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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