advice for artists – Whiskey and Magnolias

ut It’s that time of year again that I spend several days a week driving to beautiful locations. Which means it’s a lot of hours in a car alone with nothing but music keeping me company. Turns out its such good company that on these drives I would always find a reason to go off my route home so that I can find some hidden beauties for the sake of finding beauty.

There is something about driving without direction that is so freeing. In a year of change, I’ve spent a lot of time driving down old roads with no direction other than what looked good at the time. Sometimes I have just left my house on a dreary afternoon just to drive in whatever direction that called to me. A few hours later I am back home after a long date with the road and my radio, and my heart is ready to focus. The anxieties have a habit of flying out the window if you drive fast enough.

Pick a direction. Get completely lost. End up exactly where you were supposed to be all along.

I don’t know if you need help finding direction in such a messy world. What works for me might not work for you. But if you need a place to start, I recommend jumping in the car with no GPS and see what happens.

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Here is something all artists can really relate to. How do I find my own personal style?

Step One : Watch tutorials or take classes to learn basic techniques

Step Two : Stop giving a fuck and do what comes to your pretty damn heart.

I’ve spent most of my life an artist. I emulated others. Copied styles. Looked intensely at reference photos. It was a lot, a LOT of fan art from various nerd obsessions that I had acquired over the years. Photography stole me for the past 7 years, and I dropped the pencil. I sold my brushes. At first I had these wide eyes and photographed from the heart. But the same thing happened to me that happened to my illustrations… I started to lose myself.

I lost myself in the comparisons. For a bit I even concerned myself with other photographer’s work spaces that maybe if I just had that hip, minimalistic office style like it would make me into this cool photographer that they were. Because that is how it works right? Paint my walls white and all of a sudden have a green thumb for all of these perfect plants around my work station that has only 5 items tops on the desk? That would make me turn my black and whites into the exact black and whites that other photographers were doing. That’s how I would get the same amount of likes. I would have 30K instagram followers and they would be asking me for workshops! YES!!!

Turns out, it doesn’t work that way. Not by a long shot.

So I decided to just… be happy.

I turned back into art that was created for me. Bought some brushes for the first time in 14 years. Watch a few tutorials on watercolor (Skillshare is amazing, by the way) and oil painting. I made gifts for my friends. I painted fanart again without looking at references. I just made pretty things that I loved creating. And suddenly something happened :

I was excited about photography again. I was excited about ALL art again. I realized I had a gift and a vision people loved all along. When did I get swept away by this internet full of photographers? When did I forget that I love painting chickens and fan art and anything my little heart desired?

Finding your personal vision Journal Watercolors watercolor artist painter Bay Area artist artist blog advice for artists

Honestly, I can’t tell you when that happened to me. It was a slow decay at my creative heart that crept in without any sound. I wasn’t prepared for something to pick apart the very foundation of which I had based my whole life on. But there I was, not looking forward to art anymore. I was still excellent at it. I still let the excitement of my clients absorb into me. But it was being done out of fear of not doing a good job, rather than passion for creating something unique and beautiful made with my heart.

Your heart is a pretty amazing thing. No one else has one quite like you. What I’ve realized at this point in my life (it only took me a mere 24 years of being an artist), is that putting anything out of your mind that doesn’t bring love and happiness to your art will kill your creativity. Turn on music that makes your soul explode, rather than looking at art with the amount of likes that you wish you could get. Close your eyes and use your own visualizations – every little detail. Whatever you pictured you can create. But only if you allow yourself to release the blocks that you though you needed to hold your creativity up.

…TLDR?

Minimalistic offices are boring when you can have these little guys instead.

Finding your personal vision Journal Watercolors watercolor artist painter Bay Area artist artist blog advice for artists