4 QUALITIES YOU MUST HAVE TO THRIVE AS AN ARTIST

the thing is nobody's gonna hold your hand through this process no one's gonna sit down over your back breathe down your neck and make you do this you have to really want it because it is relatively a small field and it's highly competitive and hey folks tyler edwin here i've been doing my own studio in art school now for about 10 years in the creative and entertainment field and today i want to really talk about the qualities or the traits of some of the most successful artists i know so in this context i'm gonna really be talking about the differences between the rich artists and the poor artists we all know that wealth does not necessarily mean how successful an artist is in general and of course there's a lot more things important than income like happiness like relationships to health but i needed some kind of basis to kind of go off of today and to top that off i'm going to be taking you through my process of how i painted some of the concept art for a ken up bridge of spirits that a game that came out recently on the ps4 and five and is available on pc it's gonna be fun we're gonna go from a sketch all the way to the full color concept so uh let's begin [Music] so i reached out to you guys the community a few weeks ago to see what some of the responses you guys had to this very kind of question common answers you know were like things like patience and and having discipline and passion which of course i do agree with and yeah i think throughout this video my little disclaimer will be yeah there's a lot of terms that are interchangeable uh but there the one i want to start with is one that i saw a lot of folks really fail uh to mention and that i think is very important for a majority of us you know regardless of the type of artist freelance artists independent artist studio artists convention artists online sales artists there's a there's a lot of types of us right and of course the first one is business savviness i do think good art inherently will market itself so if your art isn't doing that you're gonna need to work harder in this category as most of us you know kind of have to do and for most of us to thrive of course it does require a lot more than just making nice looking pictures though that is a huge part of it there's things again like you guys mentioned time management having your priorities in line you know from going to things like as well as marketing networking how to generate leads all of these kind of go under that umbrella of business savviness and i do feel a smart artist not to be mistaken with just a good artist knows their own strengths and weaknesses and knows how to create a market for themselves using these and of course when you're creating a market for yourself you have to really know your art and you're going to have to know of course what your audience is that's having a certain level of awareness and and of course you can create connections and build that audience things like being able to have an audience emotionally resonate with your art for when people will find value in that people find value in your art or your work if it solves problems think of what work solves problems concept bar solves a lot of problems production work solves problems in general things like color key set design layouts someone's going to be editing that's a creative field in itself i feel uh to like local design right that work solves specific problems for specific people or the work itself like like in a sense this video could be educational right the people find value in that how do people find value in your work you have to understand this you have to really know this and the most successful artists do and then like once you understand this you can then find ways of course right to make a living for it a lot of the most successful artists that i do know have of course multiple income streams whether it's prints whether it's tutorials whether it's a product or actual service whether it's to pins and accessories there's a lot of ways to do it and and people like you know john park like john your breath right there they're creating studios they're creating you know different products or different ways of passive income a lot of successful people out there know this that uh you know the freelance work is consistent nothing's ever truly really consistent and the best ways to thrive is to not lean on only one source for your revenue for your for your income and i think at the end of the day you know with this flexibility is going to trump perfectionism it it it's one thing to just really rely on having perfect quality of art but an artist that in in a business and marketable world that is able to adapt is be able to see you know certain trends or have the knowledge of when or when not to avoid certain uh you know pitfalls and things that is going to create a certain amount of success for them a brief example here with myself that i've been learning the hard way was that you know over the last year and a half you know when my kids were little babies they were being born and then coveted hit there's just a lot of external life factors that were really making me you know not have a free peace of mind to just straight up hourly uh commitments that i can put toward work so i turned down like 90 of freelance work that came in you know over that period of time but you know this year i finally am ready to get back you know on the horse and i'm taking a lot more jobs and now i'm able to get to a you know a place financially where i can start delegating that and hire you know hire other artists to do a lot of that work you know with you know under the umbrella of my studio and so that it's not like work i'm just kind of leaving on the table or pushing away entirely so it's something i've been learning to adapt toward a new business model as a studio now the second trait or characteristic that i i think is important here is is maybe a little more blunt with it and that's just technical skill it's hard to get work it's hard to get paid for doing work if you're not good at it right there's there's of course a lot of people out there that find little loopholes or or snake oil salesmen and come and find ways to kind of up talk themselves to get certain things but i think at the end of the day a certain caliber of technical skill is going to really be what you're building a lot of the business from it's going to establish your reputation it's going to help with networking when so right when someone sees and that's slightly different than like just having networking and social skills but i think having really good technical skills being really good at what you're just doing for the work is a it's a great kind of lubricant it's a great way to kind of find lots of other little uh you know ways to you'll get into these other other categories and i do feel i am i'm always an advocate that art is not a talent and neither is creativity for that matter and i think talent is earned and you know technical skills can absolutely be trained most of us that are working professionally have not been doing this you know our whole lives and and we all start somewhere we we clearly weren't running a business when we were a lot of us weren't when we were teenagers or even like right out of school it took a lot of a lot of practice and a lot of failing which right does require something else that you guys mentioned persistence i'm just kind of putting this under technical skill so technical skills itself i feel it doesn't always mean you know sales or stability for the creative but you can steer your own technical skill to where it's to a point where you're creating something that's appealing right something that is marketable and that it's not boring you can have something extremely technically well done but it could also be drastically boring like imagine having like a painter that can paint the most like detailed figure or the most detailed blades of grass on a lawn but and because because that requires a high caliber skill to do it doesn't make it interesting it doesn't mean anybody wants to buy it right remember you're really going to have to pursue your own personal interests on this to develop these technical skills uh talent is a pursued interest after all and unlike many other disciplines with us in a lot of these creative fields the rewards really take years and years to really see the payoffs which is going to require a lot of patience personally i started training to be a professional artist and whatever caliber that was going to be at about 18 i wasn't getting steady client work till i was about 26 right that's like seven seven eight years of real hardcore training in school and i'd even negotiate i'd even argue that the work wasn't as steady as i would have liked it to be so it takes time right technical skill is challenging so number three on my personal list is discipline i do feel that without a doubt this is such a huge component of a thriving successful artist you have awesome technical skill you can you can market that technical skill really well or maybe you can market really low maybe you're so good at marketing you can you could sell really average skills right like there's a lot of leeway in all of these but like discipline really isn't its own kind of game of its own and by definition is the ability to control one's feelings and overcomes one's weaknesses right the ability to pursue what one think is right and despite temptations to abandon it we all have distractions we all get off course with our own kind of plans it's very easy you know to drift in in building a career in the future especially when a lot of our childhood friends and colleagues and and family start seeing measurable success way sooner than we do right we're in it for the long game and here i'm also referring to making the right compromises and staying on track for some of us that are not inherently independently wealthy this usually means living frugally for a large period of time while developing skills uh to leading less than desired social lives where we become recluses and shut-ins just honing and perfecting our our strategies and our skills and our business senses um you know just having patients in general so with discipline of course we can talk about just having you know maximizing your time plus your energy and having a focus with that right that focus is what steers it and what i'm really talking about here is structure and organization right because that's what's going to keep you on track that's what's going to keep you a goal oriented person developing the right habits over time for of course success and this you know it can be like things like routines just having like hey every day i'm i'm sketching anatomy at five i'm i'm going to learn perspective you know at six at night or i might study a particular bit of art history before bed you know for the next four months to eliminating distractions removing clutter in your house something i had to do recently to isolating a workspace that you can feel comfortable in uh to just saying hey i'm not going on youtube or i'm not renewing my netflix for the next five months so i can really focus if things like this it will add up and will add a lot to your your developing skills the thing is nobody's gonna hand hold your hand through this process no one's gonna sit down over your back breathe down your neck and make you do this you have to really want it because it is relatively a small field and it's highly competitive and only a mastery of your own discipline based on your own goals is what's going to do it anyone else remember when when dave raposo right that very famous character artist and illustrator very successful was uh you know realizing like it was like 10 or 12 years ago that his drawing skills were not up to par and he went like got a cabin in the middle of vermont or something like in the middle of the woods i remember him talking about this on an interview and he just stayed there for six months absolutely distraction free and grinded out his technical skills this is what it takes time and time again so this last one number four for me a lot of you listed out one that i would kind of i guess i think it's pretty similar pretty much is the same thing and that's creativity right you can't be a creative without having a certain amount of creativity i'm gonna call it in this case artistic vision right having your right your identity as an artist which is having right that vision and intention for which you are creating art comes from within and it's who you are and in this case right your vision is what you are trying to say with your creative works this can be finely tuned and developed in yourself i feel if you are constantly setting your own goals and planning accordingly a great way i like to do this of course is to plan three to four images in advance think about where they're going why they're going there and what of course i intend to do with them maybe this is a a hard surface concept for like a bad guy base over here maybe this this image here is to explore color light and shape theory uh maybe this is a personal piece to develop a certain theme right they all have very specific uh purposes but in general right works of art are going to hold together better when there's three key factors right that's having you know kind of unity with a specific theme and plus maybe let's say style right for for argument's sake that's the aesthetics so when of course your work has these factors and your work now makes up let's say 12 to 30 images you're going to buy you're going to naturally be kind of creating a bit of a brand for yourself which you can start running through the the business and the marketing channels and in in your artistic vision it's it's simple for some of us it might just be really deciding what emotion or or theme you're trying to convey with your body of work or simply you know to answer your your own question of like why am i creating something to begin with you know that can define that artistic vision for some of you and this is the beauty of this this is why we all do this because it's different right it's different for all of us and that's one of my favorite aspects so right my four my four big traits of successful artists are being business savvy knowing how to run and operate a business at any kind of size right whether you're freelancing knowing how to invoice knowing how to promote yourself knowing what to put on a business card all these things are important whether to know how to talk and to recruiters manage your own you know interviews things like that all business all important social skills in a sense as well technical skill just not having art that sucks right it has to be good to begin with which of course we can all develop because it's something that is uh can be trained um to discipline right having the willpower to do that training and of course artistic vision through creativity the power from which all of this comes within thank you guys for watching if you want to add in to any of this if you think i'm really off base with them i'd love to hear that as well uh momentarily uh my instagram has been hacked and deleted so right now i don't i don't exist on instagram it might end up being that way so keep an eye out for me if i end up making a new account and start putting more work on there all right to take care guys thanks for watching please hit the subscribe if you want to see more you can check me out on facebook art station and instagram [Music] if you want more in-depth content for me i teach two courses at the cg master academy architecture design and fundamentals of design if you want even more learning you can go to brushsauceacademy.com and sign up for one-on-one mentoring join the hundreds of students around the world and start improving your art and design today if you want to be part of a community we have brush sauce on discord we have monthly challenges and hangouts there are links below for everything i mentioned thanks again for watching and take care you

Channel: Tyler Edlin

Views: 11,550

Rating: 4.9820428 out of 5

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Id: dsXg2mZMY90

Length: 18min 24sec (1104 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 09 2021