Author: Lironyan

Instagram for Artists – How I got 10K Followers | Liron Yanconsky’s Podcast – Episode 62

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Hi there, Liron here! Today I will give you my BEST advice for success on Instagram, aimed at ARTISTS in particular.

This is based on an article I wrote that you can find here: How I Got 10K Followers on Instagram.

Instagram & Other Social Media Platforms

Let’s talk a bit about Instagram in the context of other social media platforms.

Instagram is undoubtably one of the HOTTEST platforms at the moment. Great engagement, very active users and a huge potential for success.

But before we dive head first, I want to provide a little caveat. Never put all of your eggs in one basket. Instagram is great now, but it won’t last forever.

Competition increases, engagement goes down and the organic reach will probably also go down with time.

So diversify and try to produce content for as many platforms as you can.

With that being said, let’s get started with the advice! (:

1. Posting A LOT

This is a no brainer. If you want to build an audience, you have to post regularly and post A LOT!

How much? As much as you can.

I think one post a day is the minimum. I personally do 3-4, but less than 1 a day is really little.

2. Hashtags

Hashtags are the main means for making your work discoverable. Make sure to use as many as possible (the maximum allowed is 30).

Also do your research and figure out which ones work for you. Rotate them around and try out new things.

3. Stories

Stories are really important for improving the connection with your audience. But I do believe they also help you reach new audiences.

Their reach is much higher than posts, and they are more easily accessible from the top area of the app.

So many people passively scroll through stories, but will never see most of your posts.

Also try using hashtags in stories. It increases their reach even more.

4. Engagement – Inside and Outside

Inside – by that I mean with your own followers. Reply to messages and comments.

Outside – engage with other peoples’ posts. Leave comments and likes. And make sure it’s all GENUINE. Fake comments are easy to spot, and hurt your brand.

5. Business Account

Not sure about this one, but it seems to me like the moment I switched to a business account my engagement and reach improved.

However, the irrefutable advantage of a business account is the access you get to the Insights feature.

This shows you your top performing posts and a whole host of useful information.

6. Buffer and Efficiency

Make sure to streamline your work process in whatever way possible.

Buffer is a really useful app for scheduling posts to different social media channels. Plus, for Instagram you can’t schedule posts, so it’s really my only way of reaching my audience at times when I SLEEP (haha, different time zones…).

Conclusion

I hope you found this episode helpful.

Instagram is such a hot platform at the moment, so I’m trying to squeeze everything I can out of it, while I can.

In the future it’s going to become harder to build an audience. It will be much more challenging to grow.

It was easier 2 years ago. And it was still easier 1 year ago. And it’s easier now than it’s going to be a year from now.

So go for it!

And with that being said, let’s move on to the artist corner.

Artist Corner

In this episode I talked about Dean Mitchell, and incredible painter working in several mediums.

His oils focus on people, while his watercolors feature scenes more often. I love all of his work, but his figurative paintings and portraiture are spectacular.

You can check out more of his work on his website: Dean Mitchell

Here’s where you can find me

Check out my YouTube Channel – Liron Yanconsky

Or ask me questions on Instagram – @LironYanIL or Snapchat – @LironYan3

I hope you enjoyed this one. Take care, and we’ll talk again really soon,

– Liron

Drawing Fundamentals – Shape, Volume & Mass | Liron Yanconsky’s Podcast – Episode 61

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Liron here! And today I want to tell you about me going back to the drawing fundamentals, and sharpening my pencil-related skills (pun intended).

Why Fundamentals

I’ve known for a long while now that what makes a piece of art really communicate with the viewer on a deeper level – is usually not the glitz and glamour.

Usually it’s good mastery of the fundamentals of art. Those would be composition, form, value, colors and so on.

Artists Teaching the Fundamentals

I recently also started exposing myself to artists and teachers that focus on the fundamentals.

This really awakened something in me that wants to revisit this ideas, strengthen my understanding and control of them, and incorporate them in my artwork (mainly watercolor painting).

If I really want to become the best I can, this is an integral part of the deal.

What Fundamentals I’ll Focus on

Here are some of the main fundamental principles / techniques I plan on working on: Pencil and line control, shading, volume and mass, simplification, working from direct observation, creating a sense of depth and more.

I’ve been doing this for about 2 weeks, and am already very excited about the results. I feel like this is the right decision for now.

Scheduling Fundamentals Practice

This is going to be the real challenge. I need to somehow carve up more time for pure practice and working on my skills.

This is already a challenge as it is, but I’ll get it to work. It’s at least as important for me to work on the quality of my art, as the rest of my daily tasks.

And by the way, I plan on continuing with the normal routine on YouTube. However, I may share new insights as I learn them. Especially if I feel like something is significant enough.

And with that being said, let’s move onto the Artist Corner!

Artist Corner

In this episode I talked about Marcos Beccari, an extremely skilled watercolor painter based in Brazil. 

He paints what I would call hyper-realistic watercolors. His subjects are mainly the female figure and water.

It’s incredible and I highly recommend you check him out. Here’s his Instagram to get you started: @marcosbeccari

Here’s where you can find me

Check out my YouTube Channel – Liron Yanconsky

Or ask me questions on Instagram – @LironYanIL or Snapchat – @LironYan3

I hope you enjoyed this one. Take care, and we’ll talk again really soon,

– Liron

Real-Time Narrated Painting Tutorials – YouTube Experiment Results | Liron Yanconsky’s Podcast – Episode 60

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Hi there, Liron again here! Today I want to share with you my recent YouTube experiment – posting only real-time narrated painting tutorials – and talk about the results.

Let’s get going!

YouTube Experiment

Over the last few months, many viewers mentioned how what they are missing are full painting tutorials. Meaning – they didn’t want time-lapse vids. They wanted to hear my thoughts as I painted.

Following these requests, I decided to give this a try for six videos, which are two weeks.

This means that for the past two weeks, I’ve been only posting longer (40+ minutes) tutorials.

Feedback I Got

The vast majority of feedback was very positive. People were commenting how hearing my thought process is really useful, and how real-time allows them to follow along the action.

On the other hand, there were probably one or two comments saying how the videos are too long, and how they preferred shorter vids.

Results on YouTube

This is more about my YouTube analytics. I noticed several interesting things here.

First, one of the videos has done really well, gaining over 10K views. This is a lot for me, as I average at around 2K views, I would say.

Aside from that one, two other videos show some promise, and will perhaps gain more views with time.

I did see an immediate increase in watch time, which makes sense – as I was posting much longer videos.

But with that, there were also more views in general. This could be attributed to the 10K views video, but I’m not sure about that.

Also, I did notice an increase in subscribers growth, which was very slow for a while now. I averaged for a while around 40-50 new subs a day, and then increase temporarily moved the average to around 70, with the peak at 100+.

These are great results.

YouTube Channel Future Direction

My main insight from this experience was that I MYSELF am interested in variety. After such a long time period of posting only these longer videos, I started craving making shorter videos.

Another insight was that you can’t please everyone, which is 100% okay. So I might as well do what interests me.

My plan is to now incorporate what I learned over the last two weeks into my routine. We’ll go back to the normal series (The Paint Show, Painting Masters), but I’ll also try and do at least 1-2 full processes every two weeks.

Conclusion

I hope this experiment pushed the needle a little more in the direction of me improving as an artist and a teacher. And I’ll keep you updated on future experiments and new ideas I get.

And now, it’s time for today’s Artist Corner!

Artist Corner

In this episode I talked about Jasmine Huang, an incredible Taiwanese watercolor painter.

Her paintings have a beautiful realistic vibe to them. She uses a very unique color palette and is very well-versed in wet-in-wet.

Coincidentally, she is also the wife of Chien Chung Wei, who I featured in a recent episode of Painting Masters. I believe I will dedicate an episode to her as well (:

The best place to check out here work would be Facebook:
Jasmine Huang on Facebook

Here’s where you can find me

Check out my YouTube Channel – Liron Yanconsky

Or ask me questions on Instagram – @LironYanIL or Snapchat – @LironYan3

I hope you enjoyed this one. Take care, and we’ll talk again really soon,

– Liron

Freedom in Painting – My Biggest Personal Artistic Insight | Liron Yanconsky’s Podcast – Episode 59

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Today I want to tell you about my biggest personal artistic insight, regarding freedom and patience in painting (and creating in general).

Freedom & Patience

A few weeks ago I sat down with one of my best friends to do our yearly plans for 2019.

We don’t do resolutions, we do actual detailed and elaborate plans. The conversation we had led me to realize there’s one thing that’s really missing in my artistic life at the moment.

And seeing as art is about 85% of my life at the moment… that’s a major problem.

What’s missing is real freedom and patience when creating.

Goal-Oriented Me

So i’m very goal oriented.

This led me to always limit my creation time (painting, sketching etc.). After all, it’s only one of my many daily tasks.

The problem is – I wasn’t allowing myself enough time to really experiment. To create with freedom, patience. Deliberate experimentation is something that was really missing.

I was missing my artistic freedom.

Freedom & Experimentation

What I want to be able to do is go on side-tangents when creating.

Maybe I’ll be working on a finished painting, and I’m about to paint a person. I’d like to have the freedom to pause, take out a piece of test paper and jot down multiple sketches and paintings of the person I’m about to paint.

Maybe I’d like to try out different ways of painting them. Wet-in-wet, wet on dry, dry brush, etc.

But I wasn’t allowing myself to do that, as I am always aware of my time constraints. And I have tons of other stuff to do. Work on content, work on my sales funnel, the Facebook ads, LinkedIn ads, Instagram stories and… a barrage of other things.

Freedom as a Major Goal For 2019

I realized that I’ll have to force myself to do this. To give myself permission to have more freedom. To experiment more freely.

And so I decided to mark that as one of my main focuses for 2019.

I want to do “quarantined” creation days, in which my only “obligation” is to paint, sketch and experiment.

I want to reach that all-time level of art, and become one of the biggest artists of our time (and perhaps not just our time).

To get there, I will have to give myself permission to do this.

What would it look like if it was easy / fun?

This is an idea I’ve been toying around with lately, when things like that challenge me. I got this from Tim Ferris’s video on asking questions better.

Whenever something like this poses a challenge for me, I ask myself: What would this look like if it was easy? Or fun?

This is something I’m still contending with, but it does help from time to time.

Conclusion

And this is it for this episode! I hope this encourages / entertains you in some way. I feel like this idea of complete freedom will allow me to reach that crazy level I’m after.

And I’m not afraid of “too much” freedom. As it turns out, I’m pretty good at being disciplined haha. It’s the opposite direction in which I need to balance myself.

So with that being said, let’s move onto the Artist Corner!

Artist Corner

Today we talked about Anastasia Kustove, a fantastic watercolor painter I recently discovered on Instagram. You can check out her work @Kustova_Anastasia.

She mostly paints views and people. Her style is fantastic, and I’ve been really enjoying seeing it develop over the last year.

I especially love seeing pictures of her work on-location, such as this one.

And this is it for today!

Here’s where you can find me

Check out my YouTube Channel – Liron Yanconsky

Or ask me questions on Instagram – @LironYanIL or Snapchat – @LironYan3

I hope you enjoyed this one. Take care, and we’ll talk again really soon,

– Liron

Biggest Watercolor Painting Influences – Stan Miller, Joseph Zbukvic, Alvaro Castagnet & Chien Chung Wei | Liron Yanconsky’s Podcast – Episode 58

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Hi there, Liron here! Today I want to share with you my biggest painting influences – Stan Miller, Joseph Zbukvic, Alvaro Castagnet and Chien Chung Wei.

I will talk about what I learned from each one of these artists. Let’s get started!

1. Stan Miller

My biggest insight from Stan was how colors don’t matter, and it’s all about the values.

Stan Miller has so many insanely helpful YouTube tutorials, and in them he always emphasizes – if you get your drawings right and your values right – it will look realistic.

I learned the most from Stan Miller, no doubt about it.

Check out this tutorial to see what I mean: Stan Miller – Portrait Demonstration

2. Joseph Zbukvic

From Joseph I learned a lot about simplifying what I see. I learned I can manipulate things and represent them in a simpler manner that really works for the viewer.

Another thing I learned was the importance of believing in the process and allowing the painting time to come together.

I no don’t give up on ANY painting, until it’s 100% doomed haha.

3. Alvaro Castagnet

Ahhh, Alvaro. Such a unique spirit. From him I learned a few interesting things.

First – the important of contrast, or as he likes to call it – contradiction. This means having hard edges and soft edges, warm color and cool color. Conflicting elements that add interest.

One practical thing I got from him was to place cools and blues in close proximity, inside the shadows, to create interest and richness to the shadows.

Overall, my style is very different from Alvaro’s, but I do get a lot of inspiration from his uniqueness of style.

4. Chien Chung Wei

I started following Chien Chung Wei more recently, and even featured him in my newest episode of Painting Masters.

I learned to much to even explain here, so you’ll have to listen to the episode haha. Mostly I learned real skill is. His work is several folds more impressive than anything else I’ve seen.

And with that being said, let’s move on to the Artist Corner!

Artist Corner

So today I wanted to focus on… Chien Chung Wei!

Instead of writing, though, I urge you to take a look at my most recent episode of painting masters:

This artist is really something special.

And that’s it for today, hope you enjoyed this one!

And here’s where you can find me

Check out my YouTube Channel – Liron Yanconsky

Or ask me questions on Instagram – @LironYanIL or Snapchat – @LironYan3

I hope you enjoyed this one. Take care, and we’ll talk again really soon,

– Liron