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

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

What Really Matters in Life – Being Present, Loving Others and Your Work | Liron Yanconsky’s Podcast – Episode 45

Today I want to talk to you about what really matters in life, for me.

Today’s episode is a little special, in that it’s more “meta”. I wanted to share some old and new insights I’ve had regarding what really matters in life.

These are things that I found bring me happiness consistently, and over long periods of time.

Main Themes

Presences – experiencing every fully, as much as possible. This means taking in both pleasures and pain, both worries and relaxation.

I find that when I’m present, I feel a lot more at ease.

Love – giving yourself to others, having good intentions and making sure other peoples’ experience of you is a good one.

Devotion to work – doing what you love and loving what you do.

Letting Go

One of my key insights is about understanding that it all comes to an end eventually.

Every little thing we worried about, and every little thing that made us happy – they all come to an end eventually.

So might as well experience it fully (:

This is sometimes easier said than done, and that is fine. It’s a daily practice. Something to work on and aim towards every day.

Daily Awareness Routine

I start every morning with a daily awareness routine. I meditate, write my thoughts and read my vision to myself, so that I re-remember why I do what I do.

I find this to be incredibly important for my success, and for honing and preserving my motivation and connection to my end goal.

Final Words

I hope you enjoy this episode. Not that art-related, but it’s a few things I wanted to “unpack” by talking to the mic (;

Artist Corner

Today I talked about Lars Lerin. This is a watercolor painter I’ve been told about a long time ago.

He is a contemporary Swedish painter who’s work I really admire. His works are both loose and realistic.

He has this unique type of impressionism you don’t see very often. Very simple color schemes too.

Highly recommend you check his stuff out HERE and HERE (:

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

How I Make Money From My Art | Liron Yanconsky’s Podcast – Episode 31

In today’s episode we’ll talk about how I make MONEY from my art.

Today’s going to be a special one, as it’s the audio taken from one of my recent videos, that’s a part of my new series – Business Monday.

(if you want to watch the video, you can do so here: How I Make Money From My Art)

In it I talk about the connecting point between art and money. It’s aimed at people who want to make money from their art, as well as entrepreneurs who want to build an art business.

QUICK NOTE – NEED YOUR HELP

If you find interest in this series (Business Monday), I’d be thankful if you leave a comment. Let me know what you thought of this, and what other topics you want me to cover.

I want this to have valuable information FOR YOU (:

Now let’s talk about how I make money from my art. Also note how I’ve included some things that work in general. These are tangentially related, and don’t necessarily make money DIRECTLY.

WHAT WORKS & MAKES ME MONEY

Here are things that work for me and actually make me money.

Books – I am able to sell my books in different channels. I was also able to sell the Spanish language rights, making my book How to Sketch available in additional countries in Spanish!

Courses – This is something I’ve been devoting many hours to producing, marketing and selling. My courses are selling on both the Udemy platform and on my own website (DrawAnythingUSee.com).

YouTube – This is obviously my favourite platform (; I’m really enjoying producing content here, and it actually WORKS. I receive valuable feedback from you, that helps me know what you want to see more of.

Instagram – Another platform I’m really enjoying right now. It’s also the best way to connect with me, if you want to hit me up with a quick message. I’ve been putting a lot of effort into YouTube and Instagram for the past 2 years.

WHAT DOESN’T WORK & DOESN’T MAKE MONEY FOR ME

Reddit – As a social media platform, it used to help me a lot in the past, but not so much.

Licensing my art – I tried websites like Society6 and RedBubble, but that didn’t really work as well.

Smashwords – A digital book distributer. I have some of my books distributed through it. As I mentioned in the video, I think 2 months on Amazon made me more money than two years on Smashwords and it’s 8+ different distribution channels. Haha.

Selling my art directly – This is something I haven’t really focused on much so far. I let it come naturally to me. Which brings me to my next point…

MAKING MONEY TAKES TIME, EFFORT AND PATIENCE

When I really audit myself and try to find correlations between my success… It is glaringly obvious that the things that really worked out for me are the things I spent A LOT OF EFFORT, WORK AND HOURS ON.

At the end of the day, success takes a lot of time.

The things I succeeded in so far are really things I thoroughly researched and worked on. It’s things I had a natural inclination to put more work into, but on the same token – it could have ended but being different things.

The message is that PERSISTENCE IS KEY. You have to keep pushing through until what you are doing works – or learn when to stop and move onto something else.

A SMALL CAVEAT

I think it’s important to audit yourself and your work. If you’ve been doing something for 10 years and you don’t get results, maybe it’s time to move on.

Or, if you enjoy it regardless, do it while recognizing it won’t make money, and not relying on it financially.

I hope you enjoyed today’s different format. Now let’s move on to the artist corner.

Artist Corner

Today I talked about Thierry Duval, a Parisian watercolor artist.

I originally came across his work through Instagram.

He paints beautiful scenes from France (mainly Paris, I believe). His work is realistic – photo-realistic. He has a very strong sense of light in it as well.

I’m fascinated by his techniques. He works in a very measured and calculated manner to achieve his realistic results. He uses masking fluid, and glazed quite a bit.

I highly recommend you check out his Instagram, where you can see some of his work processes and final artwork: Thierry Duval on Instagram

Also, be sure to check out this webpage, showing many of his beautiful works: Thierry Duval Artworks

And Here’s where you can find me (:

You can support me on Patreon

Check out my YouTube Channel – Liron Yanconsky

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

And this is it. I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I’ll talk to you again real soon!

– Liron