Professional or "on the side" artist

In college I was desperate to figure out what it was I was going to do. I remember feeling so much pressure to figure it to and make a choice and “decide”. I however was at a total loss. I felt a lot of pressure from my parents to pick business, but in my soft idealistic brain, I wanted to be an artist and go to art school. As freshman and sophomore year drew to a close, time got short and classes were super expensive.  I decided to go with a business degree, a decision which in the end I am thankful for, but there is more…. 

I finished college, moved back home  and took classes at SVA (which I was in love with at the time).  When I took my first animation class, I realized it was a monumental pain in the a$$.  Imagine drawing and drawing and drawing for hours only to have 2 to 3 seconds* of animation. WTF. Nope. So I hit a brick wall and decided to hang it up for a while and get a job and save money.

As I got my first job, I picked up and put down the artwork for a long long while . Then one day I picked up a digital arts magazine and (I think it was Imagine EFX) and was floored. It was like seeing an old girlfriend and reconnecting with her again. I was taken by the desire to start creating and I did just that. I looked at all the art blogs and artist sites and, read magazines, and tried to dissect “how” they made such amazing art work. I bought a Wacom tablet and practiced continuously and slowly improved.  

One day while watching an artist being interviewed I heard a quote that really stuck and resonated with me. It went something like “You can still be a great artist, and don’t have to be a professional or try to make a living off of it. It’s not for everyone.”  I finally** realized I didn’t want to be a professional artist anymore, but I still loved the art form and creating work. You can get the biggest answer from the smallest moments sometimes. I was finally let off some large massive hook that’d been following me around for years. I didn’t have to study art and** build a business etc.  Because being a professional artist means just that, you are spending a lot of time building infrastructure to market and promote yourself. I can just make art and become really great at it.

It took a long road to get to that learning moment. Had I done it the other way I might have come to the same decision but had a much rougher time figuring that out. If I did go to art school, I would have [possibly] burned out, and not* put in as much hard work into honing my craft. The work in building a business would have taken away from the love of creating. This is not something that I could have seen at the time. 

Sometimes in life you take the long way around to get the lessons that you need to move forward.  

So no I am not a professional freelancer nor do I want to be one anymore, not really. I do* want to be a great artist, and the balance I have discovered gives me the freedom to pursue that joyfully. Whatever you decide to do I wish you the same fruitful discovery.

Instagram: Moebocop

Vero: Moebocop

www.moebocop.com

Movie and scene thumbnailing

Today’s topic will be a bit more of a tip than anything else. While watching movies or tv shows you will notice that there are many different visual ideas represented. There are many camera angles, costumes, scenes, special effects, characters and so on. If you take your favorite movie and sketch from beginning to end you will notice the wealth of ideas and concepts to be captured. 

For example, what I like to do is start at the beginning of  a film, watch out for any scenes that really stand out. 

When I see such a scene, I will then take mental snapshot and try to quickly re-create this scene in a sketchbook or sketchpad. (You can also do this digitally on an iPad, etc.)

Another practice tip that I like to use is similar to the above, but instead of trying to recreate a scene, I simply sketch the gesture lines of the characters in the scene using little to no detail. This is another quick way to get the main idea of the scene instead of the trying to capture everything.  

You will find that your drawing will get a lot more proficient and you will be able to capture ideas a lot faster. It is also a great warm up technique before a really lengthy drawing session. 

Try both and see how it works for you! Enjoy!

Instagram: Moebocop

Vero: Moebocop

www.moebocop.com

Treat our Day Job (9 to 5) As Your Second Job

For years I was always referring to my day job as my first job and my after work pursuits as my second job.  Recently I had a conversation with a friend of mine and who mentioned to me that for the longest time we have been thinking about this the wrong way. The day job can actually be thought of as the supplementary one. The day job is the thing that funds your other exploits (if you choose to think of it that way). This one is actually your second job. The things that you do outside of your day job exploits are the real work. 

Those are the things that drive you and give you passion and pleasure and purpose (to me it does).

The trick is to find a day job that does not overtake your real* job. The jobs that really give you passion and purpose. 

For the longest time I had it so wrong. Its’ such an old world inflexible way of thinking about how you spend your time leading towards your goals.

I am at the point now where I no longer think that way. It’s the things that give you passion that are your real career. Think if it as your passion career or your spirit career.  Everything else is just a job.

Now for some people their 9 to 5 is* their passion and that’s great. It has never been that way for me. We now are able to reframe our world the way that you want to and I am glad to be living in it.

Too bad that it took me this long to figure it out.

Instagram: Moebocop

Vero: Moebocop

www.moebocop.com

What do you do when you are stuck?

There is always something on the canvas in my work studio. Or I usually have a sketchbook out working on drawing what I see. This has comes from years and years of habit and now it is to the point that I feel restless if I don’t have something in the works. What do you do though when you want to start a painting or want to start a new project and can’t? 

Or you are in the middle of a painting or project or idea, and feel like you are stalling? I am in the middle of a project just like this, and I feel, myself going in that direction. It feels like an albatross around your neck. You know that you need to finish the work, but now that you have started it there are so many other things that have come up you would rather be doing. Paying  your bills all of a sudden has become really important, or looking at that old photo album that has been on your desk for months. It seems appealing to look at right now that you have this project to work on.

For me working on a painting is a like riding a bike up a steep hill. 

There is the set up stage where you get on the bike. Here you start laying down color and ideas and setting up the structure (that’s going up hill.) Then there is the part of the painting where I struggle with the work. The idea that I had in my head and the idea that is starting to show up on the canvas are not the same things. Suddenly the painting looks like a piece of sh*t and I want to give up and start over or start another painting. 

Keep Going:

Stop right there. That feeling you have about stopping half way is what makes painting the idea in your head worth it. Imagine if an architect building a massive structure suddenly decided, that the job is too hard, and decided to give up? Or if NASA quit half way when trying to send the astronauts to space in the 60’s etc. etc. The point is that you don’t give up. Even if the computer crashes, or the house is on fire or your burning dinner, or there are million other ideas in your head that would look “so much better”. Don’t stop the project that you are working on. Keep going. 

This strategy builds a muscle (I call it the completion muscle). It is what will train your mind to focus on seeing things through to the end. This can also be used for other things in your life (not just art). My basic rule is that once you start a project, don’t stop until it’s done. Only stop if it is causing harm to yourself or damaging another part of your life. When I struggle with work, and I keep going, it’s so much sweeter at the end of the struggle. I can say “look at what I did”. It’s an educational moment for yourself, because that little struggle adds another brick to the foundation of determination that you are building.

Scale Down:

If the projects that you start working on are too grand and overwhelming, why not scale the project down? Instead of painting a giant plate of fruit, why not just paint an apple? You can scale the scope of your paintings down so that you can complete more of them which will still build your completion muscle (again). Competing work often has the positive effect of both building the completion muscle and encouraging to get to the next painting a lot faster. The bigger your other projects, then the longer it takes to get to the end of them so the struggle seems harder. If you scale down you can get more done and the drudgery will also reduce itself in scale.

Quit:

Just kidding.....don't do that ever.

Work in Cycles:

Know why people like to work out to music? It’s because the music is a motivator and it takes your mind off of the hard work. The same thing can be said for creating work. Part of if can feel super easy and not like work at all, but then sometimes creative work can feel like a drag because of the detail in a dress that you are working on. Another way to lift the drudgery I have found is to work in cycles. Use the pomodoro technique and work in 25 minute blocks, put on a movie for 2 hours and take a break and the end of the film, put on music and take a break after 10 songs. Doing this passes the time a lot sooner, and inserts forced breaks in the middle of each working session. Soon you will have worked an hour, and are that much closer to being finished.

Whatever option you decide to use from the above, the main message here is keep practicing. You will slowly start to see improvement over time, and will build a body of work that you can look back on. The only way that you will fail is if you give up or don’t try at all. So keep going!

Instagram: Moebocop

www.moebocop.com