The UNAVOIDABLE TRUTH Every ARTIST Must FACE Eventually [Pyromancer Painting P2]

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] hey guys it's out of a full news pixel and welcome back now last week I posted a video talking about social media and the type of impacts that it can have on your productivity on your self-esteem on your creative process more often than not in a negative way not always but very very often depending on the type of artist that you are and it's pretty clear to me now looking back a week later and the type of response that it got the type of comments that it that you've posted on it which by the way quite a few so thank you very much for that I have actually read every one of your comments whether I had the time to answer them all I'm trying there's a lot of you that have commented on that video but the overlying theme if I was to simplify it and summarize it that I heard from the majority of of you guys who posted was thank you I needed to hear that I felt relief and reassurance in your responses she's kind of curious in a positive way because what it tells me is this concern this worry this feeling of isolation of inadequacy or whatever other negative feeling you were feeling is something that we you feel quite frequently and it mattered to you to hear somebody say that out loud and it's amazing how many of us feel this way it's amazing how many of us are impacted by this yet we don't talk about it and one begs to ask the question why why do we keep these feelings to ourselves why do we let these feelings eat away at us when there are so many very vocal artists out there very respectable artists out there that express this feeling as well to share a sense of oneness and camaraderie with our fellow artists and that's the reason why I shared it as well I've heard artists like Ahmed I'll do retaught about it I've heard Noah Bradley talk about it I've heard Tyler Edlin talk about it I've heard Bobby choo talk about it I've heard Chris Oatley clinky early I've heard all of these artists talk about and these are very respected artists out there in the industry that have you know that they're there they're artists that have achieved quite a bit and you have to ask yourself despite all of that why do we continue to feel this way why do we need artists that we listen to that we look up to like the ones I look up to why do we need to hear them say that [Music] because underneath all of this the underlying issue here is our fear of being ourselves our fear of being open candid authentic with people I'd say that would be kind of the second secondary comment that I got I kind of tied into the first and that was thank you for being so human so authentic so so honest my honesty was appreciated why why is this why is this such a big deal I mean it's a big deal to me to when I hear somebody like like Ahmed I'll do a talk about how the fact that he's had a crappy day I really appreciate hearing that from him because I look at his artwork and I go wow you know if we could all aspire to be that good and hearing him say he's had a crappy day reassures me we as artists are hard on ourselves we we are on our own very often and we don't necessarily have somebody sitting next to us saying oh yeah that's all part of the process it's almost like going through puberty on your own without anybody telling you yeah yeah facial hair is a normal thing when you're a guy right and sometimes when you're a girl too there's a certain sense of shame and a certain sense of you know embarrassment that we have days weeks sometimes months where we just feel like garbage where we feel we have no chance at succeeding in this big competitive industry out there I have never spoken to an artist I have spoken to very very few artists save a few exceptions who when given the chance and the platform weren't completely open and honest about the fact that hey you know this this did this live demo painting I'm doing might turn out to be complete crap it might turn out great it might not and let's hope for the best right it could be very stressful because you know that there's certain days where you're just not in the zone well that's that's the issue I want to talk about today and that's what I want to I want to go beyond what I started last week talking about the whole social media thing and I want to evolve into the next incredibly important topic and it has it's really at the at the foundation of the type of artists we decide to be the professional directions we decide to go with our artwork and the authenticity of our expression no matter how hard you try no matter what efforts you make and take this from somebody who's been on this planet now for over four decades no matter how hard you try no matter how convincingly you try to mimic to impression those who you look up to you will never ever be able to not be yourself who you were when you were five years old is in great part give or take who you're gonna be when you're 75 years old as a father I look at my kids and I look at the type of personalities the type of temperaments the type of talents the type of struggles that they've had at a very very young age you can start to already get a very solid impression on who they're gonna be when they get older now of course people grow they evolve they mature they develop all of their different skills and stuff like that but the undercurrent of who they are as people continues on certain major issues might be overcome you know sir people have certain phobias or certain likes and dislikes those types of things can evolve but the the fundamental the foundation of who you are really doesn't move much I look at my son now who's five years old Lucas and look at the things he's incredibly passionate about I look at the things that annoy him and I can see where he's going with that I look at my daughter who's 17 who's now in college studying illustration the funny silly light-hearted yet remarkably strong and incredibly wise and incredibly talented an incredibly fascinating person that she is he's exactly how people described her when she was five years old - it's at the foundation of who she is and when I look at myself and who I am today and the type of things that I like and dislike you know what makes up who I am fundamentally I haven't changed a whole lot I've grown I've overcome but I haven't changed a whole lot and there was a point in my life where I had to realize that that was that was the reality of who I was the voice I have the body I have the hair I have or don't the what makes up Who I am is not going anywhere and the more I realized that the older I get the more I embrace that facet of Who I am the more I realize really amazing things about myself as an artist and about myself as a person about myself as a father I realized that as I sit here record as I sit here record as I sit here recording this video for you my the sound of my voice is completely unremarkable to me as an individual when I listen to the sound of my own voice this has been my reality my whole life the sound of my voice has been the neutral vocal tone to me my whole life there is nothing great or horrible about it it's just it's just me it's my point of reference for everything else in the world my height my size my strength or lack thereof my likes and dislikes all of these things I consider my neutral zone because it's me because I have been myself and I've lived inside this body in mind for the last forty three plus years and I enjoy once in a while if I'm the passenger in a car if I'm not the one doing the driving or if I'm stopped at a stop sign if I'm walking down the street or from if I'm at the mall picking up paper towels or whatever the case might be I like every now and then taking a moment in looking at somebody a complete utter stranger anybody a 65 year old woman who's you know looking for room deodorizers or some guy who's crossing the street on his way to college or some kid holding the hand holding their parents hand walking across the street downtown and I think to myself for a moment that person has been that person and has to be that person and everything that makes up who they are 24 hours a day seven days a week I have to step outside of myself to realize that that person is that person always and will never have a choice I think about their voice I think about their family hypothetically speaking of course I use my imagination I think about the favorite foods I think about their favorite taste in in lovers and cars and TV shows I think about what is it that makes that person who they are how do they tick because that's the reality of their life and as human beings it's very difficult for us to step outside of our own a neutral zone and observe the world around us observe the people around us and realize that they are is neutral to them as you are to you to them there is nothing remarkable or unremarkable about them they're just they're just a point of reference for the rest of the world as such one of the things that I had to realize when it came to my own experiences in my own life and my own path artistically and as a youtuber as somebody who shares his thoughts and feelings with people around the world that as unremarkable as my life and the sound of my own voice and the size of my biceps and the texture of my shirt might be to me to you it's unique to you it's different to you it's an actual experience what I create artistically to me is always an effort to keep up with my imagination because my imagination is the only thing bigger than me because I am always only a product of what I'm capable of doing physically but my imagination is always ten steps ahead of me as yours is with you so it's almost impossible to not walk away with some feeling of inadequacy every single time you pick up your paintbrush to paint something every single time you open up your mind or you try to capture your thoughts and dreams and feelings on a page on a canvas through a camera and as such as human beings it's our natural tendency to take most of what we do for granted and take most of what we see other people do as something special and what I want you to start realizing today in a healthy way of course is that you might not be anything remarkable to you in fact you might be very subpar based on the standards that you wished you could have reached but to what you consider an enact in adequacy or a flaw or a weakness to others depending on how you treat what it is that you have is actually something quite unique in something quite fascinating because you hold one quality over the rest of the world you possess something that nobody else in the world will ever ever have and that is you you are absolutely authentic in and of yourself despite how plain you might think you are and as an artist one of the things we need to learn to embrace is how what we consider completely mundane and neutral is an authentic form of self-expression that other people out there really need to hear the respect the love the the appreciation that I got on last week's video is humbling but I wasn't trying to be remarkable last week I was just trying to be as as authentic with you as I possibly could as I am with you today I'm trying to be as I'm trying not to put on a show for you I'm trying not to be something remarkable to you today I'm trying to be completely utterly raw with you today because I've I've learned over the years how incredibly valuable that is this is something else also that my children have taught me and I'm sure anybody who's you know babysat a child or loved a child or is raised up there they're a pet a cat or a dog or you know a ferret or a Bengal tiger if you're that lucky if anybody if you've ever loved another young creature before one of the things you learned very quickly is babies and young children and kittens and puppies are so completely and authentically pure they're so they're so authentic they're so real and they are not trying to be anything they're not in fact very often as a parent as an adult one of the things we we have to control in our cells is the impulse to stop them from being themselves micromanage them force them to change force them to live up to a certain standard that you might not even fully understand yourself you have to question life you have to question your beliefs and say am i doing my child justice by bugging them all the time about this or that when is it time for me to step in and help them and when is it time for me to just shut up and listen and watch and learn [Music] we have to do this with ourselves too we have to be able to sit back and look at ourselves and say this is who I am and when you do that you start to open up your mind to not only yourself as a human as a person but you start to open up your mind to respecting and loving and admiring and eventually hopefully exploiting your normal your normalcy exploiting your neutralness because you realize that it's in that neutrality it's in that unremarkable nests as you sow as you sow believe that you have a an absolutely lucid understanding of the things that matter to you and the things that don't you start to value your opinions and thoughts and when you share those with other people you'll be incredibly surprised at how many people really really need it to hear that how many people appreciate you and love you and and commend you for your bravery and your openness and your authenticity exactly what you guys did for me last week in abundance I might add thank you [Music] you are validating you are reassuring me that I'm on the right path and it's my obligation to turn the mirror on you today to let you know that what it is you are commending me for is exactly what you should be commending yourself for as well as an artist you need to be incredibly honest with yourself I might have said mention this in earlier art talks in the past but one of my favorite moments in film in my film and experiences that I've had watching films growing up is that scene in the matrix where Neos in the oracles kitchen and he looks over the threshold of her door and she's got that wood carved sign written in Latin and when he looks up at it the Oracle looks at him and said and she says it means know thyself everything that I'm talking about today can be summarized in that moment in that understanding know yourself embrace yourself understand that as unremarkable as you think you are to everybody else you're fascinating you're fascinating even if you're 450 pounds and you're only 2 feet tall you're fascinating if you're 11 feet tall and you waste 16 pounds you're remarkable if you think the sound of your voice is sibilant and irritating and nasal you're fascinating if you've got a muted you know mumbly dumbass sounding voice the only time you are offensive confided you are being a kind person you aren't being hurtful to other people but the only time people will react negatively to you at least good people or will react negatively negatively I'll get it just give me a chance here the only time people will react negatively to you is when they can sense that you aren't being authentic when they can sense that you're you've got that mask on your face and you're trying to be something you're not if you think about celebrities if you think about people who have been loved and respected over the years one of the things that makes them so admired and loved is the fact that they completely and truly embrace who they are Jack Black Bette Midler Jim Carrey think about these people that that are so admired and loved for their the depth of their personality take all of their talent Society Jim Carrey's sense of humor aside and you find an incredibly richly authentic human being people think he's nuts and think he's a complete you know a complete kook for the weird behavior he's got lately no he has learned the art he is he is pushing his ability to be real as far as he possibly can he is ignoring the fact that he's got a camera in front of his face and he's allowing himself to express himself to the fullest of his potential so when he decides to act like a complete weirdo and grow that long psycho you know serial killer beard and he starts talking this weird on the TV show or he just stares at people for 10 minutes and makes them feel all cringy and weird he is authentically letting his ego fly out the window and he's just looking at you right in the face one person to another it's like that that woman I can't remember what her name is but that woman who did that exhibit she was an artist to a performance artist who who did nothing but sit down and stare she would sit down in the middle of a room at a table or just sitting in a chair and one at a time people would just sit down in front of her and they would look at each other in to each other for as long as they so chose the whole point of that performance was to experience humanity as purely as possible and is a very moving thing I mean there's a lot of contemporary artists out there that are about as phony as a $3 bill right and they have all kinds of stupid exhibit I've been to contemporary art museums and 99% of the time I'm usually quite offended and irritated by how pretentious it is but every now and then somebody pops out of the Woodworks and shows a true authentic side of themselves and this particular performance I thought was quite powerful and quite meaningful I remember even one of my students from Germany there's quite an interesting experience every now and then he would he was look he was a liver he was somebody who loved to I don't mean that literally he wasn't a liver like you know he wasn't if he wasn't the organ liver but he was person who loved to live and he loved to experience and he had an amazingly warm personality and amazingly intoxicating personality I remember one day he took me on a trip through his city in Berlin he was taking the subway trip I don't know how he could afford that on his data plan but we did an entire two-hour session on Skype as he took the subway through Germany and I got a kind of bit of a scenic view of his the city as we as we did our class and then at the very end of our class it was perfectly timed he let me go because they had this thing in the town square of the city I came every which city in Germany I don't know if it was Berlin I'm not sure but he had this whole thing where they would wear around noon a bunch of strangers would congregate in downtown in some part downtown and they would stand in front of a stranger who they've never met and they would stare at each other they would look at each other for about 10 minutes each and just experience each other through each other's eyes for 10 minutes I thought what a freaking remarkable thing to do I don't know if they ever did something like that in Montreal I'd love to try it I would love to see what that felt like it was a powerful moment it was a powerful experience for these people to stare at another human being because it was raw humanity and that's what you experience when you look at a child you experience raw humanity when I turn to my son and I tell him he's brilliant or any child for that matter and you tell them they're beautiful or they're brilliant or they're really really smart or they're super strong I love the answer that young kids give you it's something that adults are very often incapable of doing and that's they just [Music] unapologetically absolutely agree with you it's not a remarkable thing for them to completely agree with you that they are really really smart or really really talented it's this the most authentic yep that you'll ever get from another human being it's just yeah yeah I am I am very very smart and they say it and it's absolutely adorable and it's endearing and it's right it's true they are they are absolutely fascinating and they are absolutely brilliant and they know it and you know it and there's no there's no humility there's no ego it's just yeah they understand that as human beings as people they are incredibly loved and incredibly authentic and incredibly fascinating and brilliant and powerful creatures they get that and we somehow through school that are usually around a certain age I usually see around kids around 7 to 9 years old they start to get embarrassed they start to get shy they start to get humble you know if you ask a classroom full of five-year-olds and you say how many of you are the smartest kids in this class I guarantee you every single hand will shoot up to the sky but if you ask that same question too ten-year-olds two or three might cut most you know if they see who's the smartest kid in the class they'll usually point to the smartest kid in the class at that age I remember even seeing a TED talk where there was a teacher who a child psychologist or something like that who actually mentioned that very thing as well and I've noticed that myself you are too and I'm not just saying this as a pep talk I'm not just saying this as you know as some shallow encouragement you know you're the best you're special no you really are hey you're pretty freaking amazing through my eyes and through the eyes of everybody around you you really are an incredibly fascinating brilliant remarkable person as is your artwork and as artists we need to bridge that gap between the two between our authentic selves and our expressions and I'll give you a little tip on how to do that don't second-guess yourself don't second-guess yourself for two seconds just just do it just follow whatever it is that your guts tell you to do follow your instincts follow your gut because in my personal opinion your gut is a far better judge of character and a far better guide than your brain your brain it's influenced by so many different factors but your gut your God always knows deep down inside you know what you like or don't you know when you're bullshitting people in saying that I like this I like that but deep down inside you know what you really like you know who you really are right and you're smiling because you know you know I know what I'm talking about people are gonna love you for that do people love Hellboy because he's the toughest thing on earth no people love Hellboy because he's completely obsessed with kittens he's got this weakness for kittens and chocolate bars and Snickers bars right that's what makes him lovable that's what makes him that's what makes you care for him that's what makes him matter to us because despite his muscular you know demonic exterior he he's a complete softy inside so are you now of course if your authentic self wishes harm on other people or yourself then that's not a side of yourself you want to exploit physically artistically there's no rules it's a form of artistic expression and through purging yourself of these feelings you will start to discover things about yourself because it's remarkable how the human brain works it's remarkable how your brain can connect something horrible to something beautiful and something beautiful to something horrible and it's amazing somehow how you can represent things in a very objectively grotesque way but the undercurrent of it if it's actually something quite pure and beautiful and loving and caring a lot of I've you know a lot of people have looked at my own art admire and seem that I very often like to paint dark things like this painting of this Pyromancer for instance you know it's kind of a bit of a darker theme or the fact that I'm absolutely in love with the souls series and Miyazaki's work or y mo de toros work or bik Shin skis work they're very dark seamed artists but when I look at them I don't feel darkness I feel Oh beauty I feel texture and richness and wisdom and depth and texture and life and authenticity there's a pureness of expression that I it knocks the wind out of my lungs it's just captivating trust your gut as an artist listen to yourself and realize that no matter how unremarkable you think you are it's only because you are forced to be yourself twenty-four hours a day seven days a week for decades upon decades upon decades to you you might be somebody something completely uninteresting but the more you realize and the more you embrace who you are in its purest purest form when you can quiet the voices around you of people that are telling you that you should be living your life this way or that way within healthy boundaries of course like I said right but as long as you are living a healthy non-destructive life as long as you are being as authentic to yourself as possible you're going to start to discover how amazing you are and as an artist you want to bridge that connection between that authentic self and how you express yourself on your canvas on your page okay I want you to start to open your mind to this facet of yourself because this is going to be your biggest challenge as an artist moving forward for the rest of your life but until you die this is the biggest challenge we have getting to truly and honestly know yourself and be yourself in its purest form alright so once again I said thank you last week for all of your support and I think it was a little bit ironic that I was sharing a little bit of an anti social media statement last week when well on social media you just so happened to show me a ton of appreciation so thank you for that it's your your warmth has not been overlooked it's been truly appreciated and I'm very happy that you are helping me embrace my more authentic self as is authentic as I can be with you all right so with that said happy painting I love you all and I'll see you next week take care [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Adam Duff LUCIDPIXUL

Views: 57,208

Keywords: artist, secret, afraid, share, vulnerable, insecure, pyromancer, painting, painting tutorial, concept art, illustration, fantasy art, fine art, photoshop, how to draw, how to paint, tutorial, lesson, fundamentals, digital painting, cintiq, wacom, ipad pro, mobilestudio pro, intuos, adam duff, lucidpixul, tyler edlin, ahmed aldoori, fear, ashamed, portfolio, mentorship, school, training, painting music, relaxing, life coaching, art psychology, dark souls art, bloodborne art, character design

Id: 23SOO42aFsk

Length: 38min 4sec (2284 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 21 2019