashion design for cosplayers. What are the fundamentals that I need to learn? • For the drawing part, the fundamentals are the same. Drapery is very important, but perspective probably isn't. Some fashion designers' work is very flat and decorative. They're basically blueprints. The idea is most important because the drawing isn't the end product. Even if you drew the folds wrong, it'll hang on the body of the cosplayer just right. Just do it and when you run into problems you'll know what you need to improve upon. Hang out with other people who are doing this, work on stuff together, share creative secrets, and bolster each other.

📞 Voicemail Question: I want to become an artist but I feel like I'm too old at 38. Are you never too old? • Some people feel inadequate when they see younger people excelling at something that they want to start doing. Don't compare yourself to others. Do it because you want to do it and want to see how good you can get. It's about discovery.

📞 Voicemail Question: How do you guys find a balance between fun and work? • Embrace the difficulty of it in advance. Learn to be selective about the commissions you accept. John Huston would only agree to direct a movie if he would get the opportunity to film in a place he wanted to visit. If you can't be selective, try to do your own projects on the side so you can unwind and have fun creating something that you want to.

Helpful comment regarding a voicemail about dealing with people who come to you with the next "big idea":

Mentioned: • Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives (John Naisbitt) • William Stout, Barron Storey, Claire Wendling • A Look Back (Bernie Wrightson) • A History of Costume (Carl Kohler) • Writing for Comics (Alan Moore) • The Big Kopinsky (Karl Kopinsky)

[providence-notes]

S1E17: Making Money as an Artist

• Some artists freelance. ↳ As a freelancer, you spend a lot of time showing your portfolio and marketing yourself. ↳ You get to work from the comfort of your own home. ↳ If you do good work for a client, they may hire you again or share your name with others.

• Some artists work for a studio. ↳ When you work for a studio, you typically get health benefits and the work is there for you. You don't have to chase clients. ↳ But companies can be very disloyal and the market is saturated with artists. Some artists say that everyone is a freelancer because of this. It's every man for himself.

• There are other artists who rely on their fans for income. ↳ Seth Godin says that everyone should think of themselves as a brand. As competition increases, we become more and more dispensable. Putting yourself out there and building a fanbase is one way to combat this.

• Other artists will teach. ↳ Stan thinks this is a great way to enter the professional art world but you may get stuck as a teacher. Once you become dependent on that income, it gets harder to find time to focus on your own art. ↳ Teaching is one of the best ways to learn.

• Not making money as an artist could be the best decision you make. ↳ Your art can be contaminated by someone else bossing you around. ↳ John Singer Sargent got sick of painting portraits of rich people. He put a stop to it and only did portraits that he wanted to do. This included friends and actors he admired. ↳ It might be best to get a physically active job that balances out all the sitting you'll do when you're drawing. ↳ Jobs where you have lots of down time (security guard, first aid attendant) are great, too. You could probably draw on company time. ↳ However, being an artist for a living gives you something to push up against. Some of the best jobs are done by artists who are going the extra mile to meet a deadline or meet some expectation placed on them. ↳ Deadlines can be draining, though.

• It's very important for artists to have business skills. ↳ There has never been a better time in history for people to make money off of anything that they're interested in. If you're obsessed with worms, you could be an authority figure on forums and start selling informative courses or ebooks, for example. ↳ You could chase trends, but as soon as you're good in that style, that style could go out of fashion.

• Do great work. Be reliable. Be good company.

📞 Voicemail Question: When is it acceptable to start offering commissions? • You have two temperature gauges. The first is whether or not you think you're ready. The other is whether or not there are people who want to hire you. If you think you suck but somebody wants you to draw their favorite character, go for it. The way to make it as an artist is to get people to pay you as quickly as you can. Even if you get in over your head, it will be a good learning experience. Unless you royally screw-up. Use common sense and don't take commissions that you definitely know you can't complete to the client's desires.

Mentioned: • Linchpin (Seth Godin) • Tribes (Seth Godin) • William Blake • Crushing It! (Gary Vaynerchuk) • Neil Gaiman's Make Good Art speech

[providence-notes]

S1E16: Drawing on Both Sides of the Brain

• A good thing to practice is both slow and fast repetition of a movement. Slowing down helps you figure out the whole motion (arm position, posture, etc.). Doing it faster simplifies the motion and removes anything that's not important.

• Separate divergent and convergent thinking. ↳ Divergent thinking is when you're considering how many ways you could get something done. It's creative and improvisational. ↳ Convergent thinking is when you're focused on reaching one identified solution to a problem. It's a lot more logical. ↳ The order should be divergent then convergent thinking. Don't start off too carefully and too tight. This chokes off any potential breakthroughs you could have had by being open-minded and playful.

• There are different kinds of thinking. Lateral thinking (this thing is like this thing, which is like this thing, which is like...) is very helpful for artists. Critical thinking should be kept to a minimum during your drawing session, to allow your creativity to flow. Later you can step back, be critical, and make adjustments. ↳ Try drawing gesture drawings with dynamic, empathetic lines. Don't think, just try to feel the energy of the pose.

• Drawing has so many different skills involved that you can't be thinking of them all while doing it. You need to practice consistently so you can get to the point that these skills become intuitive. Let your subconscious take care of proportions, line weight, etc.

• When training for anything, you need to be aware of spectrums. ↳ Drawing from observation and drawing from imagination are on either end of a spectrum. Working fast vs. working slow is another. ↳ See what the extremes are and see how they relate. You may have one strength that you want to lean towards, or maybe you want to be more balanced.

📞 Voicemail Question: How important is it for an artist to be able to give critiques to other artists? • It's very important. If you don't know how to analyze, deconstruct, and see the ways someone's art could be improved, you probably don't know how to do that for yourself. When you point out things that could be improved in someone's art, it also reminds you to be aware of those elements in your own work. Don't give unasked for critiques, though.

Mentioned: • Mastery (Robert Greene) • The Art of Learning (Josh Waitzkin) • Lateral Thinking (Edward de Bono) • Writing the Natural Way (Gabriele Rico) • Design Your Career with a Whiteboard

[providence-notes]

S1E15: How Important is Art History?

• You don't need to know art history to be good at art. Some good artists don't know much about art history, they just love to draw. But often, the people who are the best in their field are familiar with, or have extensively studied, those who came before them.

• "If knowledge is like food, you don't want to just take in all of this food and not have any hunger for it. You usually have hunger for it because you want to do something, so I need something that will nurture me and strengthen me to do it. And that is where the study of history becomes a joy."

• Reading biographies is great because you can learn about the best people in your field. You see their struggles and how they overcame them. Or you see what their downfalls were. ↳ "You read one person's story... and you look at the pattern and then you look at the pattern of your own life and say, 'Let's not carry through with that path.'"

• Drew Struzan was famous for his movie posters. He said he learned to draw by studying Rembrandt, Daumier, Pontormo, Cezanne, Degas, and others. He took his favorite qualities from each artist and combined them. Part of what made Struzan's work stand out, is that he looked back through a treasure trove of history to help shape his style. Nobody at the time was creating art like him, because he turned to the past and didn't follow trends.

📞 Voicemail Question: What is your opinion of Burne Hogarth? • Stan used his book on hands a lot as reference, to see how he designs tendons and knuckles. But Hogarth's illustrations of the human body are noodly, and seem to have no bones. He recommends studying Goldfinger instead. Marshall was confused by Hogarth's writing. Peck, Hamm, and Loomis have a very nurturing spirit, whereas Hogarth is a hard-ass. But he says that his books are good for showing how simple forms relate to organic forms.

Mentioned: • William Adolphe Bourguereau, Solomon Joseph Solomon, John Everett Millais, John William Waterhouse, Jeremy Lipking, Craig Mullins, Drew Struzan, David Grove, Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida, Rembrandt, Honore-Victorin Daumier, Jacopo da Pontormo, Paul Cezanne, Edgar Degas, Alphonse Mucha • Ken Burns • Dan Carlin's Hardcore History • Dr. Seuss & Mr. Geisel (Judith and Neil Morgan) • Drawing Dynamic Hands (Burne Hogarth) • Dynamic Figure Drawing (Burne Hogarth) • Dynamic Light and Shade (Burne Hogarth) • Dynamic Wrinkles and Drapery (Burne Hogarth) • Visions of Light: The Art of Cinematography

[providence-notes]

S1E14: 23 Habits for Artists

• Before a practice session, determine what success looks like to you. ↳ Are you successful if you manage to consistently draw torsos a little more accurately? Are you successful if you like at least 1 out of 10 drawings you did that day?

1. Draw from life. ↳ Drawing or painting from life is important because pictures don't capture everything, especially color information. Transforming a 3D object into a 2D picture is a valuable skill, but drawing from a photograph skips this step cause you're going from 2D to 2D. Drawing from life helps you get better at drawing from pictures.

2. Draw in your head. ↳ Draw in your head by visualizing a scene and making decisions about how to depict it in a drawing or painting, even when you don't have a sketchbook or canvas with you. This can help improve your skills and make it easier to draw or paint a scene when you do have the opportunity. ↳ "Comp studies" refer to preliminary drawings or sketches used to plan out a painting or illustration. Once you do them enough on paper, you gain the skills to start planning them out in your head.

3. Become your own best critic. ↳ The feedback loop is essential for improvement. You can overlay drawings on photographs to check the accuracy of your proportions. Or use a ruler to extend lines out from boxes to check if the lines converge correctly.

4. Get information from multiple sources. ↳ Information from multiple sources can overlap and provide a more comprehensive understanding of whatever you're studying. ↳ It can also prevent you from copying one particular artist or becoming too focused on one style or skill. ↳ Multiple sources can give you conflicting advice, though, and a mentor can help you discern what's useful. Or you can discern it yourself through trial and error.

5. Train like an athlete. ↳ K. Anders Ericsson said that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something. What matters most is not the number of hours, but how well you are practicing/studying. It should be focused and deliberate. ↳ In order to improve at a skill, it's important to break it down into smaller micro skills and practice them separately. A basketball player doesn't get good by just playing basketball games. They need to do drills where they work on specific things, like free throws or dribbling. ↳ It is important to combine those skills regularly, though.

6. Break big things into smaller things. ↳ Breaking larger goals into smaller ones can make them less overwhelming and easier to achieve. ↳ For example, when learning anatomy, focusing on one specific aspect (such as arms or hands) can be more manageable than trying to learn everything at once.

7. Protect your most creative time. ↳ It's important to protect your most creative and productive time for important tasks, like drawing practice. ↳ This means scheduling other tasks and activities (checking emails, meetings) outside of this time and avoiding distractions.

8. Go beyond the minimum requirements. ↳ Going beyond the minimum requirements for a task or assignment can lead to better results and personal satisfaction. ↳ Pushing yourself to do your best and improve can be rewarding, but it's important to avoid letting it become an obsessive or compulsive behavior that leads to burnout.

9. Think like a kid. ↳ Thinking like a child, without preconceived notions or assumptions, can lead to creative and innovative solutions. ↳ Do this exercise often. Pick a random object and think of 10 different, unconventional uses for it. ↳ Exercising this type of thinking can be useful for concept and character design and for finding creative solutions, in general. ↳ The fear of looking stupid is what chokes our potential. Children don't care about such things. They do and speak without inhibition. Be playful with your work.

10. Research, research, research.

11. Patience. ↳ Frustration hurts your progress. Learn to enjoy the process of becoming a better artist.

12. Draw things you enjoy. ↳ It's important to draw things that you enjoy, not just cubes or gesture drawings that you use to drill the fundamentals into your head. ↳ Chasing what you love and being true to your interests, even if others may not understand or appreciate them, can lead to success and fulfillment.

13. Remix your inspiration. ↳ Take ideas and elements from various sources and combine them in new and creative ways.

14. Share what you learn. ↳ Teaching can help improve your understanding and organization of information. ↳ Filling in gaps in knowledge by answering questions can help you learn. ↳ Motive for teaching can be selfish (to improve personal understanding) but the goal can be altruistic (to help students understand).

15. Spend time with other artists. ↳ Can be helpful for improving skills and staying motivated. ↳ Being part of a community can make difficult or unpleasant tasks more enjoyable. ↳ Talent can be developed and improved through being in the right environment with a community of like-minded individuals.

16. Say "no". ↳ Saying "no" to certain things can help prevent you from becoming overwhelmed and allow for more focus on important projects. ↳ Saying "yes" to something can also mean saying "no" to something else, and it's important to consider this when deciding whether to commit to something. ↳ It can be helpful to have a default mindset of saying "no", and then actively choose to say "yes" to specific things that align with your goals and priorities.

17. Say "yes". ↳ Saying "yes" to things that are challenging or scary can help with personal growth and improvement. ↳ It can be helpful to recognize and address fear in order to take on new challenges and opportunities.

18. Make ugly drawings. ↳ Marshall's sloppy drawings helped him become more comfortable with ugliness and imperfection in his art. ↳ The eight minute draw exercise involves drawing the same subject repeatedly in increasingly shorter time periods, leading to more gestural and spontaneous lines. ↳ The goal is to get past self-consciousness and focus on completing the drawing quickly. ↳ Making ugly drawings or allowing for the possibility of failure can help you with overcoming the fear of imperfection and allow for more freedom and creativity in your art.

19. Exercise. ↳ Exercise improves your physical and mental health, and can also be beneficial for learning and understanding anatomy. ↳ It can make you more aware of the specific muscles being used and their functions.

20. Draw daily.

21. Finish what you start. ↳ Many artists start new projects but don't finish them because they get bored or the project becomes difficult. ↳ It is important to develop the habit of pushing through to finish a project. ↳ One issue with long projects is that they can wear an artist out, so develop criteria for which ideas to pursue.

22. Discipline. ↳ Discipline should be selective in order to allow focus on specific goals and tasks. You may not have to be disciplined about checking your email, so don't feel bad if you procrastinate that in order to make time for drawing.

23. Master your calendar ↳ Be deliberate with your time. Do a weekly analysis of the previous week and take time to plan the week ahead.

Mentioned: • Jim Lamb, N.C. Wyeth, Howard Pyle • Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi) • The Talent Code (Daniel Coyle)