Creative Pep Talk
036 - Biggest Art Career Mistakes
(upbeat music) - Yo, yo, yo. It's Andy J. Miller and you're listening to the creative talk podcast. How's everybody doing today? I've had a pretty good week. I've had a, actually, the new springtime has brought all kinds of interesting projects and, I don't know, new motivation, new thoughts, new ideas, I'm feeling pretty good. You know, I've been loving doing this podcast. It's been great to see it grow. It's great to see people supporting it all throughout the internet and the interwebs. Thank you guys for doing that. If you wanna listen to this, you can listen to it on iTunes, you can listen to it on my website, or you can listen to it at illustrationahage.com/creativepeptalk. That's a website where they're fighting for the industry, the illustration industry, and they're doing an awesome job. You can go check that out. Okay, today. You know, I wanna talk about strategy. One of my favorite topics, and actually, it's kind of the theme of the show. You know, I feel like, I feel like in order to make a real successful career in the arts, you've got to have really good strategy. You've gotta be good at strategy. And actually, I've realized that this show, for me, is like, you know, I get worried that there's these talented, amazing artists out there, meant to spend their life giving the world their art, but they don't have the right strategy. And I think that if you have the most talented artist in the world with a terrible strategy, you're gonna be hard pressed to have a career in the arts. And on the other side of the coin, if you're maybe not the most talented artist, but your strategy is insane, you might have an amazing career. And so I feel like that I might even be better at art career strategy than I am making art. I don't know, but it's something that's on my mind. And you know, I think a lot about what it takes to make it as an artist, and what it takes to navigate the world of art mixed with money. I think about it all the time, and I've spent so much time and energy in that place, that I feel like I've picked up all kinds of ideas that have really benefited me. And I've seen them in the people that I respect. And I just wanted to, you know, catalog those things on this podcast and maybe help any of you out there that have this passion, have this talent, have this interest in pursuing art, and maybe you don't fit in other places in the world. But I think it's understanding how to navigate the current systems of our world and understanding how to navigate the market that actually enables you to have a career in the art. And so that's what this is about, and that's what this episode's about. This episode is actually about five of the most common strategy mistakes that I see in artists. And I just feel like these are things that if you miss these, you're really, really gonna be hard pressed to have a career. And so I just thought, hey, we'll go through these and you can kind of, the cool thing about all these is I feel like they're all, they apply at every level. Like every level that you hit a new ceiling, these things are ways that you can burst past that ceiling. I feel like all these different things are places where I find myself struggling every few years with a new set of situations, but the same core strategies help me break through. So that's what this is about. I feel like if you look at a band like Sonic Youth, I never, I'm not really a Sonic Youth listener. Of course I've heard of them. I was listening to Fresh Air the other day and Kim Gordon, who I believe was the basis of Sonic Youth, was on and she just had a memoir and she was talking about her experience in the band. She was talking about what their strategies were, what their ideas were, what was their vision for their band. And I thought it was so amazing that she said that, she basically doesn't really know how to play music in a traditional sense. And I just thought, look at what, I mean, I can almost guarantee that everybody listening to this podcast has heard of the band Sonic Youth. And they've managed to have this giant career with people in the band who don't know how to play music per se. And I think that's such an interesting example of how ideas and vision and strategy are so make or break in our industry. Without further ado, let's get on to the list. Number one, know your position. We're gonna go back to the sports metaphor as you know how I like those, such a sports nut. No, not in case this is your first episode, but for some reason I think in sports metaphors. I was thinking about this, I've been thinking about this a lot actually, this idea of if you're especially talented in the arts in any way, you know, I remember in first grade, I was the best at drawing in the class. I was kicking everybody's butts. And it was like part of my identity. It was part of like how I made friends. And it was what was special about me. And about halfway through the year, this kid Justin moves to town. And his drawing of the Chicago Bulls logo was sublime. It was so much better than mine. And I'll be honest, I hated his guts. I was so mad at this kid. Moved in the town, stole my glory. You know, as the competition got better, I had to get better. And actually I had to differentiate the stuff I was drawing, you know. He was better at that logo. I had to come up with weird stories. And so long story short, we actually bonded over drawing and became really close friends. But it made me think of high school, okay. Well, maybe if you look at it, maybe it's not especially talented in the arts, but what about the people that are especially talented in athletics and sports? If you're especially talented in high school, where the competition is not extremely fierce, you might be able to start in track, basketball, football, baseball. You might be able to start, you might be able to dominate in all the sports, every sport. But as you go up, as you move on to the next level, you go into college sports, all of a sudden the competition is more fierce. And the more fierce the competition, the more you have to specialize. You know, as a side note, I talk about this a lot. If you're competing in design and illustration on a local level, whatever city you live in, you can be more of a generalist because the less people competing, the less excellent you have to be in any one area. There's just a general demand. You can do logos, you can do some editorial work, you can, you know, you can be generalist. But now, if you're gonna compete for the big jobs and you're gonna compete online, now you're in a global competition and you've got to specialize. And so the bigger the competition, the more you have to specialize. Back to the sports thing. As you go into college, now you have to pick a sport 'cause you can't spend time practicing for both teams. You can't spend time, you can't get hurt playing football if you're a basketball star. So you've got to pick a sport, right? Then as you go along further in your career, and again, I don't know anything about sports, but from what I can do from that as an outsider, as you move along, you're gonna have to pick whether you play defense or offense if you're in football, right? Whether you're better at defense or better at offense. Why? 'Cause they need you to do your highest contribution in order to compete on a big level, you have to understand your position. And then not only that, now you gotta decide, are you gonna be a quarterback or are you a linebacker? I don't know if that's something, right? But I think linebacker's defense. The language, when you go into the pros, you gotta understand your position. You've gotta own it. You've gotta speak the language. You've gotta master, not just the sport, not just the offense or defense. Now you gotta know your specific position in that industry. You have to understand because being a quarterback, you gotta speak different language. You gotta be doing different warmups. You gotta be doing different training, different preparation than if you're a linebacker. It's a different language. And if you're gonna compete on a big level, you need to specialize to that degree. Now, here's my point. Every stage in your career, you need to be clearly understanding what it is that you do. And you need to understand, what is that part of this industry? What is this sector of the industry? What is the language? What is the preparation? What do I have to be good at? What do I have to talk about? What words do I need to know and use and be fluent in? There comes a time where you don't just need to know whether you're an illustrator or designer. You need to know what type of illustrator you are. What's your specialty? You know, are you one of these guys? Are you an editorial guy? Who needs to know the ins and outs of that world? The ins and outs of the history, what came before in the editorial market? Are you gonna be a comics guy? If you're a comics guy, there's such a wealth of information and knowledge that you need to understand and be fluent in. You need to be able to walk the walk and talk the talk of that particular sector. If you're in the comics industry then, are you doing kids comics or are you doing adult comics? You know, you have to know the rules there, right? Every stage of your career, you need to understand what is your position? Are you a quarterback or are you a linebacker? Right? Are you the point guard or the center? And what difference does that make? Because if you're in the sector, right, where you're a comics artist, but you're constantly pitching your portfolio to editorial art directors, you're missing the point, you're focusing your energy in the wrong place and that's not gonna get you the results. That's not how you compete on a high level. You have to understand what you're doing and what the competition is doing. If you're in a place where you're like, I don't know where to go. Here's two helpful hints. You don't know which way to specialize. Here's two helpful hints. Number one, just name the top three people that you're really viscerally inspired by. Like when you see what they're doing, their work, the type of projects they're doing, think about who are these people? Who are the top three people? Artists, illustrator, designers. That when you interact with their career in any way, it gives you the feelings, it gives you the emotions, you're excited. And then ask yourself, what sector of the market are they in? And I can guarantee that they're part of something and they might have their hands in like one or two pots, but I'm guessing they've got a few really core main things. Ask yourself that question. Think about it like that. Because if they're part of a sector and your work is in the vein of their sector, but your output, you're not focusing on the right area. Say, these people are gallery artists and you're trying to push your thing into, I don't know, logo design. Like, you've got to understand and walk the walk of your little corner of the industry. All right, now, number two, contradictions. Finally enough, what I'm gonna say next, may seem like a contradiction to number one, which is kind of ironic. Here's, I go back to this over and over and over, and this is my preface for this point. I believe that nuance is the key to wisdom. Wisdom, I think, is being able to take two seemingly contradictory truths and understand the difference between them, discern how it is that they are different and meaningful in different situations and in different ways. And so if I say, you know, if you're gonna base your career on a fancy, lettered posters, if you're gonna base your career on those pithy quotes, this right here is gonna be confusing. You might see a poster that says, know your role or find your niche or whatever. And then you might see a poster that says, you know, look at James Victoria. He says this all the time and I agree with it, but if you just take it out of context and you just compare these two things, he says what makes you weird as a kid, makes you good as an adult, makes you interesting as an adult, makes you great as a designer. Well, what is it? Find your niche or be different. Which one is it? I would argue it's both. You have to do both. What I see, I see this sometimes, okay? The people that really figured out that you need to know your position, going back to number one, you need to know your place in the market, you need to know who your crew is, you need to know the language, you need to speak the language. And I've seen those people, they find this niche and they start digging and they get deeper and deeper and deeper into it until they are like the epitome of that section of the market. The problem is they got so deep that the only people that could appreciate their work are the people that really, really, really, really get it because it's so self-referential. Here's what I think you gotta do. I think you need to get into this, find what your role is, right? If you're a quarterback, yes, you need to be a quarterback. Understand, quarterback watches the footage. A quarterback knows every play. A quarterback, you know, throws the ball. A quarterback has to have this specific knowledge and you need to be a quarterback. Quarterback, the guy when you're in a group of quarterbacks, you guys are bonding over what it's like to be a quarterback. It's a very specific little thing. If that's you, do that, get so entrenched. But if you wanna be the best, if you wanna be someone who stands out and gets the jobs, after you're there, you've learned everything that's in the textbooks. Now, you've gotta go towards the contradictions. You've gotta go towards the uniqueness of you, the difference in you. Look at, I don't know much about it, but I'm gonna talk about it anyway. Peyton Manning, okay, I came from Indiana. People loved Peyton Manning there. He was Colt's quarterback. And now he moved to Denver. Now Indiana, they're all Denver fans. That's how much they love this guy, all right? Peyton Manning was the quarterback's quarterback. His dad was a quarterback. His brother was a quarterback. They speak the language. They love this thing. They're obsessed. They're totally 150% in, right? But what makes Peyton so good is he's also really different. I don't understand the ins and outs of this, but I know that the way that he calls plays, like in the moment, is different than anyone else in the whole NFL. And he does it in a way where it's unique and it's surprising and it throws people off. And people don't, the defense didn't know what to do with it, right? And that, that's exactly what I'm talking about, right? I'm talking about, you've got to go in there. You've got to understand the rules. You've got to really know what are the rules of my position? What are the rules of this place in the market? What do these people do that are these gallery artists? What do these people do that are these editorial guys? What do these people do that do the ad jobs? What do they do? I need to know. I need to really know. I need to be obsessed with knowing. And I need to be able to speak that language. I need to be fluent. But once you're fluent, after you, you're in and you understand it and you know it and you speak the language, that's when you need to go towards these contradictions. That's when you need to specialize and differentiate yourself within this specialty. I think that you get so many people, students especially, that when you're pushing them, look, you've got to find your corner. You've got to find a corner of the market that your strengths are going to shine in. When you try to do that, there's so many people that want to reject it and I get it and I understand it. And I think specializing too early is a problem. But I think the other thing happens. It's this lack of nuance in the wisdom. You need to specialize first, right? You need to specialize and differentiate yourself, which sounds like a contradiction. But here's how I think the nuance plays out. I think it plays out like this. You find your specialty, you find your specialization, even if it doesn't fit quite right. Even if the hat doesn't quite fit and you want to reject it because you're like, I don't fit into this. I don't fully fit in as an editor. I'm not just an editorial artist. Yes, I get that. But that feeling, once you're in and you're fluent, you've done the work and you paid your dues, then you ask yourself, why don't I fit in? What is it about me that's uncomfortable in this crowd? Maybe these quarterbacks, they feel perfectly at home with these other quarterbacks, but they know there's something about themselves that doesn't quite cut the mustard, so to speak, that doesn't fit in. You know, when I was in high school, I feel like in high school everybody has reasons why they feel like they don't fit in. For me, for a lot of high school, one of the reasons I didn't fit in was I like to listen to Tupac and Boyce to Men, and my friends like to listen to Jack Johnson and John Mayer, and they would be like, "Dude, you've got to check out "this mind-blowing Jack Johnson album." And I was like, "No, I don't like it at all. "It's not speaking to me." I'd be like, "Check out OnBended Knee by Boys to Men. "Listen to Juan Yay, belt it at the end. "It's beautiful." And they would be like, "No, that sounds terrible." Now, eventually, I got into Madison House and a lot cooler music, although I still revisit Boys to Men from time to time. That was one of the things that didn't, you know, I had these friends and I knew there was things about them that I didn't fit in. And I actually think that's part of being a person, that's part of being human. You're not gonna completely fit into any one crowd. I think the danger is that you go off and you specialize or you go off into art school and all of a sudden you don't feel out of place anymore. You don't feel weird. You know, you found your other quarterbacks and you're feeling good and you're feeling accepted and because of that feels so good, you wanna squash those contradictions. You wanna squash those parts of you that don't fit in. You wanna get more and more homogenous into this group because you finally found your crew. And so there's great things about finding the crew. It's great things about getting that sense of security and confidence by diving deep within to the sector that you wanna be a part of. There are amazing things. But what you have to do, you have to not let go of what makes you different, what makes you a contradiction. You know, when I went on from, you know, high school was, I hated high school, really. You know, I was an art kind of guy, but for a long time I didn't really realize that so much. You know, the theater kids were a little bit too strange for me in some ways. And the jocks that were mostly my friends, you know, thought I was a goofball, which I am a goofball, but I couldn't play any sports. And I didn't really know that I loved music. And I didn't have, I didn't really, it was nothing really. It was just an awkward time for me. And so then when I went to college and I'd figured out my passion for design and illustration, it was so great, you know, and I made some really close friends. And, you know, I can tell leading up to the end of graduation, us four guys who had become really close, bonded over all this work, that our work had a lot of overlap. And then when we graduated, we all went different paths. And actually it was in those different paths that we really found our best work. And I think that for me going to art school as an example, going to art school, well, I didn't go to art school. I went to an art program in university and in England. And, but being in that art crowd, finding people that I related to, you know, a challenge for me was that most people didn't like to think about spirituality or God or things of that nature. I would say the art crowd tends to be more atheist agnostic. And that was kind of a contradiction for me. Here are these people who I love, who we bond over things in a really deep way. And there's these parts of me that they don't understand or don't agree with or whatever. And I think that so many people would want to run and hide in either contradiction. They would run and just try to homogenize into one of those zones. But I've found that figuring out ways of translating, how do you translate the things that make you different, the things, the interests that you have that don't fit in? How do you translate those for your industry, for your sector? Because you can't just say, oh, this thing that nobody understands, I'm gonna smash it into my work and you're gonna like it. No, you can't do that. But what's great is, once you're in that specialty, once you've dug deep and you know you're fluent in language, you understand how to communicate it differently. And so for me, that looked like, I wanted to put all of that interest in, you know, the other side of life, the hidden side of life, the, you know, quantum physics and other dimensions. And, you know, I just started drawing other dimensions. You know, I just started, you know, my work has this quality to it where I have figurative things. I have, you know, the people and the animals and that kind of thing. But then I have a lot of other stuff, like patterns and stars and whimsical elements and weird creatures and, you know, spiritual looking things that reference the deeper underpinnings of life. But I'm doing that in a way that makes sense to the industry. I'm doing it in a visual way. I'm doing it in a way that makes me different instead of makes me an outcast. And I feel like it's by leaning into those things, those contradictions, the ways that you don't fit into this specialty, after you find it and after you're fluent and you've paid your dues, then allowing yourself to translate the parts that are weird about you and bring something new to this crowd, like bring something fresh and new. You know, for me, the podcast is a lot like that. You know, I'm super into marketing podcasts and spiritual podcasts and self development and all those kinds of things. I listen to that kind of stuff all the time. I read tons of books on that stuff. And for the longest time, I was like, I've got all this interest and passion in radio and public speaking and self development and strategy and all that kind of stuff. And I just had no way of bringing that into my illustration career. And it really bugged me 'cause it was a big part of me. And what I realized was is that you can bring that. You can bring it to your corner of the market. You just have to translate it. And so I'm not gonna get on here and I'm not gonna talk about webinars because if I do, you're gonna think, oh, weird marketing lingo, don't say webinar. And I don't wanna say webinar. I don't wanna say niche. I don't wanna say brand. I don't wanna say any of that stuff. I know it's like nails on a chalkboard, but I'm in, you know, because when something makes me cringe on this outside, these things that are outside my industry, the things that make me cringe, I just don't say them that way. I just don't, if I feel like there's value, I just, if I feel like the cover of the book is gonna put off the people, my crew, from reading the book, I just draw a different cover. If I feel like there's value inside. And so this podcast, it was a, was, for me, trying to learn the art of translating this valuable stuff into a sector of the market that I think needs it. And so that's, this is like a pursuit. That's part of this. And I feel like this podcast is one of, definitely one of the things that makes me weird and different in the illustration industry, but that's a good thing. Okay, so that's number two, contradictions. Number three, let your weakness define you. You know, sometimes I come across a portfolio someone wants me to look at or whatever and you go there and you look at what they've got. And they've clearly got an eye for art. They've got an interest in art. They've got some talent in art, but they are not allowing their weaknesses to find them in the right way. They're allowing their weaknesses to be glaringly obvious and ruin their portfolio. So if I try to draw a person realistically, I would say, probably, I don't know, two times out of 10, I can draw a person. I can draw a person and capture their likeness. Now, if you compare that to everybody in my high school, I was pretty good. I was pretty good. You compare that to everyone in my college, I was probably in the top 50% of someone who could draw realism realistically. If you compare that to everybody on the internet, everybody in the world, I'm probably, if you look at the people that are good at drawing realism online, I was probably like in the bottom 2%. And so I quit doing that. And I let that weakness tell me which way to go. It's like early on, color was an issue for me, like figuring out how to get colors to work together. So you know what I did? I let that be a strategy. I clung to gig posters. Why? 'Cause you only had two or three colors. I could master that in a piece and it was hard even then. Even then it was like, I've got two colors. I've got three colors. How do I pick colors that actually don't, you know, mess with each other really bad? And then as I've gotten better at color, and I'm still not an expert at color by no means, but as I've gotten better, I work with more colors. You know, there's a lot of times in my pieces that I'm working with 10 different colors or 15 different colors, but they're still flat. You know, I'm barely shading anything. And that's me recognizing what I'm good at and then really recognizing I'm bad at this. It's no matter how hard I work at it, I'm never gonna be good at it. I'm moving on from that. So yeah, I'm not the best at drawing realism. That is for sure, but I do feel like I'm good at like picking up subtle nuance and drawing and being able to draw, you know, in thinking shapes instead of lines. And when I do that and I approach it that way, I feel like I can come up with nice graphic shapes that feel more than what they look like. You know, these simple shapes, adding them and subtracting them in the right way, then comes out with something quite unique and in nice and aesthetically pleasing to look at. And so that's the way I try to lean. So I feel like I'm good at that. I feel like I could be in the top few percent of people that do that kind of thing. And so that's where I spend my time and I let that weakness, instead of letting that weakness crush me or ruin my portfolio, I lean into it. You know, I think this is true especially early on when you're untested. Your portfolio is good as your weakest piece. And so if some of your weaknesses are shining through and obvious, it makes you look terrible. It makes you look your whole portfolio look bad. If you're like showing your, if you're trying really hard at something you're really bad at in your portfolio, it's gonna make your strengths dim. It's gonna make them not shine because we're not gonna be able to quit thinking about the thing that you're not good at. I think it's really important to let your weaknesses define you in the right way. This reminds me back at like Sonic Youth when we talk about Kim Gordon, like she didn't really play bass. And they, but you know what they did? They made noise music. And they did it in a way that was relevant to the time. They did it in a way that was new. They did it in a way that was artistic and beautiful to lots and lots and lots of people. And in that, that's called good strategy. That's called I'm gonna take, I'm gonna use what I got. Maybe it's not even much, but I'm gonna use it in such a way that it's successful. There's so many people out there that I see that you know, they wanna be illustrators, they wanna be artists. And you go to their portfolio and you think you're playing with stuff that you just don't have any business playing with. You need to like, you need to accept, you're not gonna be good at this. And you can still enjoy it, like, I'll tell ya. You know, this, letting your weaknesses define you. Something that I started thinking about, they talk a lot about it on your "Dreams Online Nightmares" podcasts with Sam Weber, where he interviews other illustrators. And he talks about this a lot, which is ridiculous, 'cause I can't imagine what he's weak at as an illustrator. But if you look at his work, you know, I love his work. It's like hyperrealism. And I love it. It is amazing. So I can still super enjoy it, but it doesn't mean that I have to make hyperrealism just because I love it. Just because, and I don't love it all. I love his work in particular. But I've been inspired by him in a lot of ways. There's a lot of stuff that he did a few years ago that just blows my mind, sticks with me. And it influences what I do, but in a really, really different way. And actually, that contradiction again, like being interested in that, actually makes my work better and makes it more interesting. And by no means is my work groundbreaking or completely amazing. I hope that's not the message that I sounds like I'm putting out there. I'm just saying these are the things that have helped me grow, helped me develop a portfolio that I'm proud of and get some good jobs along the way. So three is let your weaknesses define you in the right way. Number four, spell it out. This strategy is so important. You know, I talked last week about this idea of starting at the bottom, like Drake, and starting at the bottom and then working yourself up to the big dogs, to the big clients, find the easy access points into the industry. And one of the ways that I think you can do that, even before you start working with clients, you know, I think self-publishing, and I use that term loosely. I don't mean just books. I just mean self-generated projects and work, like making things happen without getting permission for them is the best way to spell it out. Spell out what you're good at. Spell it out to people. You know, think about Hollywood. I think art directors are not unlike movie directors and in casting directors. How many actors, if you compare illustrators to actors or designers to actors, how many people get typecast? You know, how many actors out there get typecast? You know, so often, especially the people that are like the pros that are the big shots, the people that are just like making a good living on acting. You know, they're really good at knowing what they do and doing it well. And you'll see these, you know, be actors, these people that are showing up in all these different shows and everything. You know, it's like in Seinfeld, you saw all these people playing these specific roles. And then a lot of them went on to go play people and friends in the same kind of role. You know, recently I saw a guy who played a cop in Friends, go on in another sitcom to play a cop. And it's like, if you wanna get good work, if you wanna have a successful career, you need to be a little bit okay with that. You need to be okay with this idea of, you need to prove what you're good at first. If you wanna make kids books, that's a hard industry to get into. My suggestion is, make a few kids books, make 'em well, do 'em accidentally, and go up to the next tier and say, "Hey, look at these kids books I made. "I make pretty good kids books, right?" And they can see it, why it lowers the risk for them. You know, I used to think, if I put a cat in my portfolio and it's a good looking cat, it's easy to think this guy can probably draw a pretty good dog. But what I found was, is that, when I draw a cat, people know I can draw a cat and I get a lot of cat jobs. And that's how you gotta spell it out. You gotta say, "Look, I'm this guy." So my suggestion is, pick an area that you wanna be known for. Say it's T-shirts, and make 50 T-shirts in a year. You know, push that direction until you're the T-shirt guy. When that art director that knows you thinks of you, they think T-shirts. And when we need a T-shirt, I'm coming to you. That's what you gotta think. That's how you gotta interact. So spell it out. Don't just put the art up there and be like, "Use your imagination to how this could be used." You're leaving too much to the imagination, and people don't wanna take the risk. Risk is money. If the art director risks too big and you blow it, they might get fired. Like, you have to spell it out. You have to say, "This is what I'm good at and watch. "I can prove that I can do it." That's another big mistake I see so many illustrators do. They're just, they put their art up there and it's just a digital file and nobody knows what it's for or what it is. There's no context. And you're not helping people understand what is this used for. Number five, last one, make stuff. This is the one I see the biggest mistake is they don't make enough stuff. You know, if you're, you've gotta figure out how do I make work all the time? How do I, you know, I'm not putting a burden on you to say, you need to just, you need to be obsessed and all you should ever do is make art and it's all you should think about and you're not doing enough. It's not like that. What I am saying is you've gotta be comfortable with the fact that being an artist, being a designer is not a passive job. It is a calling, it is a career, it is a big deal and until you're ready for that, until you're ready to give it your all and say I'm going to make stuff all the time. I'm gonna just become, I'm gonna be prolific. I'm gonna be putting stuff out into the world. I'm gonna be creating and creating and creating until I'm known as a creator. You know, I was listening last night to the Adventures in Design podcast and Mark Bricki was interviewing an online buddy of mine, Tad Carpenter and it's excellent. You should definitely check it out. They talked about something that I thought, this is absolutely brilliant. And it was that you make your own luck by working super hard. And the harder you work, the luckier you are. And I think it's totally true. And Mark Bricki said that every piece, every project you put out into the world is like a lottery ticket. And the more lottery tickets you buy, the bigger chance you have on winning. And it's that same, I heard a different version of it, which is like, the more risks you take, the less risky those risks are. Why? Because the more risks you take, the more likely one of them is gonna pay off. And I think making work is so much like that. You know, I see these illustrators, they've got six pieces in their portfolio. And I'm just like, man, you do not look committed to this. You do not look like an illustrator. It doesn't look like that's who you are. You look like someone who dabbled in illustration. And I think you've just, you need to be like, I'm gonna make stuff. You know, and not to mention that it works in that lottery way. It works in that way of like being prolific and being known as an illustrator and a maker and someone who's just brimming with creativity and has tons of ideas and not to mention that it's like that, the more stuff you put out there, the more likely something's gonna bite. It's not just that. On a side note, it's just good for your mind. It's just good for your psychological health. You know, when I wake up in the morning, I woke up really early the other day, like five in the morning before I had to teach and I made a piece in like 45 minutes to an hour. Something quick. And, you know, I used all my tricks. I used everything I know how to do. I made something that I thought was gonna be good and it's something I could do really quickly. And you know what? I just, it like just gave me some peace for the day. Like I'd put my stamp on the day. Like I'd done a piece that day. You know, for whatever reason, if you're a creator, a maker, an illustrator, a designer, there's something in you that's like desperate to make stuff. And when you make a finished thing in a day or you've just put something out there, it gives you some satisfaction to move on and be like, you know what? Okay, whatever the hell's happens today, I've done something, I made something. And I think it's just good for your psychological state of mind. You know, I think someone that's just a really good example of this is Lisa Congdon. She makes so much work. She's done these big projects, these ongoing long projects and there's been so much payoff for her by just being busy and disciplined. You know, I keep saying this, like, discipline stands out on the internet. Why? Because the internet is the king of lack of willpower, right? The internet is the opposite of willpower. And I think any time you approach the internet with discipline, you're gonna stand out from the crowd and come say, look at this guy. He's doing the opposite of what the internet wants. The internet wants you to lose all of your time and energy and mind and morals. The internet wants to take over your world and life. And when you approach it with discipline and you set that, I'm gonna make stuff and I'm gonna keep making stuff and even if, even if nobody cares, I'm gonna keep doing it. When you do that, people will start to care. People will start to look over and see what you're doing. People will start to think of you differently. If you make work all the time, they're gonna think of you as someone who makes stuff. So that's number five. That's the biggest, that's one of the other big mistakes. So just to go over this again, we're gonna say, number one, know your position. You can't just know that you're good at sports. You can't just know that you're good at basketball. You can't just know that you're good at football. You can't just know that you're an offensive player. You can't just know that you're good at offense. You have to know that you're good at being a quarterback. And then once you're in that zone, you have to think, what am I different at? That's number two. What are the contradictions? What are the ways that in this little sector that you've pushed yourself into that you're different? And then figure out ways to translate that into a unique perspective, a fresh piece of information for your crew. Number three, let the weaknesses that you have define you in the right way. Don't let them define you as you suck at art. Let them define you as it pushes you into the type of work you should be focusing on. Number four, spell it out. Don't leave it to someone else's imagination to wonder if you can write a kid's book or you can make a kid's book or whether you could do it good editorial. You know what, I wanted to do editorial illustration a few years ago. I wanted to do more of that. I am doing more of that now. I'll tell you how I did it. I feel like it's due to this fact. I wanted to do more editorial stuff. I wanted to do illustration for articles. And so you know what I did? I just started writing my own articles. I wrote about illustration, something that I felt like I knew about. And I made my own editorial illustration until I had made tons of it. And people started referencing that and I started getting more jobs like that. Spell it out. Don't wait for them to have to use their imagination. And the last one is make stuff. If you wanna be an artist, you need to be making stuff all the time. You know, the longer you go in between making the work, like I had gone a little bit too long without really drawing, really drawing recently. And when I went to the page, I could not remember for the life of me how to get into that groove of drawing. Like, how do I draw well? Like everything I was drawing looked terrible and ugly. And it took me so long to get back into that zone. And you wanna minimize that time in between making stuff. Just let that thing inside you that's like, make stuff. Let that fuel you to be just constantly making stuff. Just talking with a student. She had like eight pieces in her portfolio online. And I said, I love what you have here. But let's like triple the amount of it. Like in your, if you got a spare hour, make something. Make something. And that same, don't overthink it. Just make something really cool that fits in with this stuff and put it online. And then when you have more time, replace it with something else. But get that stuff out there and build it out. Okay, that's pretty much, that's the full list. You know, I really, I definitely believe that the difference between an artist, an artist's success, the discrepancy in between each artist, oftentimes has a lot less to do with the talent level and a lot more to do with what they actually do with the talent. What their strategy is, how do they think about their work? How do they position themselves in the right way? How do they lean into what they're good at and lean out of what they're bad at? How do they find the places in the market where there's money? You know, I feel like something I've been thinking a lot about lately. I'm thinking about, I'm writing a book about these kinds of subjects, about finding the place where you need to be in the industry creatively. And I'm thinking about, you know, you hear about this thing called the sweet spot, right? And they say, you need to find the place where your passions, your talents, and a demand in the market overlap. But I have to add to that one other thing. You need to find what makes you, what makes you not fit in? What makes you different? And figure out ways to translate that. Because I believe creativity, like doing a new thing, is about making seemingly contradictory things come together and be one. So I think that that's so much about strategy. It's so much about not just putting your stuff out there but figuring out the right way to do that. Well, I hope that all of this helps you. I hope that it peps you up like crazy because I think if you're not confident that you can do this, then you're not gonna try. It's just like that student who thinks is gonna fail the test, he's not gonna study. But if you think that you can do this, if you can have a career in the arts, you're gonna put a right amount of time and energy and strategy into it. And I think you really can do this. So keep pushing, get excited, get hopeful, get peped up. I hope that, I hope this strategy really helps you kind of break through on some things and kind of up your game and go to the next level in your art. If you wanna listen to this online, you can find it at Andy-J-Miller.com/podcast. Or you can go check it out on illustrationedge.com/creativepeptalk and go check out their awesome illustration website. Thank you for all those great reviews on iTunes, all the tweets and the Instagram posts. You guys are amazing. This is why this show is growing and getting bigger and more people are getting excited about, getting super stoked out of their minds about their work. Thank you, it's awesome, I super appreciate all your support. And until next week, stay peped up. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]