Tag: advice

What Makes Art Good? | Liron Yanconsky’s Podcast – Episode 51

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Android | RSS

What makes art good?

Hi there, Liron here – and today I wanted to share my insights after listening to Antrese Wood’s podcast episode with Alvaro Castagnet.

In the podcast (The Savvy Painter) episode, they were talking about what makes art… well – art!

Alvaro shared his perspective on what is important when creating, and what separates good art from rare / great art.

Impressed By Castagnet

First off I want to say how impressed I am with Alvaro’s dedication to ART. He seems to be an artist through and through, and not “just” a painter.

I didn’t know he had such a developed outlook and perspective on this topic.

My Main Takeaways – What Makes Art Good

Here are the points I found important here:

1. Creating with innocence. We know how to make beautiful art, but then we learn and internalize a lot of excessive baggage. Unlearning is the key. Children’s paintings are beautiful and fully authentic.

2. Being present while creating. Something I mentioned here many times in the past.

3. Sensitivity to the world. This is something I’ve been talking about, but never phrased this way. Alvaro is a GENIUS. It’s such a good way to put it. Sensitivity. The ability to see more, where others see nothing.

4. Spontaneity. This is especially true with the wild medium of watercolor. At times you have to be able to be flexible and react to what the paint does.

Vision & Techniques Work Together

The above help you develop a clear vision.

What techniques do is help you execute on that vision. This is why techniques are important, but have their place.

A spectacular vision, imagination and perception, together with mediocre technique – can actually do wonders.

Excellent technique with complete lack of vision may produce boring work that has no soul.

And this is it for today. Would love to hear your thoughts on this in a comment below!

And with that being said… Artist corner!

Artist Corner

Today, I’ve featuring Antrese Wood! I mentioned her podcast and wanted to share more information about her.

She actually has an interesting life story, and art played a very significant role within it. She’s a painter, working mainly in oils and watercolor. From what I’ve seen she focuses on the A-la-prima approach (finishing the painting in one go).

She created a body of work called “A Portrait of Argentina”, which I highly recommend you check out. As someone who visited some of these places – she did a FANTASTIC job.

Antrese’s website: http://antrese.com/

Antrese’s podcast episode with Alvaro Castagnet: https://savvypainter.com/podcast/alvaro-castagnet/

A painting by here that I absolutely LOVE: https://shop.antrese.com/original-art/original_art_products/persistence-pmb4gqkh1da

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

Why I Love Q4 – Last Push for 2018-2019 | Liron Yanconsky’s Podcast – Episode 50

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Android | RSS

Hi there, Liron here and today I want to talk to you about why I love Q4 of the year!

Hard Work

To make a long story short – I see Q4 as an opportunity to work even harder than I worked for the entire year.

I like to start strong, then take it a little easier around July, and then pick up the pace again and go faster.

The main word I want to use for Q4 is MORE. I like to use this opportunity to JUST DO MORE. More videos, more posts, more ads, more articles.

By doing that, I know I’m setting myself up to win at the start of next year.

Conclude 2018 & Plan 2019

This is also a good time to reflect on the successes of the year (so many wins in 2018!). It’s important to recognize these.

Then, it’s time to plan how to win next year.

My Goals: Recap

I have two main MACRO goals. These are probably things I will never fully attain, but will always feel.

1. I want to become one of the best watercolor painters and teachers in the world.

2. I want to inspire as many people as possible to create with complete passion and courage.

And that’s pretty much it for this one. Now let’s move on to the artist corner!

Artist Corner

Today I’m featuring Russ the rapper.

In the past I told you how I want to feature not only visual artists, but also musicians, actors, writers and so on. So now’s the time.

Russ’s favorite theme is of him doing it himself. No one signed him, no one put him on, and he built his own career with his two hands.

I can really relate to that. When you are just getting started – all you get is no’s. And it’s up to you to push through and hopefully stick it to the nay-sayers’ faces (;

Here’s my favorite song of his: Me You

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

Going All-in on Instagram & What I Learned (for Artists)| Liron Yanconsky’s Podcast – Episode 49

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Android | RSS

Today I wanted to share this update regarding the recent changes I made in my Instagram routine / strategy / tactics, and the impact they had on my presence on the platform.

Two Main Changes on Instagram

I changed two main things in my Instagram routine:

1. Increased post frequency

This did prove to provide faster growth, and it didn’t seem my audience “got tired” of my content (:

I basically moved from 1 post a day to 2-3.

2. Tons of stories

I used to post 1-3 stories a day, and sometimes zero. Now I’m doing as much as 15-30 stories. I’m also making sure I use hashtags there as well.

One last thing I did, though that was a little while before all of that, was changing to a business account. I wanted to get the analytics (:

The Results & Impact on my Instagram Account

I’ve been feeling the acceleration in growth in terms of followers, no doubt.

But the more important thing is the amount of messages and genuine comments I’ve been getting, which really blew me away.

The engagement went crazy too.

So we’re not talking only about quantity, but also about quality.

Future Plans

My future plans are basic – keep this new baseline, and increase / go above it as much as possible. I’ve been doing the occasional 4 or 5 posts a day too.

I will keep you updated on how it goes! (;

That’s all I wanted to share today. We can now move onto the artist corner.

Artist Corner

Today I’m featuring Ilya Ibryaev, a Russian watercolor painter.

His focus seems to be light, and I don’t mean that in the usual sense. His great talent is portraying actual light shining through trees and clouds. He focuses on simpler landscapes with more complex and interesting skies, clouds and light.

What I noticed he does is play around with edges and contrast, to create a strong illusion of light. It actually FEELS like you can see the light itself.

If you want to see what I mean, I actually found a GREAT article written on him over at Seamless Expression – a website about painting and watercolor that I LOVE: Ilya Ibryaev on Seamless Expression

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

Depth in Creation – Detailed Paintings VS Quick Ones | Liron Yanconsky’s Podcast – Episode 48

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Android | RSS

Hi there! Today I want to talk to you about depth in creation.

Two Ways to Paint – Different Levels of Depth

After painting for 4+ years, I slowly came to realize that there are two main ways to paint.

This is my personal experience. Yours may be different. But here’s what I noticed.

1. Slow and Detailed.

This is when you really take your time and paint slowly. You may take a break and revisit the painting later. You carefully observe it and make changes, corrections and tweaks.

This approach really improves your ability to create highly polished, finalized pieces.

2. Fast and Spontaneous.

This is a quicker way of creating. It allows you to put emphasis on different aspects, and higher level pillars of good creation.

This approach allows you to work on the basics – composition, arrangement, values, color, edges and so on.

It also allows you to gain experience and insight in these areas fairly quickly, as you can produce many quick and small paintings.

Alternating the Depth

One of the things that helped me the most when it comes to improving over the long haul, is alternating between those two methods.

I would argue that this helped me to improve FASTER as well.

Here’s what I would do.

I would create a few very detailed paintings. These may take several days.

Then I would feel artistically exhausted. I finally figured out the solution was to switch gears and do the quicker sketches.

So I did a bit of those. Until the next day I felt like doing another detailed painting.

And so on (:

Conclusion

I think it’s beneficial to recognize YOUR OWN cycle, and do the things that will allow you to continuously move forward in your creation.

What do you think? Let me know in a comment below.

And with that, we can move on to the artist corner.

Artist Corner

Today I talked about Trevor Chamberlain, an English painter who works in both oils and watercolor.

He had no formal education in art. He got started in oils, and then taught himself watercolor in one year. In his own words, he did that through sheer perseverance and learning from previous masters.

He currently serves on the Council of both the Royal Society of Marine Artists and the Royal Institute of Oil Painters.

Here is a gallery with some of his FANTASTIC works – Trevor Chamberlain

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

Anchor Podcast, Sales Funnel & Patreon | Liron Yanconsky’s Podcast – Episode 47

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Android | RSS

Today I want to give you a quick update about my work and what I’ve been up, especially in regards to my new podcast on the Anchor app, my sales funnel and quitting Patreon.

Anchor Podcast

There’s this app for podcasting called Anchor. This month I decided to go all in on it and see what happens.

So for the entirety of November 2018, I plan on posting an episode a day on the app.

Unlike this podcast, there I’m posting shorter and quicker snippets, talking about how my day was, what I’m working on and so on.

I want to taste it and see if it has potential in addition to this podcast. You can actually find me there by searching (any podcast directory – iTunes, Google Store, Alexa, iHeart Radio, anywhere) for “Liron Yanconsky”.

Sales Funnel

This one’s going to be quicker. I finally finished and launched my third course, called Sketching People MASTERCLASS.

It’s more robust than the other courses, and so I priced it at 97$ (you get a 7-day free trial to try it out first).

I sold 3 of these so far, which is really nice, as the profit margins are much better (;

And I’m currently running Facebook ads and they are starting to pop and work for me.

This is one of my main sources of income, so it’s nice knowing I can start relying on it a little more.

Quitting Patreon

I talked about this on YouTube, Instagram and now here on the podcast as well.

I quit Patreon because (1) I don’t like to ask for money – tip jar style. I’d much rather have you buy a course or a book and learn something you want.

And (2) It stifled my ability to share in other platforms (as I would think to myself – hmm, this is good, maybe I should “save” this for Patreon).

I didn’t like that feeling of creating a wall between my content and you.

And by the way – I have NOTHING against the platform or the people on it. For some it is actually a GREAT match, and allows them to monetize their art and creation and actually make a living.

But I feel like it’s just not for ME (:

And that’s basically it for today’s episode! Now let’s move on to the artist corner.

Artist Corner

Today I talked about Lena Amstrand. She is a Swedish watercolor painter who works very loosely.

She loves to portray mood, atmosphere and especially – water.

You can check out his work here: Lena Amstrand

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