if you're an artist about to give up on their dreams, watch this first.

[Music] so [Music] hey guys it's ed from lucidpixel and welcome back yes today's our talk is in person for two reasons number one a little bit of nostalgia my art talks used to be talking head videos like this one i changed that a couple years ago um but secondly because i want this i want this talk to hit home i want to be a little bit more direct in today's art talk so i thought maybe talking face-to-face might help to drive certain things home and the reason being is today's art talk is a maybe a little bit of tough love giving you some blunt straightforward advice from the perspective of somebody who has lived through quite a few professional successes but also more importantly mistakes but also somebody who's taught and directed for many years in my mentorship working in different studios and i've come across different types of students and different types of professionals have gone through thousands of portfolios that start to show trends at a certain point certain portfolios and certain types of artists and certain types of attitudes that can lead to very quick professional growth and other ones where i can see art artistic careers being held back for years if not decades some people hold back their entire career sometimes so i want to have this direct conversation with you and go through a little bit of a checklist not exhaustive that that can help you reflect on your own approach if you find that you're struggling a little bit with your own professional success um and this maybe one of these might be able to tack onto your approach you might be able to relate to some of these and hopefully these our talk can help you to overcome some of these things that said i have a little checklist here and before i actually get started with this the first thing i want to mention is what you will not be experiencing from me today is any you know as been gold style rubbing my temples or somebody like elitist rubbing his temples going i'm so tired of seeing this how many times do i have to explain this to you type of elitist talk i'm not above you by any stretch of the imagination i don't have life figured out and i don't get annoyed with incompetent people even if they throw the same question at me 600 times in a row we are people we're all in this boat together and if anybody talks to you like that they're just whether their advice is worthwhile or not they're probably just jerks so just take that into account but that said and i've got a little checklist here because there's quite a few things i wanted to talk about the first thing that i think is more of kind of an entry level when you're first starting off your career and i'd say the majority of my students are usually in their early to mid 20s um starting off getting that professional training is an unprofessional portfolio not being able to distinguish between a professional portfolio and a student portfolio which is something you might have heard in other art talks in the past and a really good analogy for this is to imagine yourself hiring a professional for instance in about in about three hours i have a an electrician coming by to change a couple of thermostats in my house do you hire a professional electrician for instance because he possesses the tools to do the job because he has all the fancy electrician tools or because they know how to use those tools right i have a bunch of electrician tools in my toolbox too but i'll be damned if i know how to use half of them to their full capacity i just know how to change a couple of you know switches and and plugs and stuff like that i don't know how to rewire wiring in my house that's a totally different ball game so i'm hiring them for the skill not just for the tools when you're in school and you're learning all of these different fundamentals perspective and anatomy and line and how to draw line quality and and values and colors and composition and visual storytelling those are the building blocks those are the tools to produce a professional piece of artwork they are not the be-all end-all they are not the finished product in and of themselves they're just tools you're going to use to get that job done and you need to have an understanding and a mastery of these different tools to greater or lesser degree depending on your particular career in order to produce the professional portfolio you need to get the job and that's what directors are looking for that's what professionals are looking for so when you present a portfolio and i've seen thousands of these if you present a portfolio that includes life drawing perspective studies value studies shading studies where you have the ball or a cube and you're doing all these different studies and stuff like that anything along those lines color studies etc anything that falls into the school work category should not be in your portfolio because that's an indication that you're a student you're not a professional okay and that's very very important because there's a fine line between these two yes you use those tools to do the job but no you don't want to present those tools in their exclusivity in order to get the job because if you do that that's a red flag to an employer that that artist doesn't have a professional portfolio yet so you want finished illustrations finished concepts finished designs finished paintings and works of fine art you want to put all this together and you want to brand all of this into the package that is you the artist and you want to have a a substantial enough portfolio usually anywhere from 8 to 12 is safe number and 12 to 15 is usually kind of a max as far as that goes and you present that to your employer okay just remember to distinguish the difference between the two now while we're still on the subject of portfolio the other thing that's important is consistency of portfolio and i've used this example in the past one of my old friends mr wyazowski who's a former friend of mine from an old writing camp a horse riding camp that i used to go to when i was a kid uh captain vyozowski's writing school his son pochook ended up working at ubisoft and i didn't even know this and i applied to ubisoft for a job and so i applied to him and i said hey it's nice to see you and everything like that it's nice to talk to you again and i said let me know here's my portfolio he said yeah absolutely and about a week later he contacted me and he said sorry i didn't get the job and i went okay cool and i said but since we are friends could you do me a favor because i i'm always too afraid to ask this i said why not can you tell me what's wrong with my portfolio so i can fix it for next time and he goes yeah of course no problem he said from a technical perspective from a from a skill level perspective you were twice as advanced as the artist and you even did me the the courtesy of showing me some examples of their work albeit a very good artist but yeah i was a little bit more advanced but as soon as i saw that artist's work i said it makes perfect sense why they got hired style i had more skill but the other artist had better he had the style that fit what ubisoft was looking for more of the assassin's creed type of stuff i'm a lot more of a traditional dark fantasy type of artist so it made absolute sense why they would hire them you have to put yourself in the perspective of a director and myself i realized this very quickly when i worked as a director you're taking a chance you're taking a risk hiring an artist you want to hire an artist that can help build your idea build your brand build your project and if that regardless of the skill if that artist doesn't possess the style you know that it would take them years at best to be able to adopt the style whereas somebody who already has the style just needs to just needs to team up with a senior artist and they'll be up to speed quickly but they don't have to reinvent themselves artistically okay and this is something i've already touched on in for in former art talks but i think it's worth reiterating because it's it's an important factor that a lot of people take for granted and that fits into what i would say is kind of like your brand so to speak now brand is not something that comes overnight my brand did not manifest itself until being working professionally for years because i had to experiment i had to try different things out i came from an animation background and i got into fantasy illustration but at the beginning of it i was kind of flip-flopping between a more cartoony style and a more realistic style and do i want to do more visual storytelling or do i want to focus more on design there was there was a lot of flip-flopping and through that flip-flopping which is necessary it's a part of the growth process um i wasn't necessarily buckling myself down on a on a certain style a certain brand a certain product to whatever studio or client i was i was trying to present myself to and that from a professional's perspective can be a little bit scary because they might have a couple of examples of work that looks nice that they like but maybe there's only a few of those and there's a lot of them that they don't necessarily care for and they might make them think well what does this artist want to do where do they where do they place themselves and what do they enjoy the most and when did they actually produce that piece of artwork can they recreate this years after the fact did they just did they paint these last three pieces in the last month or were are these five-year-old pieces that's significant because i've been hired by studios to draw something to recreate something from my portfolio but i have no idea how i did it it was just kind of this experimental mishmash and i ended up with this finished product and i had no idea how i got to those results so recreating those results in my today was hugely stressful because it basically felt like i was trying to copy or plagiarize somebody else's style of artwork that was very very challenging for me and very stressful and the results were hit and miss depending on dependent on the situation sometimes clients were happy because i lucked out and sometimes not but it was a real gamble so something you definitely want to avoid so next and this is a big one i'm going to package this in a word in a term i'm going to package this with the word ego and i don't mean ego in the vanity side of the word i mean ego in the connecting your feelings to what it is that you do sense of the word because our egos are very very fragile things particularly when you're artists we we very often associate ourselves our personalities in those things that we express if you do cute sweet innocent work that might mean because it's a reflection of your self of your soul and if you're somebody who does dark greedy stuff maybe that's a sign that that's a reflection of your of your artistic tastes and your personality as well in that you become very emotionally protective of what it is that you produce particularly when you've invested a lot of time time reinforces ego very often it's like when you've been in a relationship for a really long time and you break up very often the the the most hurtful thought to a lot of people is i've invested so much time into this relationship for nothing it's that feeling like you've wasted years that very often hurts the most right it's the lost investment so to speak not to sound callous or anything like that but that applies to our art so if somebody a well-meaning person a professional who understands what you're looking for and is looking at your artwork in a very unbiased and very professional and very clinical way comes to you and offers you some kind of feedback me as a teacher and as a director have often faced certain students or certain artists on my team that were resistant or made excuses for those shortcomings of their work and by shortcomings i don't mean they suck per se i just mean there's certain fundamental things that are missing maybe the style isn't there maybe there's certain fundamentals that are a bit weak in their work maybe didn't package it well whatever the case might be it could be a whole bunch of different factors it's it's really a case-by-case situation where i look at the work and i give them some constructive feedback and they go oh yeah yeah but you know i'm doing it because of this this this and that and i go okay okay i said yeah but you could also work on this because yeah no it's because of that that it's all because of this and at a certain point depending on how many excuses and how resistant that artist becomes at a certain point because very often that artist might be very lacking sometimes it's just a little something but sometimes that artist might be very lacking and really doesn't have proper insight into their own work maybe they haven't had enough feedback over the years it's the first time they're they're facing critique so to speak that i stop them at a certain point and i say well why aren't you why don't you have work yet why aren't you working if you if you've got it all together if all of your work is exactly as it should be why isn't anybody hiring you yet and that's kind of a bit of a blunt way of saying sit down you're not there yet stop making excuses you need to fix that it's like i said it's a bit of it's a bit of tough love i'm trying to help you you haven't achieved a career in over 10 years because of reasons you came to me for i'm offering you advice sit down and listen right in fact i i've referenced this in the past before it was really funny anthony jones was talking it was a podcast or a q a or something like that i think it may have been might have even been the one that i did with him you can check it out here yes i'm plugging my own video um where somebody had asked them a question in during one of his live streams or something like that what's the common quality of artists that tend to succeed the fastest and he said they listen to you when you talk i offer advice i'm putting it out on the table i'm working professionally i have for years i'm telling you what to do are you actually going to apply it are you actually going to listen or not are you just going to go yeah yeah thanks and then go and watch a youtube video right you can see you can very often see that and for me in my particular case the artist that i have experienced as a teacher and as a director that really succeeded the fastest and really grew the fastest are the ones that were sitting there going yeah okay well not with their phone they got a notepad and they're like okay okay taking notes i even for my students and in my mentorship uh i i very strongly recommend in fact most of the time i recommend recording our skype calls that way they can take they can re-watch the videos over and over again and uh they don't have to take notes because there's so much information that you have to go over sometimes 15 times before it all starts to sink in right but but digesting and and reflecting on and applying that information is mandatory and as chris oatley said years ago i've quoted in the past if you subscribe to a fitness magazine and read an entire magazine every single day for a year but you don't go to the gym are you going to be in better shape at the end of the year no you have to apply it right so it's about listening understanding getting stop making excuses just listen unless there's a real specific reason for certain things but there's a certain point where people just have excuses for everything and those excuses are really protecting that person's ego they're really protecting that person's fear of critique and the more professional you get the the more professional you get the more you learn how to be very very unbiased and clinical about what you do because you want to get a job you want to be able to find growth and that's very often a very big determining factor and i swear i've had artists that were in their 50s and 60s that are still resisting feedback saying they want to get a job doing this and then i say well why why don't you have any artwork in your portfolio after after 30 40 years of doing this that reflects that and they go i i don't want to do it there you go now to flip that coin artists that think too little of their work and that's i'd say the more common obstacle that artists just have never heard the words from a professional saying you're ready and i find more often than not as a professional i look at a lot of different artists artwork my students at least i can't do that as a service to everybody but for my students i'll look at my students artwork and they think so little of what they do and i'm sitting there going you were overqualified 10 years ago how come you haven't worked yet oh i'm still working on it you can work on yourself for the rest of your life but there's a certain point where you just got to go okay just just jump off the damn diving board and go in the water stop stop waiting for that perfect moment that perfect moment's never gonna come but you are ready so go and just as a really here's an example that i'm not using not to not to show up this artist at all but rather just to prove is a very good example of my point um a very very successful very uh celebrated artist martinez who is my student at one point yeah i know i don't know why either it didn't make any sense to me either but um i told her she said she said to me are you ready and she was wondering whether or not she should reach out to cynthia shepard at the time and i said martina i said it's insulting that you would even ask me that question i said you are so ridiculously overqualified i mean look at your work for god's sakes if you don't just go on my go to adamduff.com or go to lucidpixel.com scroll down i've got a piece of martinez work from years ago and you're sitting there going she wasn't sure if she was good enough now she's a big magic the gathering artist and she's she's very celebrated all over the place but she wasn't entirely sure well she's from slovakia she might not have necessarily had that feedback but my feedback to her was like don't listen to me go go go get out of here if you're not sure if you're sitting there on the fence getting a little bit of feedback sometimes you you have to be open to that feedback sometimes that feedback is going to go you're really good you're getting there but you just need to blah blah blah or you're ready go and if somebody says you're ready if somebody gives you the green light and goes go go just do it you've got to get your feet wet professionally you've got to overcome the anxiety of actually applying to a job and starting work at a new studio or starting work for a client you've got to do that because it's it's very scary when you go from being somebody who um just did stuff on their own to all of a sudden doing something and there's an expectation of it and you have to kind of you have to warm up that muscle the last one is impatience this is a big factor that plays into professional success and growth especially nowadays where where you're looking for that quick fix and people look for that quick fix everywhere and it's not surprising in the art field because art can be very slow burning slow growth process where you're working every day you're training every day you're practicing every day you're looking for different resources for learning you're going to this mentorship you're going to that website you're checking out this youtube video you're buying this book you're going to this school and you're slowly building things and sometimes seeing growth can be very very well it can be growth can feel invisible to you it can feel non-existent but there's a few factors that go into artistic growth that you have to take into account number one one of the things that i've i've witnessed in my own artistic growth and in countless other artists as well is the artistic uh progress curve is not this steady diagonal incline like this no it very often kind of feels flat line for a certain period of time and the reason being is um in order for something to click in order for you to have that epiphany um you have to get certain pieces of the puzzle in place and it's not a one puzzle piece solution sometimes it requires multiple puzzle pieces so you get a little bit of that a little bit of this and a little bit of that and then the last you've been struggling and kicking busting your ass for the last six months for the last year the last two years ah nothing i'm not making any progress and then all of a sudden somebody says what about that and they give you that little key and all of a sudden you go and you literally you literally gasp when that happens i remember that happened with me at a schoolism workshop i've mentioned it before watching uh uh um attending uh carla ortiz's workshop in montreal when she did the schoolism workshop and she said something that made me go oh my god that makes sense it was just this she gave that she handed the entire audience this key and i let out an audible gasp in front of everybody at the school and i was a teacher too so people like she must have said something important because the teacher just gasped when she said that and carla looked at me i don't know if she remembers it if you're watching carla hello and uh she looked at me she says i think the gentleman in the front row had an epiphany and i said crowley you have no effing idea no idea and i she literally unlocked something for me but it had been years where i was kind of mulling and sitting on these different principles and all of a sudden something just fell into place so what happens is you you might feel flatlined but then all of a sudden your growth just takes off you have these big explosive moments i had won this i had one last year when it came to tattoo art i learned a lot from my tattoo artist when it came to design and and just perfectionism of design aesthetic and all that kind of stuff that immediately and permanently had a huge impact on my artwork so shout out to all my tattoo artists including a couple that i'm teaching right now i have a lot of love and respect for the tattoo industry so understand that that's a process but at the same time understand that it takes bloody time and one of the questions that a lot of professionals don't like hearing myself included it's kind of a it's kind of a question that that might get you a little bit of attitude and responses how long do you think it's going to be before i get a career and my answer to that is how hard are you willing to work you know are you willing to apply yourself are you willing to apply the the lessons have you learned or are you just going to say thanks and move on with them and not apply anything are you willing to put the time and effort into it if you're not it's going to take you longer or you might never achieve it if you're just looking for a quick fix and a lot of reasons why a lot of artists tend to tap out in the end uh is because they went well i didn't realize this was going to be a 10 15 year gross growth path now it doesn't take that long to get a career usually a couple years might be enough five years might be enough but don't watch the clock instead enjoy the process grow slowly and just immerse yourself in the passion of your craft but find a way either yourself or through fellow professionals to get an unbiased lucid perspective of your own work all right with that said of course i love you all with all my heart and happy painting take care [Music] you

Channel: Adam Duff LUCIDPIXUL

Views: 329,364

Keywords: artist, giving up, overwhelmed, artist career, succeeding, how to find work as artist, how to overcome the stresses of art career, professional guidance, art feedback, how to be a youtube artist, social media for artists, animation art book review, video game art book review, how to overcome anxiety, is my art good enough, am I ready for art career, how to handle critique, professional art portfolio guide, when are you ready to be professional artist, what's holding you back

Id: em2yeng1BOE

Length: 23min 34sec (1414 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 13 2022