Lessons
Embracing Yourself as an Artist
08:13 2Actionable Goals to Achieve Your Dream
06:09 3Setting Intermediate Goals
04:15 4Creating Actionable Tasks
05:29 5Develop Your Business's Personality
02:51 6Your Messaging & Communication - Part 1
01:11 7Your Messaging & Communication - Part 2
03:41 8Successfully Promote Your Work
09:21Lesson Info
Embracing Yourself as an Artist
embrace yourself as an artist. This is really the topic of chapter one of my book, I am an artist. Am I periodically do public speaking and a lot of what I talk about is this idea of ownership as an artist and of really owning what we do, especially those of us who are self taught, any self taught people in the room. We often feel like impostors, even people who went to art school and went through traditional channels, feel like imposters at the time. Um, and and so this idea of embracing ourselves as legitimate and genuine. You know, when somebody asks you, what do you do, you say I'm an artist, right? It's important because we all experience doubt and all of this putting our work into the world, can feel incredibly nerve racking. Maybe you have graduated from art school, but you haven't made or sold any work in years and you're trying to get back into it. Maybe you're, you're worried your work just doesn't compare and you don't have a shot. Um and yet the reality is that believing th...
is is possible in believing that you have something to give the world is really the first step and we're going to keep coming back to the that idea that believing this is possible is the first step. How many people have heard of the starving artist myth. Okay, you're all familiar. So, let's talk about it for a second as a culture. We've traditionally separated art from money. The idea is that art in order to be good and pure had to be made by somebody who is not concerned with making money from it. Um from this grew the starving artist myth. We also as a culture, you may not believe these things and that's good if you don't. But as a culture, we've traditionally believed that only a chosen few make it in the art world. How many have heard that before? Right. And that actually used to be true. But now we have this thing called the internet which is level the playing field and it's great, so many more opportunities. We've been conditioned to believe that struggle is inherent in making art and I'm here to tell you it sort of is But but that's actually a good thing. If you're not struggling, if you're not out of your comfort zone, you're not pushing yourself hard enough. Okay, All right. So the thriving artists mindset, which is what we sort of want to get to starving artist myth is just that a myth. There was a time when for the world of artist was close, very close, dark and mysterious place. Those days are over new media and new ways of connecting in the world has really changed the landscape for artists and actually it's changed the landscape for writers, for engineers, for scientists, for everybody. This isn't just about artists. This is about everyone in the world. The world is a much bigger and smaller place all at the same time, I um I do believe and I have witnessed time and time again, that a combination of talent which you all have strategic choices, great customer service and self promotion are what it takes to build a career. And if you combine all of those things and a few other things that we're going to talk about, you've got an amazing shot. I'm not going to teach you in this class how to not be paralyzed by fear. I can't do that. There are lots of ways to approach it. Um but if if you feel like fear is paralyzing you then that is really sort of the first step is to work is to attempt to work through that. And I don't think that has to happen before you launch your career. It needs to happen simultaneously. All right. What about rejection and criticism? Um Another sort of like the thing that we're sort of afraid of the most right artists objective as we talked about earlier, but it's part of what we do. This idea of rejection and criticism, whether it's um I posted a photo of my new painting on instagram and no one commented, you know, like something is sort of little as that too. I entered a juried show and I didn't get in and I got some hard feedback from the from the jurors, you know the guest or something big like that. It's just part of what we do, writers experience it, anybody who's um innovative and creative experiences that we are by nature, what we do makes us vulnerable when we put what we do into the world, we feel vulnerable. It's part of what we do. So it's never gonna go away so you might as well befriended. And another important thing is separating the personal from the professional, when people give you feedback on your work more often than not, it's not about you or whether you're a good person or whether you have any talent even it is, it's just a some professional feedback those of you who went to art school. How many of you again, you experienced Critz right where you probably felt like you wanted to cry afterwards. Alright. From starving to thriving. Here's how to do it, support your, surround yourself with a supportive community. We talked about that earlier. If you don't have one start to find one. And the internet is a great place for that. Um as well as sort of getting involved in your, your arts community wherever you live, um surrounding yourself with supportive people, family, friends, mentors, write stuff down religiously. Um I truly believe that when you get your your worries out onto paper, there is a release that happens. That is very profound. I carry a notebook with me everywhere and I right as much as I can down in it or draw sometimes I also write down all my ideas. So I don't forget them. Um I write down just about everything that comes to my mind and I feel like writing stuff down is really important. No one ever has to see it. You never have to publish it if you want to write a blog post about it on your blog, that's great. But really it's your way of sort of, releasing and writing the last thing is to go outside of your comfort zone every day. I pretty much live outside my comfort zone, which means I'm a little anxious a lot of the time, but it serves me well. And I think as artists, this is a place where we have to go, whether it's in your work right in your creative process, pushing your work or whether it's in promoting your work and really sort of taking on this idea of like putting your work into the world and feeling like so nervous about it because you're afraid of what people will think um to um embarking on some aspects of business that may as a right brained person may feel really uncomfortable to you because you're very um because you're very right brained and organizing things maybe isn't your thing. So go outside of your comfort zone every day. All right, so overview of the goal setting process, which we're gonna start with vision mapping, we're gonna start with that core values. I'm gonna have you um make a list of all the things that feel important to you, these are your values that you're gonna keep in mind for um you know, for your art career, like what are the things that are important to you and that you want to always bear in mind, we'll go more into that soon. Intermediate goals. These are sort of manageable goals that you can accomplish in a week or a month or two months or three months that stem from the big goals on your vision map and then actionable tasks. These are the things that you can do in one day or one hour to sort of get you closer to your intermediate goals and and the big goals on your vision map. So, I was using this this tool, you can see at the time to think about how I wanted, you know, the things I wanted to focus on for the rest of that year, you can use a vision mouth for anything for the purpose of this class. We're going to use the vision map to brainstorm. Big goals for um, For the next 1 to 5 years around your goals as an artist
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