Summary:

The last in a three part series. Check out Part 1 and Part 2.

One of the most unanswered questions is: what do I want to create?  What do I really want to create?

Not, I need to do this or I need to do that...  Not all the expectations we have of ourselves...

As creators, we often loose sight of the reason we actually got into the business. We go down the rabbit hole of trying to fit in, trying to make a living, trying to make a difference...  and then we get lost.  We begin to live someone else's life.

The way we recapture our lives is to answer that one simple question: What do I want to create?

That one question is the key to this prison we've built out of expectations and our beliefs... It is the antiodote to the poison of trying to fit in...

So, what do you want to create?

About Ryan Kingslien:

Over the last six years, Ryan Kingslien has launched over 70+ online classes and impacted thousands of students through his different academies. His courses have generat...

Summary:

As an artist, feeling stuck or feeling like we can't create anything we're happy with can be a debilitating feeling. 

To help us overcome this feeling we can look at the following three things to:

Rules for ART! What are our rules for being an artist?  Have we defined "being an artist" as something that we can never achieve?  Have your made our life so difficult during this journey that we ultimately steal the joy from our lives and open the door to quitting?

Rules for STRUGGLE! Do we equate struggle with failure or with success?  Our relationship with struggle is one of the major indicator of our future success.  In order to push through all the problems and all the natural barriers of mastering any craft we must become comfortable with struggle and we absolutely must learn to love the process of struggle

Are you focused on RESOURCES or your lack of resources?  What, in your life, can you use an ally in your quest to master your craft?  What do you already possess eith...

Hi!  Ryan Kingslien here.  I am the founder of UArtsy.  And one of the jobs I love doing the most is unlocking the artist inside of you, so you can reach your full potential.  And what I want to look at today is this idea of confidence in our art.

What does it mean for us to be confident?  And I’m not going to say that I’ve got all the answers and I know exactly how things play out.  I’m just the same as you!  As I’m working in this, I have my doubts. I look at some work that I’ve done in the past and sometimes my work didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to. So I get unsure about where I’m heading in the future. 

A hundred years ago for example, creating art was literally something you decided to do for your life.  It was something that you built into your life because that was the way you made money.  And today, we’re not focused on survival in the same way we were back then.  We’re focused more on thriving, on building up a beautiful life. 

And that’s different!  It requires a w...

In whatever situations in life, external factors can have an effect on us. It doesn’t really matter what line of work you are in, whether you’re an artist or a surgeon. I am certain that all of us experience this in our day to day. 

Finding the right people to surround you is an easier task than you might imagine. Most of us just leave it at “I don’t know these kinds of people”. We never bother to make the effort to find and connect with them. 

Don’t “prophesize” the kind of people you meet and get to know. This is what you’ll expect and sometimes unconsciously, this is what you’ll work for. As an artist, you don’t actually think “I’m not going to come up with a great design”, do you? Same thing goes here. 

You also need to make a mental note on the kind of people that aren’t good company. What I mean is, these are the people that aren’t uplifting – they tend to pull you down instead of supporting you with positivity. And sometimes, the negativity isn’t that obvious. There are peopl...

It's a new year and that means... a brand new start. A blank canvas, if you will. How are you going to become a better artist, a better partner this year? Well, this is the time for Resolutions, right? Did you make any New Year resolutions?

In this post I want to talk about why resolutions just don't work and what you really need to do.

In my online art school, I see students all the time in my courses who feel that they just need to learn one thing... anatomy, for example. They think, once I learn anatomy then my problems will be solved! It takes about four weeks, though, for the honeymoon phase to wear off and they realize they didn't solve any problems at all. In fact, they added a whole bunch of new problems!

Where is that levator scapuli, again?

After the five week mark they discover that they're now in a pissing contest between willpower and inertia? Who wins? Inertia, right? After all, Inertia has all the time in the world to wait... :)

Willpower, is finite. ...

So, you may have missed the Four Keys To Growing As An Artist but...

... once I finished the periscope I saw these two great twitter posts by the Shiflett brothers and it was an amazing opportunity to work on KEY NUMBER TWO: Model A Mentor.

Modeling someone requires a specific kind of analysis. You need to look for patterns and there is one VERY LARGE pattern staring us in the face.

The first Pattern is that they work Big to Small. The Upper right of the first image shows that they are thinking about: Shoulder, Arm, Lower Arm, Cube of the Head, Triangle of the Torso.

The second Pattern is that they create forms with a specific SHAPE to them: Cube of the Head, for example.

So, they work big to small and they start with specific shapes. That's cool. Can you see anything else?

Notice how the DELTOID evolves. Notice how they actually have the three distinct parts of the deltoid. The clavicular, the acromium process and the scapula at a very early stage and then go in to create the i...

We have all reached points in making art where it feels like nothing is working. We get frustrated with the art we are trying to create and we feel defeated. I call this The Valley of the Suck.

The Valley of the Suck is the familiar and miserable moment when everything caves in and you feel like you can’t get anything right.

Hope is lost.

Artists everywhere experience this. I used to think it was part of the process and that you just had to trudge through this step by step. I thought it was a right of passage and part of the artist’s journey and in my own experience, after some wretched period of time, eventually something would snap I would gradually make my way out of it and start making progress again.

It doesn’t have to be that way. I now understand that the Valley of the Suck is caused by very real problems that we face as artists.

On one side is ability. You are facing a very real problem. You don’t understand how to work with these new paints or you don’t understand the a...

The internet and bookstores are filled with information on the psychology of sports. We know that in order for athletes to perform at their best, they have to understand their own psychology. Contrast that to the psychology of art. If you Google psychology of art you get depression groups and art therapy. Art as therapy and talking about art when we are in a vulnerable and damaged state is valuable. But there is a significant lack when it comes to considering and honing the performance psychology of artists.

How do we grow and thrive as artists? In art, skill is 20% - the rest is psychology.

We don’t need to perfect our skills and become the best draftsmen. That’s not necessarily what makes great art and a lack of skill is not what holds us back. We need to work on our psychology. The artist’s path is fraught with uncertainty. That is the nature of creation. Understanding your own process and psychology as an artist will open the door to more freedom.

Artists sometimes feel selfis...

Artistic Anatomy is so much more than just the muscles and bones of the human body. For thousands of years artists have created strategies and concepts to help them recreate the human figure to be more life-like, more expressive, or just fit their world-view better.

In this chapter of Unleash Artistic Anatomy, I look at just one way to approach a drawing: via simple forms. These are forms that anyone today can use to make sense of reference or the live model and instantly improve their own artwork.

We start with two spheres that approximate the volume of the model, my son. These two spheres establish the major light and shadow shapes and help me create a likeness right off the bat.

Then I move into more anatomical type information by creating the orbit of the eye and the simple planes of the nose and lips.

At 10:15 I work some subtle light into the eyes to create the eyeball itself which I finish off with some line work at 15:28.

The key for this drawing was to minimize the amou...

When I teach Anatomy, I have learned that it’s essential to go beyond muscle groups and bones. Making art is bigger than technique. Sure, artists need to develop their skills. Learning anatomy informs your work and makes it realistic. But if you focus on only skill and drive your art with the critical eye of a perfectionist or draftsman, it will not thrive as art on its own. It will always be limited to our vision and captive to our anxiety.

What is the anatomy of our vision? What is the anatomy of our psyche?

How can we get our work to the point where it lives and resonates and begins to take on its own life?

If you let it, your work will start to develop its own life and vitality. It will exist outside of us.

So often, we think about art and we want to control what is happening on the canvas or screen or sculpture. We believe that we must have more skill and ability and we compare ourselves to others. We judge our work. We erase and delete and poke at it.

We want to shap...