Tag: painter

Can Anyone Become a Successful Artist | Liron’s Podcast Episode 95

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Hi there! In this episode I’m discuss the question – can anyone become a successful artist?

My general answer is YES, with a few caveats.

Here’s what we’ll talk about:

  1. Definition
  2. Internal Challenges
  3. Talent and Skill
  4. Financial Success

1. Definition

A big thing to think about, is how do you define success?

I believe success is ultimately happiness. This means that if you have a job you love, and you make art on the side and are happy – you won!

So YES – anyone can become a successful artist if you look at it from this angle.

2. Internal Challenges

Many people I meet and talk to have INTERNAL obstacles only. They don’t believe in themselves, and this prevents them from creating.

Art is ultimately self-expression. I’d like more people to understand that if they WANT to create – they should. The rest doesn’t matter.

3. Talent and Skill

Even talent and skill are in question. You see plenty of artwork that doesn’t necessarily have a lot of skill behind it, that is still successful, and celebrated in museums and galleries.

The word “skill” is arguable in and of itself. Who says, for example, that an abstract painting that took only a few brush strokes to make does’t require skill?

And if so many people say – “I could have done it” – well – why didn’t you?

Food for thought, especially if you feel judgmental of these types of works (which I know can be fun sometimes, haha!).

4. Financial Success

This is a little trickier. I do think different people have different potentials for money-making.

BUT, could almost anyone create SOME financial success around their art? I believe so. You just have to figure out your true gift, and the format.

Are you a good teacher? Manager? Story-teller?

Perhaps you are SO OFF THE CHARTS when it comes to art, that you should focus ONLY on that, and hire people to do the rest (which for most people would mean have friends help out, as not a lot of people can actually really hire someone when just getting started).

In Conclusion…

Yes, that is my answer. If you are having doubts, or are unsure – use this podcast as permission to AT LEAST believe it’s POSSIBLE.

And let me know if you have any questions or there’s anything I can help you with.

Here’s how to contact me:

YouTube – Liron Yanconsky Art

LinkedIn – Liron Yanconsky

Pinterest – Liron Yanconsky

Instagram – @LironYanIL

Twitter – @LironYan

I’m Back from New York & November 2019 Plans! Liron’s Podcast Episode 93

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Hi there! In this episode I want to give you a quick update on my New York experience (that’s been awesome by the way!). I’m also talking about my plans and focus for November 2019.

Here’s a VERY QUICK conclusion of what I talked about…

New York (and Ohio) Experience

  • Had a great time and visited most important spots.
  • Ate a lot of bagels and pizza!
  • Visited most of the museums (MET, MOMA, Guggenheim, Frick Collection, The New Museum, The Natural History Museum and some more…).
  • Visited different neighborhoods in Manhattan, as well as in Brooklyn and a bit of Queens.
  • Met a couple of friends we made in the past.
  • Took 2 walking tours in the south of Manhattan and Chinatown.
  • Saw the statue of liberty by taking the ferry to Staten Island (then immediately ran inside to catch the ferry back – we spent literally 43 seconds on the island!)
  • Went to see the Joker movie in a really cool, “vintage”, hipster theater.
  • Then visited my uncle and family in Ohio, which was a GREAT way to wind down after NY.
  • Then had a really horrible experience with American Airlines on the way back.

Overall this has been a great experience, and I definitely plan on coming back in the future.

Plans for November 2019

  • One of my main focuses – The Plein-Air Challenge – Starting every day with a plein-air session.
  • TikTok! Posting TONS of content there!
  • Starting to build a proper online gallery for selling my artwork
  • Sleep, health, workouts and nutrition
  • Brainstorming a new course
  • Experimenting with finalizing watercolor paintings without glass

Excited for this one. Not much left for 2019, and I want to make the most out of it!

Going Back to Work

Coming from a month-long vacation is an interesting experience. I’ve had it last year too (spent August in Ohio).

This time, however, it was more of a mix. On the one hand I felt happy to come back.

But on the other hand – it started getting dark earlier, which always makes me sad for the short transition period between seasons. I also felt like I’ll miss some of the freedom.

This is why I decided to not go back to work immediately, but rather spend a couple of days easing into it, and feeling again what it’s like to be on VACATION, but while AT HOME. It was actually a really smart move, and helped me get back on track better.

I’m now really into the routine, and despite working longer hours for the past couple of days – I feel connected with my goals and vision.

I’ll definitely keep you updated on how it goes.

Take care, and I’ll talk to you again soon.

Want to Reach Out?

Got any questions? Want help with your paintings? Feel free to reach out to me in any of the platforms I’m on, and I’ll be happy to help (:

YouTube – Liron Yanconsky Art

LinkedIn – Liron Yanconsky

Pinterest – Liron Yanconsky

Instagram – @LironYanIL

Twitter – @LironYan

The Value of REPETITION in PAINTING – Improve Fast & Efficiently | Liron’s Podcast Episode 72

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In this episode I’m talking about repetition – a valuable exercise for improving your drawing and painting skills FAST and EFFICIENTLY.

Table of Contents

1. Repetition in Painting and Drawing
2. Worse 2nd Attempt
3. Internalize
4. Loosen Up
5. Recognizing Recurring Mistakes
6. Conclusion

1. Repetition in Painting and Drawing

Repetition is a great tool for improving. It involves painting or drawing the same subject several times.

This allows for more focused learning, and unlocks some obvious (and less obvious) benefits.

2. Worse 2nd Attempt

Surprisingly enough, you may find that in your repeated efforts you actually do worse.

That’s to be expected.

The 2nd time around, working on the same subject, you lack that same spontaneity that characterized the first version.

You may also have some “arrogance” (very natural, not blaming you (;), and a feeling you “already know” the subject.

Don’t let that deter you from doing this. Even when you don’t notice, you are learning and improving.

3. Internalize

Drawing the same subject / scene several times, allows you to internalize a part of the process, and focus on a different one.

As mentioned, you may find some of your result to be worse, but other aspects may be better.

So take the good with the bad. 

Whenever you try an “extreme” technique, it tends to be accompanied by some growing pains.

Whenever I have a streak of great paintings – I am happy, but also weary of the fact it means I may not be growing.

4. Loosen Up

One side-effect of repetition, that is barely discussed, is how it sets you free and helps you loosen up.

Doing something a second time, and DELIBERATELY at that, makes you less worried about the end result. You can just paint yet ANOTHER version!

This freedom helps you loosen up without you even noticing. And it will show in some of the later attempts.

That’s especially true if you are as impatient as I am. The fear of boredom in the 2nd and 3rd iterations actually motivates me to try something different!

5. Recognizing Recurring Mistakes

That’s really the gist of this exercise. Doing repetitions of the same subject will bring to surface recurring mistakes that might have otherwise gone unnoticed.

And that’s probably the biggest benefit of doing this.

6. Conclusion

I hope this episode encourages you to give this exercise a try.

And by the way, creating a small preparatory painting for a larger piece, or even just a preparatory sketch – are also a form of repetition.

It’s up to you to decide just “how much” repetition you are interested in doing.

And with that, let’s move onto the artist corner!

Artist Corner

Today I talked about Samuel Colman, an English painter. He lived from 1780-1845, and painted mostly portraits and landscapes.

His landscapes are what really grabbed me about his art. It’s rooted in realism, with an added layer of surrealistic atmosphere

You can check out some of his works here: Samuel Colman. I also recommend doing a Google Images search.

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

Huge YouTube Research – Growing Channel in 2019 | Liron Yanconsky’s Podcast – Episode 66

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I’m doing a huge YouTube research endeavor to figure out how to create better content that reaches MORE people.

I’ll keep this short, as I want to create a more detailed post on LinkedIn & Medium.com on the topic.

But here are the main things I learned.

Excellent Video by Derral Eves

So I watched this video and gained some valuable insights in regard to my own videos, and in general.

The new Creator Studio Beta – YouTube’s new Creator studio is INSANELY helpful.

They developed some relatively new features that I really like. The way they present the CTR (% of people clicking your thumbnails) is really smart.

I also loved how you can watch the retention graph alongside your video. This means that if you are rambling in the vid, you’ll probably see a drop of viewers on the graph.

The importance of thumbnails and titles – I always knew how important these are. But now I understand that in an even deeper level. As Derral mentions, some of the creators he works with spend hours coming up with their titles and thumbnails.

These provide you the chance of being discovered. And YouTube rewards videos that have a high CTR (and a high retention rate, which brings me to my next point).

AVD (Average View Duration) and watch time are everything – Ultimately YouTube wants to make money. If you can create content that gets a lot of clicks, and gets people to binge watch – that’s the best.

This is why it’s highly recommended to create playlists (like my The Paint Show and Painting masters). These are series that people enjoy consuming one by one.

Huge YouTube Spreadsheet

This is a project I’ve been working on in the last couple of weeks.

I created a huge spreadsheet with 50 or so YouTube channels, and different criteria (like video length, views %, likes to dislikes ration and a bunch of other more unique elements).

I am filling the table up, with hopes of finding different correlations between things.

For example – do channels that have NO INTRO perform better when it comes to views %?

There are a lot of things I want to test out, and hopefully this will be a good tool to do just that.

IGTV VS YouTube

IGTV is Instagram’s platform for video. Unlike YouTube, IGTV is vertical, and everything is based around that.

So far IGTV has been really good to me. I went all in and started posting tons of videos there, and it’s paying off.

Some of my vids reached as many as 600K views, and these accelerated my growth on Instagram as well.

So this is another platform I’m hopeful of. But I’m also aware that YouTube isn’t going anywhere soon. Plus the views there are more high quality, in the sense of more people who want to actually learn how to draw and paint.

Artist Corner

Today I talked about Randall Sexton. Randall’s a California-based oil painter. I love is impressionism and style.

His color choices are rather unique, I haven’t seen many artists paint like that. As always, his street scenes are my favorites. He has one I love in particular, of a van / trailer with a smooth reflective texture that he portrayed beautifully.

You can check out his work on his website: https://www.rcsexton.com/

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 to Develop a Personal Art Style – Basics & Experimentation | Liron Yanconsky’s Podcast – Episode 63

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Hi there, Liron here! In today’s episode I’m teaching you how you can develop your own personal art style.

Many artists strive to grow and develop their own style, but there are many myths about what it takes, and the truth is much simpler than some may think!

We’ll take a bit of a philosophical approach, but embed a lot of practicality to it!

Personal Art Style

Probably every artist you admire has their own unique art styles. Artists who work hard and attain higher and higher levels of creation, tend to also have a uniqueness to their work.

There is something very charming around a distinct art style. This leads many beginner and aspiring artists to worry about developing their own style.

Which brings me to my next point…

Unique Art Style – Don’t Assume you Don’t Have One

This is extremely important.

I want you to understand that with enough practice, repetition and experimentation, everyone develops a unique art style.

It’s inevitable.

So instead of worrying about that, let’s focus on what we can do to ensure you develop successfully as an artist (:

Fundamentals & Experimentation

The way I see it, there are two elements to improving continuously.

Working on the fundamentals / basics – This involved doing the exercises and learning the techniques that are relevant to multiple art mediums.

An example for this would be composition, color harmony, matching values (in case you are doing realistic / representational / naturalistic art) and so on.

Experimentation – This involves breaking our own patterns, using work processes that are foreign to us, trying to work in a different style, using colors we aren’t used to and so on. 

Using these two together ensures your skills will grow, and your style will develop.

Remember that every experiment you do, every technique you play around with – these all add up and become a part of your style. By experimenting frequently, you widen your style’s possible spectrum of expression.

And with repeated work on the basics, you’ll ensure that your technical skills won’t deteriorate while you experiment.

This works very nicely with my concept of Inspiration & Isolation which you can read about here.

Everyone ELSE Will Recognize Your Style

I want to mention something I find amusing. Ironically, you will be the last person to recognize the uniqueness of your style.

That’s just how it goes for most people (unless it’s really unique and out there).

People started telling me about a year ago, that they could tell my paintings apart from others very easily.

I was very surprised to hear, but wasn’t able to see that myself.

Now I can better understand what they mean. There are many nuances. It’s in how you treat the edges, how your brush marks look. There are a lot of signature properties it’s hard to put in words, but easy to tell when they’re there.

Conclusion

I hope this all makes sense. Let me know if you have any questions and I’d be happy to expand on whatever you want me to (:

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

Artist Corner

In today’s episode I talk about Oliver Pyle, an English watercolor painter.

Oliver specializes in natural landscapes and rural scapes. His works convey serenity and calmness that I find very relaxing.

His work also taught me a lot about conveying your message with simplicity.

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