Creative Pep Talk
052 - Fine Commercial Art
(upbeat music) Hey y'all, just a quick heads up. The episode you're about to listen to is eight to 10 years old. Now, these episodes were intended to be evergreen, and I still believe there's a lot of good information in these early episodes, but I do wanna let you know that some of my ideas have evolved over time. Times have changed since we made these episodes, and ultimately, I'd like to think I've grown a lot as an artist and a human, and that these don't necessarily represent my best work, or the best of the podcast. If you're new around here, I suggest starting with the most recent episode, or at least go back to around 300, and move forward from there. Enjoy the episode. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Well, hello! You're listening to the Creative Pep Talk podcast with me, commercial artist, proud artist, who also makes money, Andy J. Miller. This is the show where I spend some time every week racking my brain, taking notes, trying to figure out how I have found a little pocket of success in my art career, and how do I translate that into something that can help other people do something similar? Because I am extremely and ridiculously passionate about helping creative people thrive financially in our world, and feel creatively fulfilling, and get to make the work that they long to create. Because when I was in a place, when I couldn't do those things, it was just miserable. (laughs) And so I don't wish that upon other creative people, and that's why I spend this time every week pouring into this show, and I hope that it helps you. - I'm a believer in the idea of dressing for the job you want, not the job you have, and I have applied this to my creative practice too, which means if you want professional results, you need to present online like a pro, and that means going beyond social media and having a professional website that reflects your style and looks legit. I rebuilt my site this year with Squarespace's Fluid Engine, and was so happy with how easily I could build my vision without coding, that when they approached me to support the show, I jumped at the chance because I love and use this product. So, go check it out, squarespace.com/peptalk to test it out for yourself, and when you're ready to launch your site, use promo code PEPTALK, all one word, all caps for 10% off your first purchase. Thanks goes out to Squarespace for supporting the show and supporting creators all over the world. Hey, in case you don't know, we have a monthly live virtual meetup every last Monday of the month with supporters of the show from Patreon and Substack. We have so much fun on these calls, and they are the warmest, most encouraging creatives that I have ever met, and we also talk real creative practice stuff. We have authors, illustrators, lettering artists, picture bookmakers, fine artists, musicians, and folks that work in video and film as well, and we have people that are just starting out, people super established in their creative careers, and everything in between. For the rest of this year, we're gonna chat through our new Journey of the True Fan series, exploring questions and ways to apply these ideas to your own creative practice so that you can leave 2024 stronger than you came in, with more visibility, connection with your audience, and sales. Sign up to whichever suits you best at either patreon.com/creativepeptalk or antijpizza.substack.com. And I hope to see you at this month's meetup. - Today we have a fantastic show planned if I do say so myself. I'm really super excited about it. A few episodes back we did a highlight on the business side of art business. I am this person who is desperate to bring back this idea of commercial art. In the mid-century, a lot of people, professionals called themselves commercial artists. And I actually think that terminology has a way of opening parts of your brain. And I think when we call thing graphic design or illustration, we're missing, what is this really? And I think really it's commercial art. And we talked about elevating the commercial side of your business. Now I wanna talk about how important it is to elevate the art side, to get a little bit goofy with the art side. Getting arty, getting weird in the art side. That's today, before we jump in though, a few things. One, if you are a big fan of the show and it's helped you and you want other people to be helped, which you should don't, you know, don't do the competitive jealous thing. Go out there and let other artists thrive too. If that is you, would you do me a favor and go to iTunes, it'll take a second. Go in iTunes, find the podcast, write a little review and rate the podcast. That's how the podcast ranks higher in the design charts and the art charts so that other people can find it. Thank you so much for people who already do that. And if that's you, if you're a long time listener, just pause the podcast and go do me a favor. Super appreciate that. You can find this show on illustrationage.com/creativepeptalk on iTunes or SoundCloud or on the link of my website, Andy-J-Miller.com. Thank you illustrationage for all the love and support. I love what you guys are doing. Means so much to me. Real quick, so my $10 backers, I have a Patreon where you can go back a certain dollar amount per episode of the podcast and support the podcast financially. I have a handful of people who back at a $10 level. I give them personal pep talks quarterly. So quarterly, I go look at their portfolio, their web presence, see what they're doing. And I try to have insight about how they can take it to the next level and challenge them and critique what they're doing. And then I record a little short personal pep talk and I send it to them via email. Now, I don't open a lot of spots for that because it's hard for me to keep up with it, but I love it. I'm super passionate about it. And I wanna be giving little shout outs to the $10 backers because of their awesome support. So today I wanted to say thank you Kai Vail, C-A-I-V-A-I-L. Kai Vail, she makes fantastic work, really beautiful, really ornate stuff. And I wanna say thank you Kai for backing the podcast. You are awesome. She is going to be doing awesome things in the illustration art world. Thank you so much. Hey, if you love the podcast and you already did a review and you're like, man, I've gotta figure out how to help this guy more because I'm so excited about the creative pep talk. You can go to patreon.com/creativepeptalk and go back at a dollar level, $2 level or $5 level. At the $5 level, you actually are gonna have access to a back catalog of episodes you've never heard. It's their shorter, I call them pep talks. I don't know why I call them that, but I do and they're some good ones and there's some of the stuff in there. I kid you not is some of the best stuff that I've come up with for the podcast. And we have conversations on there. So yeah, go check that out. The Patreon is definitely probably the biggest reason why I've been able to make it to 50 episodes. So thank you guys. Thanks for your support, go check that out. Okay, we're done with the stupid announcements. I don't like announcements. I don't like announcements on other podcasts. I get it, it's annoying, but they're just a necessary evil, just like brushing your teeth. You gotta brush your teeth. It's not a blast, it's not super fun, but you gotta do it. So let's get on with the actual show. You know, when I was a kid, we, you know, back in the day, the good old days, I don't actually think it was the good old days, but we spent a lot of time, I remember when I was about 10, me and a few friends from the neighborhood, we were, we spent a lot of time, a lot of hours alone out in the neighborhood, in the woods, doing all kinds of things and getting into trouble. And, you know, one of the things that we did is we'd always try to be starting fires, which is terrible, I know, I get it, but that's when you're 10 years old and you're in the woods with a couple of other guys, you think about these people on TV that start fires from nothing, you know, they would just gather a few leaves, maybe get a little branch with a little stick and just kind of do one of these things where you're, you know, rubbing your hands together on the stick to like, make some smoke, get a fire going, or maybe you just, you know, if that doesn't work, which it never did, someone's like, oh, I know, I saw one time, they just grab two stones and just kind of smack 'em together and that'll just spark a fire, will be good to go. Hold on, let me go find some stones. They'd run and go find some stones and be, we'd be smacking those stones together. We wouldn't even get a spark, you know, even as a teenager, I remember going to camp with one of my buddies, Kyle Batten, a few of us were out there camping. We thought, you know what, we're nearly adults now. We can figure this out. So we even, we had one of these like a piece of flint or something and a knife and we built, we got, you know, we're trying to like make a spark, nothing. We had to get the lighter fluid out and, you know, for all you scouts out there that might be shameful, but we didn't have all the lessons growing up, okay? So it can be pretty difficult to start a fire from nothing, right? And I'm proposing that trying to handle to have a thriving commercial art career without elevating that art side, without having an approach that says, this isn't just business, this is my art. Without doing that, I think that's trying to start a fire just with a few sticks. You know, have you ever, if you start a fire and you've got the lighter fluid, you've got the kindling and you've got the matches, it's incredibly easy to get a fire roaring. And I think that when you do the hard work, you know, the hard work that maybe a fine artist would do to tap into themselves and their inspiration and what they believe in and what their voices and what they have to say and what their opinions are, I think when you dig deep into that and you intimately know yourself and what your art is about, I think it is so much easier to get a roaring fire of an art career, of a commercial art career going. So when I was a year at a college, I talk about this every once in a while in the podcast, when I was a year out of the college, I was just not satisfied with the level of art in my commercial art. You know, it just didn't feel authentic enough. It didn't feel like it was me. And I think, you know, sometimes I'm a little bit cautious about pushing this idea too much on students, you know, 20 year olds because it's hard to say really who you are at that age. It's hard to, you know, without having to do real world experience, I think it's hard to really have a lot of opinions and a lot to say. And, you know, you don't have a lot of experience under your belt that isn't sheltered in a lot of ways. And I find, you know, almost 10 years later, I'm almost 30 now, that I have so much more to say than I did 10 years ago. And I remember people coming to school and saying, you really need to put yourself into your work, you need to have an opinion with your work. And I think I just didn't have a real opinion. And I also hadn't been very intentional about understanding who I was and having an understanding of, you know, I wasn't self-aware enough. And 10 years in the real world getting kicked around a little bit, I've started to have some real opinions and some real thoughts and some real experiences. But a year out of college, you know, I just realized that I didn't know what my work was about. I didn't know what I was trying to say. I didn't know why I responded to what I responded to. I didn't know exactly why I was making what I was making. And I actually started to do some things really, really intentionally. And those things ended up dramatically altering the direction that I took. And that's when things really started to get interesting in my career. When things started to turn towards my inspirations, you know, and I started to filter those inspirations and not take those inspirations and then transform all of those things through my own voice. That's when the career started to build. That's when it started to have a little bit more roaring action. And so I just, I took some time and I just note, I took some notes about what those things were and how they helped me and how you can use those same things to kind of elevate the art side of your career. So here we go, here's my plan. Number one, you need your lighter fluid. This is the thing that you're gonna douse your whole career in that's gonna get that fire to go wild. You know, the lighter fluid is the fuel that makes it explode, right? And I think that there's a lot of misunderstanding around this idea of inspiration. I think your inspiration is the lighter fluid of your art career and I think there's so much confusion about how inspired you should be. And I think there's so much to say on this topic. You know, when I was, the biggest thing that I have to say is I think any good artist worth their salt, I think that's a phrase, I'm not sure. Sometimes I mix phrases. But I think any artist, any commercial artist worth their salt and any artist in general, one of the cornerstones of being a good artist is being observant, being present in the moment and actually going out there and living life, but noticing things. You know, one of my all time favorite art forms and it's one of the ones that I'm most impressed by is comedy, stand-up comedy, in particular. You know, when I was younger, when I was a teenager, I wanted to be a stand-up comic. I wanted to go be on "Saturday Night Live." You know, I've always had this fascination with comedy and I was always intimidated by how, you know, I felt like sometimes every once in a while I could crack a good joke when I was with my friends, but I couldn't understand how do you do that systematically? How do you have a craft where you learn to make people laugh on command? It just seemed like total magic. And that's part of the reason I didn't go into it is I just couldn't see how that was possible. But, you know, stand-up comics are observation geniuses, their ability to have insight into the everyday and to the human experience is mind-blowing. And I think one of the things that is a practice that is so hard to develop and I've gotten so much better at this is just noticing how you're responding to things in life and noticing when you're feeling inspired and noticing when something is happening, even just in the everyday. You know, one of the things that helped me, as I started thinking more critically about making art and making an art career, I started noticing things more because when I would go to write about creativity, I would, you know, you can't just stop then and look backwards and think, all right, now I'm gonna really be observant of my life and just go into the videotapes in my mind of the past couple of years and just pull some stuff out. And that's so much harder than noticing something as it's happening. I think one of the things you need to do is notice your feelings. When are you having a spike in a visceral response to things? One of the things I did early on was I looked back to when I was six. I always say this, if you, if there was a tattoo that you would have got when you were six, that you would still be super stoked on now, that's a good tattoo to get, right? And so the things you have in common with your six year old self are unlikely to change for the rest of your life. And so I looked back at my six year old self and I wanted to just scan through my experiences and my responses and think, when do I remember as a kid really having those strong visceral moments where I remember really responding to things and it seemed like time kind of stopped. I started with media. Like what media did I really, really respond to? And you know what I'm gonna say. I'm gonna say Fraggle Rock. That was one of the ones that I remember several times. And then I narrowed it down to specific episodes that it was something about those that struck a core with me on a really deep level. I remember watching the Charlie Brown Christmas episode and being struck really hard by the sad jazz. I love that combination of words, sad jazz. The sad jazz music on that. I remember it just like stopping me in my tracks and at the time I wasn't observant. You know, I didn't notice that it stopped me in my tracks. I remember the Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland. I remember not maybe particularly liking how it made me feel but it made me feel these very intense emotions. And so I started just taking notes and trying to be observant of those times when I was feeling inspired or feeling, having those extreme experiences or emotions. Then as I got older, things like I remember the first time I saw Spirited Away. I actually caught it on TV, Hayao Miyazaki film. And that made me feel these very, very strong emotions and actually realized that they were making me, it made me feel exactly how I felt when I woke up from a really intense dream. And so then I went down that rabbit hole and I think it's kind of like connecting the dots just one thing after another and not just being observant but being analytical about what is it about this thing. And then also connecting the dots between all these things. What are these things that have in common? So I noticed these things have in common kind of abstract side of life, the mysterious abstract side of life. So dreams and existential things and spirituality and philosophy, it was that side of life. I started noticing that it was like the things behind the things that you need intuition to notice, the things that are invisible. Those are the things that always struck a chord with me. The episodes of "Fraggle Rock" early on, they're talking about finding your own personal song which is a very abstract idea and I just responded to that. That just made sense to me. It was like an analogy for life. If you know me, I'd like analogies a little bit. So then I started to notice even in real life, even just interacting in real life that I have those moments. And so it would be things like dreams and things like spiritual experiences or kind of that invisible side of life that would really impact me. But I also remembered just looking at the night sky as a kid even in fourth grade. I remember just sitting on a deck, just looking up and just being like enamored by the night sky. And just the mystery of that, the mystery of stars and space. I remember anytime I've seen an unusual or unfamiliar plant or animal, something that is just really out of the norm would just spark my inspiration, spark my imagination. And so I started to notice all these things. Another thing I noticed was there was certain types of music, certain types of songs that really struck a chord with me. And one thing I did that was really helpful, I made a playlist of the songs that all put me into that zone of inspiration or feeling inspired. I put a little playlist together and I would make personal work with that music on because as soon as I heard that music, I would start getting into that zone that I wanted to create artwork from. And so that was a thing that really helped me just spark that inspired zone. So I believe that inspiration is your lighter fluid. I think one of the things that's important to do is find those people throughout history. When you start noticing the things that get you going as an artist, looking back 50 years ago, 100 years ago to the people that had the same inspiration in life and take from them because, you know, in fashion, right? In fashion, there's, like the copyright is a lot less flagrant. You can get away with a lot more. Like if you make your own version of something, that's kind of legal in the fashion world as far as I'm concerned. I'm not a fashion expert, but this is what I'm told through Kirby Ferguson. He talks about how the fashion laws are just a lot looser when it comes to copyright. And someone said that, you know, really creativity is often just being able to curate things from the past in a way that feels relevant to today. Like being able to notice things from the past that are interesting, that would be, you know, how fashion, there's always things that come back after long periods of time. And I think one of the things that's really interesting to do is to look backwards and find those artists, 50, 200, 200 years ago that had things strike them that also strike you and finding and using that as inspiration, their work as inspiration. I think that's where really interesting things happen. So you've got the inspiration, you're feeling super stoked out of your mind to make artwork and to bring that kind of fine art to your commercial art practice. The next thing I think you need, you can't just pour the inspiration fluid. (laughs) This sounds really weird. All over just, you know, a few big, hunking chunks of logs of wood. You need something, you know, these big chunks of wood or logs would be your pieces of work. You can't just go straight onto that. You need something in some intermediary thing to kind of capture this inspiration and keep it going, right? You know where I'm going with this? You need the kindling. And the kindling for me is the sketchbook. You need something to take the notes. You need to be able to, you know, I take notes on my phone for the podcast all week. I'll note little things down and kind of compile them later. You need to be sketching in your sketchbook. I've said this before, you know, wanting to be a commercial artist and not having a sketchbook is like wanting to be a bodybuilder, but not really being into lifting weights. Like you don't really train, you know, but you want to be a bodybuilder. You want to be a commercial artist. You need to be in your sketchbook, experimenting, having experiences and taking that lighter fluid of inspiration and being observant and taking visual notes and getting them down in your sketchbook, right? - Aw, the holidays are here. You've got to find a unique gift for Uncle Derek and your sister, Catherine, and her kids, Jettson and Jetton, Jurfrey and Jaggab and another two J kids. There's so much thinking, so much searching. Plus there's the ethical thing. You got to shop small, it just, it's a lot, but it doesn't have to be. Uncommon goods makes all of this simple and straightforward for real. The site is chock full of unique and interesting gifts that also support small businesses. 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Visit eyeglassworld.com to schedule your exam online and for offer details. - Now, I have the honor of having Dan Kristofferson, AKA B-Teeth, B-Teeth.com, B-Teeth. On the show today, he has some brilliant thoughts about sketching, finding that fluidity in your commercial art. I'm so excited to have him on the show. You know, when I was thinking about elevating art in your work, you know, kind of approaching your commercial art in a similar fashion that you would maybe approach fine art with putting yourself into the work and having a voice and having an opinion and having thematic elements that are reoccurring. The first person that came to my mind was Dan. He has this work that is highly influenced by Mormon culture and artifacts and Utah. He actually lives in Utah. And I think that was such a, you know, when I came across that, I thought that was such a bold move, such an interesting thing to introduce to the commercial art world, you know, a illustration and graphic design with these kind of artifacts and these threads that, I don't know, have this mythological quality to them. And it just screams and all of his work, these things, and there's just this real consistency. And it also makes his work so much more original. And I love it. And he has this very high quality of craft, to everything he does. Everything he does, he seems to be bringing the goods to be making it have, you know, really tons of energy put into making the details shine. And so I'm super glad to have Dan. He recorded some really interesting thoughts on this topic. I'm sure they're gonna be helpful without further ado. Here's Dan Kristofferson. So a big thanks to Andy J. Miller for having me join in on this topic. I really love this. I've been thinking a lot about it and put some notes together. And I hope I can speak as clearly and casually as Andy does in his podcasts. So the idea of working more art quote unquote art into your commercial art is really interesting. And I think I've put together some thoughts and I hope they're helpful. The first thing I think of is the difference between commercial art and fine art. Commercial art definitely feels like a solution to a problem often posed by a client. You know, there's guidelines and deadlines and feedback and budget and a lot of rules to work within fine art feels so much more free, the creative freedom, the experimentation. It's often self-directed. It's directed by a need to make or communicate something visually. I think it's very fluid and organic. There's a lot of process and layers involved. You know, those layers often contain action and reaction to something you've just done. So you can see that process and in there you can see failures and little triumphs and those things I think are very interesting to viewers. And in that, you know, it's very inspiring and it shows off a lot of passion seeing that process and often a polished commercial art piece, you lose a bunch of that. Both though, in my opinion, are really magical, especially to non artists, people who don't create making something out of nothing is like that last bit of unsolved magic and I think it's really inspiring to people. So creating fine art, you know, with no rules and no guidelines is very freeing. There's something very satisfying about coming up with a project or an idea and seeing it through to the end yourself. But with no client and no deadline, you are completely in charge of seeing it all the way through. So, you know, often it may take a little bit longer to start or be pushed sort of to the back burner behind other projects, but when I create a piece, you know, whether it's a painting or just sort of an illustration just to sort of play around, I often hold those pieces up to a higher standard, even maybe higher than a client would because I'm so proud of it and, you know, I want to display it and it's something that I've done purely out of like the joy of making something. So I guess the question is how do we get more of that pride and that passion in commercial art pieces? And I think one of the solutions would be to allow the process of fine art to creep over into the commercial art process and maybe vice versa, letting those processes kind of cross back and forth, I think is really important. So I think one thing that I've noticed and one thing that would help really quickly is when I'm approaching like a sketching session for a client project, I notice that those sessions are much more formal. You know, I'm sitting up and my shoulders are tight and I approach it much more formally than I would a fine art sketching session. You know, I'm sitting there with the brief in front of me and a list of bullet points that I'm trying to reach and each sketch is precious and I'm trying to solve something really quickly with it. And the other side of it, like the fine art sketches are like dessert sketches. I'll save them for the end of the night and they're fun and loose and, you know, I'm not scared to kind of scribble and mess up and really experiment and I think getting more of that fine art loose like dessert sketching session into my client projects will bring some of that art into the commercial art. You know, self-directed, those self-directed projects that are very freeing, I think adding more of those into your practice, you know, start a personal project or like a self-directed project and do those periodically throughout your practice. And I think using those to remind you of the process you go through with a fine art piece, you do more of those and notice that process, you go and implement some of those pieces from that process into your commercial practice. One other point would be to remind yourself that you are an artist at work on your craft. I think historically, you know, if you want to see it this way, this may be a little bit dramatic, but, you know, the same client hiring you now to do some cool logo or some icon or whatever, that same client historically would have been, you know, some wealthy spice merchant in the 15th century commissioning you to do a beautiful work of art in a church or, you know, on their huge boat or something like that. You know, our version of that today is being hired as commercial artists to build these, you know, beautiful little pieces. So reminding yourself that, you know, you are an artist working on your craft and these clients or benefactors are enabling you to do that, I think it can help put your head in the right space. And I think that comes down to when you pitch a round of designs too, if you speak about it with that same passion, you know, involve these clients in that formal process, talk them through the ink and the pencil and, you know, the colors and how you built it digitally and all of the layers and the process. Like, involve them in the excitement of finally figuring out a solution and when you've done something you're really proud of, you know, like getting back up out of bed to go back and look at it and cock your head and kind of be proud of that. Involving in them in that feels very similar to what I do when I'm speaking about a fine art piece in a gallery, you know, where I'm explaining the process behind it and the concept and watching a possible, you know, perspective buyer, look at this piece and get really excited about it with me. That feels very similar. I mean, there's obviously a huge gap between the logo you're designing for some ostrich meat burger joint and, you know, being hired to paint the Sistine Chapel for 40 years or whatever, but that logo you're designing and your passion for a really well-designed burger joint, that's what's going to get you to your next commission or your next client, just like a beautiful ceiling painting would, you know, attract another benefactor. And in between those, you know, benefactors sending you emails with huge projects, you have to, in some ways, be your own benefactor. And that's probably the last point I want to make is on a really small scale, we're in charge of, you know, surrounding ourselves with our, you know, building our own artist studio and giving ourselves plenty of time for projects, you know, working in a creative space with plants and natural light in a comfy chair, you know, all of the things we need now that a benefactor would have given an artist hundreds of years ago, hang cool on your walls and, you know, drink plenty of water and listen to music and organize your supplies and, you know, treat yourself to your favorite pencil and paper, all of those little things that create that same feeling of being commissioned to create something beautiful. And I think, you know, all of that, those, letting those processes kind of mix and treating these like refined fine art pieces, I would just encourage you to let the best parts of your fine art process creep into your commercial art processes. And I think you'll start to see that the best parts of your fine art pieces creep into your commercial art pieces. Thanks, Andy J. Miller. - No, Dan, thank you, thank you, man. I really appreciate you taking precious time out of your schedule away from your family to do this. It means a ton to me. I don't take that lightly. And I love this advice. I think, you know, bringing that process, that process that you approach your personal work, the stuff that you do in your spare time, figuring out how do you break the boundary between your personal work and your commercial work? How do you, how do you meld those together? You know, the artists that seem to be the most successful that do the most amazing things, they say they figure out how to take that stuff from the sketchbook, the stuff that they just observe and connect with and not take. How do they take those things and help that stuff fuel their commercial stuff? When they start doing that, that's when it starts to get good. That's when things start to happen. So I think you're spot on, Dan. Thank you for sharing those great thoughts and keep making amazing work. You know, I feel like Dan, someone who is really just starting to get going. He's already done amazing things. And I just think, yeah, I just think that amazing things, much bigger, more awesome things are just gonna keep happening for him. Thank you so much, Dan. Really, really appreciate it. So you don't just need the lighter fluid. You don't just need the kindling. You can have kindling soaking in lighter fluid all day and night, but without that spark, nothing happens, right? You can take all the inspiration in the world. You can note take, you can translate, you can put it on the page, all you want. You can do that all day and night. But if you don't spark it, nothing happens. And I believe the matches, the spark is you. You have to light this stuff with your own DNA, with your own experience, your own pain, your own joy, your own interests, your own experiments. You have to set it on fire yourself. You can't just wait for something to happen with all of that stuff. You have to figure out, how do you get onto the page? And it's not easy. It's not the, you know, it's both the easiest thing in the world and the hardest thing. It's not something that just happens though. And I'm reminded of, let's go back to Frag or Rock, the best thing that's ever been made. And, you know, my second favorite episode of all time, if you're interested in the first, it's gone but not forgotten with a cameo from a creature called Mudwell. That's my favorite episode. Go check that one out. That one's absolutely heartbreaking. Heartbreakingly amazing. But my second favorite episode, and it's a close second, is the minstrels. It's where this guy comes along mysterious dude, comes along playing this magic pipe. We've talked about it on the show before, but it's such a good example of this. And he says that all the fraggles are gonna sing a medley, and each fraggle's gonna sing their own personal song that's personal and true to them. It's just their song. And he can't really explain how you find it. You just kind of have to listen internally. And you get this one character called Red, and she's the one who wants to win all the races. She's competitive, she's the type A character. And I think in the art world, there's a lot of people like that. You know, I find myself to be similar to that. Like, they're like, you know, if it's meditation. So if someone says, you should meditate. And I'm like, all right, tell me what to do. I'm ready to go. Just tell me the five things I gotta do to be good at meditating. And they're like, no, you just have to do nothing. And you're like, what? Like, I can't, no, just need the list of things. I'll do those things, and I'll be ready to go. And that's this character, Red. She's like, okay, I need to find my song. Just tell me what the song is, and I'll sing it. And he's like, that's not how it works. And I think when it comes to putting yourself into the work, that this can be the challenge, because it's about getting quiet. It's about putting the uncomfortable stuff on the page. Like drawing things that are ugly at first. You know, having some mistakes. Getting vulnerable, like sharing who you really are. Like having an actual opinion in your work. It's not easy. It's not, you know, we just recently watched, when I said it's not easy, it reminded me there's a quote. So one of my favorite musicians is Baths. And he has a song called Seaside Town, where he quotes or he samples a bunch of samples from Kiki's Delivery Service. It's a Hayao Miyazaki animated film. And there's some really good quotes in there. One of them is, "Maybe I need to find my own inspiration." And then someone says, "Sometimes it's not easy." And I think about it all the time. We actually watched that movie recently. And in that movie, you have this witch in training Kiki, and eventually she forgets how to fly. She loses her magic. And she has to find her own personal reason to have magic. And I think it's in that process, that journey. It's the hero's journey. It's the artist's journey. That process is not comfortable. It's not easy. But if you don't do that hard work, you will not see yourself on the page. So I think you need to take the time and the energy to do the experiments, to have the experience, to be able to translate that experience onto the page. And I think one of the best ways of doing that is just maintain personal work. Personal work is, you know, in a lot of ways, the matches. You know, finding that time and energy to make things purely for yourself. And a lot of times sharing that with other people and seeing how they respond and seeing what you learn from that, that's where the commercial stuff gets really interesting. When you're consistently figuring out how to put yourself into your personal work, that's when the other stuff gets really good. I think this is so important because you can't fake it, right? You know, I'm someone who, you know, confession, I love ranch dressing. It's terrible for you. It is ranch dressing is double the calories of nacho cheese. It's really bad for you. But you know, if you give me ranch dressing, I don't need a lot of it anymore 'cause I've been trying to be healthier. But if you give me ranch dressing and you make it, you don't make it with buttermilk. You make it with yogurt. I know, it's not the same. You can't call it ranch dressing, all right? Like you can't substitute for the real thing for you and your work. You've got to take action and do the hard stuff to get yourself in the work because if you don't, it's going to be inauthentic. And these days we are so good at knowing when something doesn't smell authentic, when it doesn't have the scent of reality. We know it, when we can sniff the substitute, we can tell that it's yogurt all day. Don't put the yogurt in the ranch dressing, all right? You know, I think about McDonald's and Taco Bell comparing these. So I think Taco Bell is onto something. I don't eat Taco Bell. My younger brother does. He loves it. He eats the Taco Bell breakfast, the waffle tacos. And I think what's working for Taco Bell right now is they know their restaurant and their food, what they're serving is kind of ridiculous. But in their ads and in their marketing, they embrace that they're crazy. You know, they have the silly little sauce packets with the weird phrases and the commercials are ridiculous. And you know what? There's something about that. I don't really like, I don't eat the food, but I don't feel terrible about Taco Bell as a brand. Now flip over to McDonald's as an example. McDonald's is saying, we're for everybody. We're reasonable food. But we know it's not true. We know that food is not good for you. We know we don't eat it when we're in a good, you know, we're trying to be healthy. But in their commercials, they look like these coolest trendsetters in the world eat McDonald's. And we're not buying it. It's not true. And we can sense that a mile away. And people can sense it in your art when you're not in the art. Yeah, you can have a career that is somewhat successful without figuring out how to get yourself into your work, how to get that fine art approach into your work. But I'm not sure you can have a fulfilling career. I'm not sure it will be creatively fulfilling. And I don't think you'll ever get to the level financially or in your, the demand unless you start to figure out how to approach it a little bit more like an artist instead of someone who's, you know, selling soap door to door. Like this is something that should mean something to you. You know, after I started to put myself in the work and start to be observing of my inspirations and find that lighter fluid and take the notes and sketch and experiment and try to set it on fire with my own life experience. When I, as I started doing that, you know, things really started to get so much more interesting. You know, the demand went up eventually, and I, it was so much more fulfilling than I ever knew art could be. You know, recently I did, I was lucky enough to do a project with the Guardian in the UK to make the guide, festival guides for the, for Glastonbury, one of the biggest, might be the biggest art and music festival in the world. It was an amazing experience. And I, and I was humbled by, you know, all the photos, you know, almost every photo has this little guide around every Glastonbury photo this year has this little guide hanging off their neck. Now that's great, you know, that's a fun thing. And, you know, I think anybody would be excited about that. But nothing made me more excited than this fact. On that festival guide, they specifically asked me to use my character who has an umbrella over his head and his eyes are on the umbrella. And that character is called Billow, right? He was, he's something that came directly out of that first year out of college, or in the first two years, I was doing all those, that hard work. And he's, he was a direct product of digging deeper into my inspiration and in my sketchbook work. And, and I have so much emotion and energy and, and, and myself in that character. And they wanted him front and center on this guide. And so, it wasn't just that I had work hanging off the necks of thousands of people at this festival. That was cool, you know, in its own right. And I, and I, and excuse me if it sounds like I'm bragging because it's definitely not the point. You know, I'm often kind of uncomfortable talking about different, you know, things that have went well in my career, but it's, it was just such a good point of the thing that was fulfilling about that was the part of it that was, was me, the part of it that was my art. You know, having that character that meant so much to me front and center of this campaign, it was such a, so fulfilling. And you know, I've had other experiences where I did a gig poster for a favorite band and I, and I put a character into that scene that also had all this history and all this emotion and all this voice attached to it that, you know, I knew that character intimately and I, and I put it in that gig poster collaborating with one of my favorite bands because I felt like that part of my voice mashed with thirst, created this interesting kind of mashup of a collaboration. And it made it so much more fulfilling to me to be able to take my thing and add it to theirs and have some real interaction between our collective voices. And that's when, that's when things started to get good. If you go listen to Your Dreams My Nightmares podcast where they, where Sam Weber interviews all these illustrators or go back to Escape from Illustration Island with Thomas James. You know, one of the reoccurring themes is that these season illustrators, the people that made it big time say that, you know, it started to get good and interesting when they figured out how to take their own life experience, their own tastes and knowledge and figured out how to put those things into the commercial stuff, into the paid gigs. And I think it's not a magic serum where you start doing that and all of a sudden everything goes better. It's not going to, you know, you're going to put one of your characters into your work or, you know, develop something that's more true to your voice in the next day, you know, Hollywood's going to call you. It's not like that, but that's when it's, that's when you start getting on the path that's really interesting. And so my challenge to you is start to dig deeper, even in that commercial stuff. Like Dan said, bring that process that you take for your personal work and bring it to the commercial stuff. Start figuring out, you know, at first you feel like you're getting away with something. You know, some of those characters I put in, in some of these campaigns, you know, I know that some of these characters have like, in my nod project, some of these characters would be kind of dealing with depression and now they're selling a product. There was something like subversive and interesting about that and it was just, it's so much more fun. It's just more fun. Not to mention that I think the results are so much more interesting and just, and just a lot better, right? So that's my challenge today. I hope this has been encouraging you, help you stay motivated and inspired for the week. That's why I do this podcast. I believe in this work, you know, I feel once you start going down a path that feels right, then I think you should try to give like 10% of that your time and energy to helping other people find that path. And that's what this is about for me. Thank you guys for the iTunes reviews. If you wanted to do that and you forgot, go give me a review, that means a lot to me. I read them all. They really encourage me to keep going on this podcast. Thank you guys for the support on Patreon and all the sharing on Instagram and Twitter and Facebook. You know, I read all that stuff and it makes this worth it. So thank you guys so much for doing that. I think that's about it for this episode. I think we've pretty much covered every angle. So before we get going, I just want to do a quick shout out to illustrationage.com/creativepeptalk. Go listen to the show there. There's all kinds of inspiring things there if you're looking for inspiration. Go check out illustrationage. Also a quick thank you to the band Y and the lead singer Yoni Wolf for letting me use their music for this podcast. I am a giant fan. They are literally one of my all time favorite bands. I am totally blessed and honored and stoked out of my mind to have their music on this podcast. Honestly, I kid you not. It almost makes me cry every time I hear it. That is maybe over sharing. But when I hear that music that comes in at the beginning, it pairs so well with the album artwork of the podcast. It just feels like the cut from the same cloth. I love that interaction. I love that the brand is starting to feel a little bit more cohesive. And then when the out music that you're about to hear that maybe you're already hearing, that music is just-- it's the perfect level of punchy and whimsical, mixed with, oh, it's a sad goodbye. The podcast's over. You're going to have to wait another week. I don't know. Maybe I'm overthinking it. But I just love it so much. So thank you so much, Yoni. Thank you. Why? Go check them out. They have some really great, honest hip-hop indie music. Now, I will just give you a little warning that some of it is pretty explicit. But if you're OK with that, go check that out. It's very honest. And Yoni is someone who definitely takes that fine art approach to his music. So thank you again. Until we meet again, stay peped up. [MUSIC PLAYING] Hey, y'all. One more quick thing. Earlier this year, I rebuilt my website using Squarespace's new fluid engine. And I was so pumped about how it turned out that I have been really thrilled to find as many ways to partner with them and tell you about what they can do and bring you discounts as possible. With social media going haywire, I think having a site that feels as unique as your creative work is essential to building trust with your target audience or your clients. I have had several clients point out how cohesive and fresh my site looks lately. And if you want to check that out, and what I was able to do without any code, check out AndyJPizza.com. If you want to test it out, go to squarespace.com/peptalk to test it out yourself. And when you're ready to launch, use promo code PEPTALK for 10% off your first purchase. Thanks Squarespace for supporting the show and for supporting creative people. I did consider Barney a friend. And he's still a friend to this day. The idea of Barney is something that I want to live up to. I love who you love me. I call it the purple mantra. Barney taught me how to be a man. Generation Barney, a podcast about the media we loved as kids and how it shapes us. Listen wherever you get your podcast. (upbeat music)