×

From Pixels to Paint, it's all about the Creative Synergy... Let's get Creative!

Create or Quit…??

Create…That is the question.

It’s so easy to get beat down by failures. We want so badly to accomplish some goal, or dream, but every time something goes wrong, or not as planned. It’s like every step we take forward.. two more steps are instantly growing in front of us and the finish line just keeps inching farther away the closer we get, creating this endless treadmill effect where stuff’s happening, but we’re never really getting anywhere. Or maybe we just beat ourselves all together before we even start, by telling ourselves lies like “maybe it wasn’t meant to be,” and “it’s too hard,” or “it’s going to take too much time.”

…and what about “Time?” There’s another problem all together. It seems the older we get these failures of ours are a thousand times worse and harder to get past. The lies get bigger, let downs start hurting worse, and our pool of regrets just keep growing deeper and deeper, as our time gets shorter and shorter. We have this false expectancy and insatiable need for instant gratification and assume this is how the world works, and when we don’t get it, we want to give up all together…

We live in a world surrounded by instant gratification at every turn, and so we are always telling ourselves that we are waiting for that “one thing” that will make us successful, or rich, or famous. We call ourselves looking up to those that have made it… our role models if you will. But do we ever realize how much failure they went through before they could get to that illustrious plateau of success that we covet so much?

As a culture that worships at the altar of immediacy and instant gratification, we continue to romanticize the notion of the “overnight success,” overlooking the years of struggle and failure that paved the way for some of humanity’s most admired and accomplished luminaries.

“Expect anything worthwhile to take a long time,”…a wise woman once said.

I believe there is a common misconception these days about humanities most successful and enlightened people, how they’re somehow luckier or superior to us and that we could never hope to achieve a level of success as they did, and our lives could never be as successful… Well I challenge the ones that believe this to check their history. The truth is that many of the world’s “geniuses” were in fact, complete and utter failures for most of their lives.

This mythology and misconception of genius is exactly what British Filmaker Adam Westbrook explores in these amazing video essay mini-series “The Long Game” – a truly masterful feat of storytelling!

This is a two part series and the first video tackles the story of one of the world’s most celebrated artists, and my personal all time favorite: Leonardo da Vinci. It turns out that he didn’t get his big break until the age of 46, which was very old by that era’s life expectancy standards…

The Long Game Part 1: Why Leonardo DaVinci was no genius from Delve on Vimeo.

In the next series, Westbrook explores “Genius” even further, unveiling her secrets by focusing on “the difficult years” …those long dark years in a creative career that stand to separate those who preserver and end up being celebrated as geniuses, from the ones who just quit when things get hard, throwing in the towel, and never being heard from again. Westbrook reminds us that showing up no matter what, day in and day out, without fail is the surest way to the mastery of ones self and achieving lasting success.

The Long Game Part 2: the missing chapter from Delve on Vimeo.

“This celebration of youth, coupled with technology, has distorted our perception of time — the world moves faster, and so do our expectations. Today, we want success in seventeen levels, or seventeen minutes, seventeen seconds — and when the promise of something new and better is just a click away, who wants to wait seventeen years? But that’s the thing that connects all of these great people — they played the long game.

All of us have the brain, and the talent, and the creativity to join them. But now, right when it matters, do any of us have the patience?”

 

…It takes a lifetime of failures to pave a road to success. What separates the winners from the losers are the ones that keep going, no matter how long that road gets. The truth is, we never know how close we are to our dreams, and should never quit. You’re not dead yet, there’s still plenty of time. Just KEEP GOING!

18398_original

…So what are your thoughts on achieving success? I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this post as much as I enjoyed writing it! As always any comments are appreciated so feel free to join the discussion. See you next time, and remember…

…Stay Focused, Stay Inspired,

and BE Creative!!!

“Creative Overflow,” and how to escape it…

IMG_3797-1

Where do I even start?

We’ve all been there right? You have all of this time set aside, and plenty of amazing ideas of what to do with it, but when you get your chance, you just can’t seem to focus on any one of them?  …There’s too many ideas swimming around inside your head and you just don’t know where to begin. Now I don’t mean procrastination. Procrastination, like I mentioned in my last post, is something that is completely in our control. What I am speaking of now, is a much more wild and untamed beast… THIS is “Creative Overflow,” otherwise known as artists block, or writers block.

banner

 

…Maybe you drank too much coffee or Red Bull, or you’re simply getting all cramped up in your usual creative spot, and even attempt to move to a more inspirational location, only to end up with a creative traffic jam in your brain because of all of your ideas start flooding your head at once, and you can’t seem to find where to begin. Before you know it, your time is out and you’ve accomplished absolutely nothing… Whatever the reason, when this happens it can quickly become overwhelming and even shut you down, bringing your entire creative process to a screeching halt.

The problem is not coming up with ideas, but that we often have too many ideas, and we can’t seem to decide on which one to work on next. I personally have notebooks and sketchpads, both physical and digital, filled with tons of ideas and random thoughts just waiting to be explored and developed. Now don’t get me wrong, I realize that most of these ideas are probably complete crap, but it’s not always easy to tell the good stuff from the bad right away.

Escaping the creative logjam

log-jamIt’s easy to get overwhelmed; you have so many ideas, you don’t even know where to start. One way to get past this, is to trick ourselves. The truth is, we can be pretty hard on ourselves sometimes. But if we’re really serious about living a creative lifestyle, then the reality is we have nothing but time. As long as we keep notes, and sketches to work from, then we have our whole lives to finish. The deadlines are ours to make.

Usually the best solution is a “one at a time” method until the jam is unclogged. And while this is true and can even be highly effective, this too can even fail us at times. Sometimes by taking on more than one item from our list at a time, without setting any expectations on ourselves, we can often avoid the jam all together. For instance, don’t set any expectations on yourself as to how much needs to be finished with your project, there’s no need, you have until it’s finished. Don’t even try to focus on completing or doing anything huge …Maybe just come up with a title, or only paint the background of the canvas, or write just one paragraph of your story, whatever, just do little pieces of them, floating around from one task to the other. Without setting any expectations or imposing any killer deadlines on ourselves, we allow our passions to drive us, and in doing so, we’ll usually find ourselves being motivated naturally, by pure instinctual interest and attraction at it’s barest form.

If you’ve been around the creativity game long enough, you probably know that ideas can be a bit fickle. One day you might be bursting with ideas and excitement. A few days later you might not be able to drag yourself out of bed or cobble two coherent sentences together. That’s just the nature of the beast. So we can’t waste anything. Every thought needs to be saved and written down and we need to learn how to sift through the bad to find the good…

NGS Picture ID:1086913

 

One way that I save my thoughts is by keeping an album of “inspiration.” I have a massive digital photo album that I have collected over the years of only photos that’ve come across that’ve inspired me in some way. Sometimes, if I can’t focus on anything to work on, scrolling through these helps to inspire my motivation into gear…

And if you’ve tried everything; nothing is working and you’re still all jammed up, then simply stopping is the only logical solution left. Back up and just forget about all of it. Get out of the house if you have to, but don’t do anything creatively. Sometimes I have to do what I call “get recharged up.” When we are in our creative modes, we focus on exerting so much of ourselves outward into the world, and if you’re anything like me, then you are very careful as to what you allow yourself to take in, both consciously and subconsciously. If creativity and self expression were a flowing river, then any outside influences are liken to a stone being tossed in, disturbing the creative flow, or even like a dam that’s completely stopping the natural flow all together. It’s important to be conscious of the flow of information and influence we allow into our rivers. However, sometimes this in itself can even be draining and eventually cause a disruption in the flow. Too much of anything can be bad… So every now and then we have to stop with everything creative and just recharge. Get lots of human interaction. Lot’s of nature, sunrise, water, sunsets, …all of the goodies. Go out drinking for the night, whatever, just DON’T be creative! Even the great Leonardo da Vinci knew when to put the brush down:

“Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen.” ― Leonardo da Vinci

 

More often than not, when all else fails, after simply walking away for some time, you’ll find that when you least expect it you will be recharged up and excited all over again to re-attack your latest and greatest masterpiece, and with a fresh new vengeance.

You see, the trick is to sort of treat this whole creativity business like the ocean. Creativity is a living thing that we truly cannot control, but must still respect. So when we find our selves up to our necks and all jammed up creatively, sometimes the best way to act is to not act at all. In the ocean when you get caught in an undercurrent, we are taught to do nothing, to just float and let the current pull us to safety. The same advice can apply here as well… If we try to fight our creative block too much, we can just end up worse off than we were in the first place. I am pretty lucky in the sense that I write and create my art. So usually, for the most part when one gets jammed up, I can simply switch to the other and keep things rolling. But even this fails me at times and everything just won’t work. When all else fails I drop everything and leave. Literally I go somewhere, anywhere but I make myself get out of the house. Human interaction and anything to get my head off of whatever it is that I was having trouble with. This is usually a perfect time for family and friends! And often I find that upon my return I am completely re-energized and can easily begin knocking things off my creative list one by one in a productive and efficient manner.

I hope this helps the next time you find your self in a Creative Logjam…

What tricks do you use to focus when you find yourself overwhelmed? As always any comments are appreciated! See you next time! Until then…

 

Stay Focused, Stay Inspired,

and BE Creative!

jam2

Mastering The Art Of Procrastination…

Time-is-gone

“Time is at once the most valuable and the most perishable of all our possessions” – John Randolph

 

Time

 

Until someone invents a time machine, procrastination will continue to be the arch nemesis of productivity. We’ve all been there right? …We have this amazingly, Earth shattering, take-over-the-world kind of idea for a work of art, or project, or a blog we have to write, but for some reason it just keeps getting put off and eventually never gets done. As an artist, I deal with this all of the time. Sometimes I have a whole day free and completely set aside, and I think I’ll get a ton of painting done, but all too often I’ll get to the end of my day only to find that I haven’t even picked up a paintbrush. It’s not that I don’t want to do it, because trust me I absolutely do, it’s just that something is preventing me from getting started. If you’ve experienced this (and most people have), then you’ll know just how frustrating it can be.

BUT, what if we could use procrastination to our advantage somehow?

…Before we get into that, what exactly is procrastination, and why does it have such a commanding power over us? Procrastination rears it’s ugly head in many different forms… Sometimes we simply get distracted by our phones, emails, Facebook, TV, …anything but what we were originally planning on. This is procrastination. Sometimes we may feel that we don’t have enough time to finish something, so we decide to just wait until we can set aside a longer period of time. This is procrastination. Or maybe we may feel like we are lacking in motivation, and decide to simply wait until some grand moment of inspiration to come along. This too, is a form of  procrastination. 

But why do we procrastinate?

Is it really that we get all amped up and focused, our minds set and ready, and then out of nowhere here comes smug ‘ol Procrastination, and SMACK! Completely out of our control, instantly we’d rather do anything accept the very thing we intended to do in the first place, and there’s nothing that we can do about it?

While it does seem like this most of the time, if we just take the time to dig a little further, to the very roots of procrastination, what you will find might be a bit of a surprise… Hidden in the very depths of procrastination itself lies a massive, bubbling cesspool of Fear. Yep, you heard right; big fat stinking FEAR. Our fear of rejection; fear of not living up to expectations, whether our own ridiculously high standards of perfection, or someone else’s, all boils down to our innate ability to subconsciously fester that very Fear into one of the most self deceiving, and dangerously contagious bio-chemical weapons known to Man. This Fear stops us from doing what we truly want to do, because distracting ourselves and making excuses is a lot easier than facing those fears head on. We’ll bold face lie, and tell ourselves all sorts of devilishly-ingenious excuses like: “I’ll just start when I have more time to finish,” just so we don’t have to work on what is most important to us.

So then how exactly are we supposed to master procrastination and wield it to our advantage?

110514

For starters, by acknowledging the fear and ignoring it, then simply, “Taking Action,” …ANY action. The antithesis to fear and procrastination is Action. The simple act of ‘doing’ is the very opposite of fear. So in order for one to overcome procrastination, one simply has to take action, and just DO! Do anything, even if it’s just painting an unused under-painting on your blank canvas, whatever, just begin. Obviously that’s easier said than done, but what I try to do for my own artwork when I feel like I’m procrastinating, is to just start. I’ll take my blank canvas and literally start painting it any color of my choice. For the most part, this step is an unnecessary artistic-placebo in a way, since it’s usually completely covered up by the end, but I’ll sometimes also use this as a technique to add some depth to my paintings with complimenting colors and layers. Sometimes though, just by the simple act of painting that first coat, regardless of what color it is, I have already taken the first step towards overcoming my procrastination. After all, it’s a lot harder to quit something once I’ve already started. Which brings me to my next point of mastering the art of procrastination.

Knowledge of self is Key.

I’m the worst at using this particular excuse: “I’ll just start when I have more time…”  I can’t stand not finishing something once I’ve started. Since creating a painting takes a while, it is really easy for me not to start unless I have an entire day free to give, so as a result paintings tend to get put off for weeks or even months sometimes before I return to an idea. The truth is we will never just ‘have,’ or ‘find’ time. If you want time, you have to take it; …NOW. Time is there for us to do our bidding, every second of every day. What we do with it is our choice. So even if you find yourself with only 20 minutes before you have to leave for a meeting or whatever, don’t wait to start something until you have time to finish… Try not to think about the time you are lacking. Instead, think about all that you could do in 20 minutes. Even if all you get done in those 20 minutes is paint a blank canvas red, or just sketch an idea for your next painting, then that’s how it has to be, Congratulations, you’ve taken your first step towards conquering your fears, and completing your next big artwork, AND all on your own terms.

Time-Management-300x300

 

The point is you just have to be honest with yourself, and strict with your time. Whatever your schedule is, we all have areas where we can shave just a little time here and there. I sometimes set my alarm a half hour earlier to get a jumpstart on my writing. Or if I know I have 5 hours before I have to be somewhere, I will usually set 30 minutes or so to reading, 2 hours for writing, and the rest on painting.

The truth is that we will go out of our way to work on everything except the very thing that we are needing or wanting to… so we have to use this to our advantage somehow. According to one writer, the trick is to prioritize our procrastinations. I found his concept of “Structured Procrastination” pretty interesting. He says:

“The key idea is that procrastinating does not mean doing absolutely nothing. Procrastinators seldom do absolutely nothing; they do marginally useful things, like gardening or sharpening pencils or making a diagram of how they will reorganize their files when they get around to it. Why does the procrastinator do these things? Because they are a way of not doing something more important. If all the procrastinator had left to do was to sharpen some pencils, no force on earth could get him do it. However, the procrastinator can be motivated to do difficult, timely and important tasks, as long as these tasks are a way of not doing something more important…”

If you want to hear more about John Perry’s “Structured Procrastination” technique, you can check out his blog here. If you’re having a hard time with procrastination yourself, (and who isn’t right?) …then hopefully some of the ideas in this blog were able to be helpful.

So how do you handle your procrastination? Do you have any helpful tricks you use to get back to work after you find yourself procrastinating? Feel free to join in the discussion!

…Looking forward to next time, until then I hope you have a great day, and as always,

…Stay Focused, Stay Inspired, and

BE CREATIVE!

 

And Remember…

do not waste time

 

Hey Creatives, It’s 2014 and The Future is Here!!

__it_works_____back_to_the_future_by_scarecrow426-d4iwz94

What a great time to be an Artist!

It’s 2014 and the future we dreamed of as children is finally on its way! For myself as an 80’s baby, 2014 is a time to rejoice. Looking back, I can remember when I was around the age of 13, having to walk almost 5 miles to the closest strip mall where the nearest comic book store was, just to find my inspiration. I would save my money all week from mowing lawns with my first business in one of the neighborhoods I grew up in.

IMG_3425-1

I’d spend hours in there scouring through every comic that caught my attention. If I felt any sort of a connection to the style of art on a cover, then I would crack it open and study its pages, and if I found a good amount of pictures in there that I wanted to draw, (which was only certain realistic styles and body positions because back then I was working on creating my own team of characters just like The X-Men, only my team could kick their butts!) then I would buy it. The literary content was secondary…

back-to-the-future-hoverboardAs a child, when flying cars and touch screens were only a dream in my imagination, and in the movies, I was a sci-fi junkie; and still am thank you. But today, all around us that far fetched science-fiction we grew up with is actually starting to become a reality. We now have working jet-packs, flying cars, touch-screens, 3D printers, cell phones, tablets and even robots… The future is on its way. It’s slightly different from the one painted in Back to the future that I was looking forward to ( no hover boards yet, unfortunately,) but we are actually getting those cool “Back to the Future power laces” soon in 2015 according to Nike, so hey, there’s still some hope…

I can remember everyone being so excited about the ‘Paint’ program on those now ancient computers back in school and at home. I was actually disappointed. Even then in elementary school, I knew I could draw better on my own and wanted a way to draw directly on the screen. Thanks to Star Trek, I used to dream of a touchscreen and stylus… and now, thanks to innovators like Apple they are a reality. But for me I think the biggest technology so far that I am thankful to have in this future we are living in now, is the internet. Today we can “Google” literally anything and get amazing information and images instantly. When I was a kid, to get any good information or inspirational pictures, the closest thing I had was my parent’s Encyclopedia Brittanica set, Saturday morning cartoons, or my personal, (and totally awesome) Sci-fi filled, VHS library. If it wasn’t for these outlets I don’t know what I would have done. There was no internet as we see it today. Now, Universities such as MIT have there entire libraries online for anyone to view: https://libraries.mit.edu.

My-Princess-Background-Final

There is absolutely no reason for anyone not to learn how to do something with all of the information and tools available now at our fingertips. One of my favorite “tools,” and absolutely crucial to my work would have to be the simple but powerful “google image search.” For my inspiration, I now have access to an unlimited amount of knowledge, and amazing images of anything I can think of, giving me access to priceless insights and inspiration for my art. I once even taught myself Adobe Flash in 2 weeks using only google and youtube, (and insane amounts of coffee…,) and made my very first first animated cartoon.

I grew up with Star Trek and Star Wars… I’ve been waiting for a sci-fi enriched future my whole life! I am always looking for ways to bring technology and my passions together as an artist, and aside from Walt Disney Studios going door to door and training willing artists and dreamers such as myself, I couldn’t think of a better Time to live in. We can literally learn to do anything we want. The old cliché our parents and teachers used to tell us growing up is actually true: “We can be anything we want to be,” and we can do anything if we just set our minds, and Google Search to it…!

130509142450-flying-car-tfx-terrafugia-story-top-2http://whatsnext.blogs.cnn.com/2013/05/09/is-this-finally-our-flying-car/

 THANKS for reading the latest Blogpost on my brand new website! I’m new to this whole idea of blogging, but I hope to continue to be able to bring you creative, inspiring, and insightfully thought-provoking material as we grow together as artists. As always any insights, comments, or opinions of your own are welcomed and much appreciated, so don’t be afraid to join in the discussions. I hope you have an amazing day, and until next time…

  …Stay Focused, Stay Inspired, and BE CREATIVE!!!

Quiet time is crucial to the Creative process…

IMG_0042

Creating art, or even just being productive in the studio can be a very daunting task at times. Some feel that the best way to overcome this is to simply dive right in whenever they feel the urge, and let the fates decide what will be painted or created.. while for others, such as myself, there has to be a highly strategic plan. If not for overthinking, I’m not sure what I would think about… Either way I feel that one major factor into any creative process, is a dedicated time set aside for personal reflection, and creative thought.

It is important to have quiet time alone with your own thoughts, on a daily basis. In order to achieve this I find that it is best to get this time out of the way in the beginning of the day, because once I begin to let the noise of the world in by either music, radio, or TV… Etc… It is almost impossible to switch it back off and find a meditative state that works. …But if I begin first thing in the morning with quiet time for meditation, followed by either writing and reading, for at least the first 2-3 hours of my day…( which starts pretty early at 6am everyday,) then I can lay the ground works for my creative plans, and attack the rest of the day with artistic precision, creating a streamlined vortex of productivity… IMG_5319

For me, each day begins with some sort of writing. I have been working on a novel for the past year, so usually my morning writings have to do with this, but then sometimes I just write, setting a low, manageable limit for myself at 500-1,000 words/day.

As for the reading, I usually start with the personal notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci. I find there to be many useful thoughts and priceless artistic insights for nearly every aspect of life all throughout his pages. I definitely suggest for any aspiring artist to take the time and read through some of his notes…

This quiet time is crucial to not only my art, but to my personal life as well. It is all to easy to get so consumed by the everyday shuffle and grind, that life merely gets “glazed” over…  Taking the time each morning to center my thoughts allows me to take charge and enter a highly productive mindset, paving a road to exciting creative insights and discoveries. Most of my best ideas come from this special time early in the morning alone with my own thoughts… I try to focus only on the essentials. Creating an atmosphere which is conducive to my creativity, exploration and personal growth, really allows me the opportunity to hack away at my dreams and goals, little-by-little revealing more of the true nature of my own destiny with each passing day.

“It’s not the daily increase but the daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential…”- Bruce Lee

…So how do you find your quiet time amidst your daily hustle and grind? What is your creative routine? I would love to hear about your own creative process!

For more insight into wisely utilizing the creative power of time, check out this awesome site to see for yourself the daily routines of the world’s most famous creative people. And Thank YOU for Reading my first official blog post on my  brand new website JaysonBlondinArt.com! I look forward to sharing my passions with you here, as often as I can. Until then…

Stay Focused, Stay Inspired,

and BE CREATIVE!!

…See you next time!

IMG_0001

 

Follow

Get every new post on this blog delivered to your Inbox.

Join other followers: