Do you feel like you spend so much time on social media, and it's giving you little to no results? Are you feeling overwhelmed with all the choices and advice, and you have no idea who to listen to and what will actually work for you? If so, I have an important message for you: Stop wasting your time online and share your work where it really matters Read more...
If I were to choose one secret weapon that helps my productivity more than any other, I'd have to say it's meditation. I know, it sounds weird to associate meditation – the epitome of non-doing – with productivity, which is all about doing, but if you think about it a little, it actually makes perfect sense. Meditation and action are polar opposites, but as with any opposites, one cannot exist without the other. We need the state of non-doing in order to be able to define doing, and vice versa. Meditation acts like a reset button on those thoughts, and enables me to get the most out of my time. Here are 5 ways meditation can boost your productivity. Read more...
I imagine that a lot of people reading this are artists that either have a job in a creative field, or have a business that relies mostly on creative services. On the surface, it sounds like the best possible way to live as an artist, right? Here you are, doing the stuff other people would kill for. But there are days when you realize it's not as shiny as it seems on the outside. Read more...
Some people say ideas are worthless without execution. Others say ideas are the currency of the future. You, however, seem to have a problem cashing in on this currency because you have more ideas than you know what to do with — it's both a blessing and a curse.
While I don't have a magic pill that will stop this craziness (and honestly, we wouldn't want to stop it), having a system to manage our wealth of ideas helps a lot.
Here are my suggestions how to handle this 'problem'. Read more...
I want to talk about an issue that I feel is greatly affecting our ability to be successful in our art and business. It's about our willingness to stand firmly in our uniqueness, and put our individuality in the spotlight in everything we do. Read more...
Let's welcome the new outdoor sketching season with a little art supplies geekout! I'm always voyeuristically scavenging blogs and Pinterest to see what sketching tools other artists are using. I've only mentioned my sketching kit once before on this blog, so I decided to create a post about this topic alone. Read more...
On September the 1st I celebrated the first anniversary of making the switch to full-time self-employment. I find it really funny to read all the advice now, because I broke pretty much every single rule along the way. And this made it more difficult than it had to be. If you're still in your day job, here's a heads-up on what not to do, and what to do instead. Read more...
When I was a kid and I started getting nice stationery for birthdays, my grandma warned me that I should not 'play' with it, but keep it safe for when I was older. I internalized this story: I don't deserve nice things now. Fast forward 20 years, I realized I still kept my 'nice sketchbooks' because I felt undeserving. Read more...
Don't ignore the question of pricing before anyone asks you. You need to come to the art buying conversation prepared. If you have no idea how to figure out how much to charge for your creations, I've got you covered! I'll show you the exact process I used to figure out the pricing for my art. Read more...
In the start-up world people often present early concepts of their work because they don't want to put thousands of hours of work and boatloads of money into something that isn't even interesting or useful to other people. And what do most of us do? We wait until we build it — no actually, we wait until we perfect it — and then we show it to the world. Read more...