• Resources for Artists: Set Up a Website + Mailing List for FREE

    April 2, 2022 /

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    CAPTION FOR THE VIDEO ABOVE:

    Hi friends! Welcome back to my website and this week’s vlog. So I’ve been talking about resources for artists and free things that can help you with your art and your business so far this month. And I think I have a little bit more to share with you today along those lines. So let’s dive in!

    A lot of people think that they have to spend a whole bunch of money on their website, on their mailing list on all kinds of things to make their business, like to get it started. But if you want to do that without paying money, here are a few websites that might help you.

    So the first one, if you want to sell things for free, like you don’t have to pay to create this website and you can sell things from it and get paid from it. I use beacons.ai, it’s kind of like you might be familiar with linktree. It’s kind of like that where it’s one website like one link and it’s basically full of other links, but the cool thing about beacons is they also have a shop section on there where you can put things like digital products in there to sell and you don’t have to pay to create an account. So they might take a small percentage as like a service fee. I don’t remember if they do or how much it is, if they do. But just to like, start off and have something and be able to start making money immediately after you sign up. This is a really good option. 

    So, beacons.ai, I’ll put the link to mine below (CLICK HERE TO SEE MY BEACONS PAGE) so you can see what an example of one looks like, but it’s really simple. If you have like multiple social platforms, and if you have, if you don’t really have an actual website yet, but you want to start selling stuff. This is a really good option because you can link to all of your socials, like, say you have a link to your Instagram, your TikTok, your YouTube, your Facebook, whatever you want to link to, I think you can have that section where you sell digital products.

    They also have a place on there where you can have people pay to like, receive a video from you, or like, a one-on-one session kind of thing. They have several options for ways that you can make money on there without having to pay to create a website.

    Another website that is really helpful that is free. You might… depending on what kind of art you make, you might want to look up for something different. But if your art is not too controversial, not too much like nudity and stuff, this is a really good option. So if you want to have a mailing list where you have a list of people that you can send emails to and create like landing pages and that kind of thing. MailChimp is a really good option. It’s you can sign up for free. They have a paid plan which has more features and things you can do. Like, you can actually schedule your emails instead of having to send them, like, click the button to send. But to me, it’s worth it to have it free. And I can just, you know, if I want to send it, I can draft it and then send it whenever I want it to send, but there’s other things on there that you can get for the paid version, but I’ve never needed to use it.

    We use MailChimp for Going Beyond the Lens. I don’t use it for my personal art because I have a whole bunch of nude stuff. Like, that’s most of what I share. So just in case because of their terms of service, I don’t use MailChimp for my personal, like, email list, but for the Going Beyond the Lens email list, we do use MailChimp. It’s really easy to use. It’s free. It’s great if you’re just starting out. 

    Also, none of these things are set in stone. Like, if you’re just starting and you want to get started and start stuff for free right now. These are great things to do and you can always switch platforms later on like say if you start a MailChimp you have a mailing list. You have like a hundred people on your list and you’re like, okay, this is great. I’m ready to start paying for a different list that can do more things. But I don’t want to stay on MailChimp. You can grab like you can transfer those contacts, your whole list from MailChimp to another platform. So it’s not like you have to be stuck with this one platform forever. If you choose it, it can be a temporary option for you until you find something that fits you better or until you can afford the thing that you really want.

    So yeah, those are two websites that can be really helpful to you if you’re just creating your art business and you want to get started selling stuff and having things for people to look at and sending emails, but you don’t have to pay for it. These are great options. Beacons.ai and MailChimp. Yeah, they’re real great. I think I think beacons does have an affiliate program. So if I might do that link here, but I don’t think MailChimp does. And if they do I’m not going to try to do that, but I might try to do the affiliate for beacons, because I think it might give y’all like bonus thing and me a bonus thing, if I refer you to beacons, so it will be beneficial to everyone. So, yeah, I just wanted to share more of those Resources with you because they’re helpful for me, so hopefully they’ll help for for you. 

    Yeah, I just I want all artists to be able to succeed and do well and I don’t think that we should have to pay a lot of money in order to do that because money is an automatic barrier to a lot of people, especially a lot of people that are already marginalized this society. So the ways that we can support them, that are free, I want to do it. Yay. Okay. So yeah. I hope this helps you. Beacons, and MailChimp are great. I have used them personally.

    Yeah, if there’s anything that you are curious about want to know about want me to talk about, let me know. You can either comment below. You can send me an e-mail or you can respond to you by survey. I’ll put the link below. Thank you so much for being here. I love you, and I’ll talk to you soon! Bye!

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  • Resources for Artists: Free Video Editing Software

    March 26, 2022 /

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    CAPTION FOR THE VIDEO ABOVE:

    Hey friends! Welcome back to my website and my vlog, I’m Bunny, thank you so much for being here! I’m going to continue my little mini series on things that I use in my art and my business that are free resources that have really helped me a lot. So I wanted to share that with you in case it will help you too. So last week I talked about canva this week I’m talking about video editing.

    I’m still a very beginner learner. I know that this resource that I’m about to share with you is this huge big powerful resource that can do a lot of things and I’ve barely scratched the surface of what I can do with it, but I’m learning more and there’s a bunch of YouTube videos for learning even more about it, and diving deeper into learning video editing. I’ve learned that video editing takes a lot of time. So I may not want to be a video editor for other people or for very long extensive videos because I don’t want to spend like 10 hours on a 10 minute video because that kind of makes me feel depressed. So I try to not do too much, just because I would rather be doing other things than sitting on a screen at a computer and staring at a screen and editing video for hours and hours, and hours and hours.

    So, but if you’re a video editor, And well you probably, if you are a video editor, you probably already have the software for it. But if you want to learn video editing, and don’t know where to start and don’t want to pay for it. Here’s what you do. So Blackmagic is a big-time video company, they make cameras and they have software for video. They’re one of the more well-known camera makers that has like 4K cameras. They also have a video editing software called DaVinci Resolve and it’s free or, they have a free version and they also have a paid version. The free version, I like I said, I’ve barely scratched the surface of what kind of what I can do with, even just the free version, but it’s very powerful. You can do so much with it. So, of course, the generic, like usual video editing of like, cutting splicing moving adjusting stuff. I think you probably get that with any video editing, but they have a lot of controls that I don’t even know what they do, but I know that you can like sensor stuff on there. You can add captions, you can add like Graphics, you can do fancy transitions. I’m still learning, there’s a lot on there that you can do that I don’t even know about. I think you can change like the color stuff in there. Yeah. I’ve just started learning but it’s been really helpful, I know that it’s a really powerful software. So, it is something that you have to download onto your computer and it does take up… some space. I don’t know how much but if you have a decent computer with a decent amount of space, you can definitely download it. It is free.

    I’ve edited a few videos on there and there’s one that I’m not finished with and I’m still editing. It’s a little bit of a longer video that I’ll probably eventually share in my YouTube channel, which is like a cropped censored much shorter version of an older vlog from you guys like for me that are that’s on my website. So you’ve already seen the video technically. You just haven’t seen the edited much shorter version of it, which I will eventually be done editing. I’ve been spending more of my time in the past working on the residency application. So I kind of set aside my video editing project until I could finish the application for The Residency. But yeah, I just I really wanted to tell you about this software that is available to you for video editing.

    And before I finish this video, I think I’m going to tell you about another software that’s for video editing that’s on your phone. It’s an app, and it’s also free and it also is pretty powerful and has a lot you can do on there and I haven’t even touched all the things you can do. It’s not as powerful as DaVinci Resolve, DaVinci Resolve has way more things we can do. But this app for your phone for video editing is still, there’s still a lot you can do with it. You can do voice overs, you can switch out audio, you can crop and move and edit the video of course. I’ve seen that there’s other things you can do on there that I haven’t even touched, like, green screen and, like, adding different things to your video. I just haven’t played with that yet.

    But so this app for your phone, it’s called CapCut. It’s a free app and it makes it really easy to just like upload straight to Youtube. I think they primarily are using that app for TikTok because I have you can connect your TikTok account and like, grab the sounds from TikTok to put into the video and you can upload the video once it’s done straight to TikTok. I just don’t have a TikTok account. But if you do, that would probably be helpful. Yeah. CapCut is the name of the app. It’s really easy to use. Download on your phone for free and you can Video Edit with it. Yay we love free resources. Okay. Yeah. I think that’s all the important stuff want to share with you today. But thank you for being here. I hope that my little mini series of free resources for artists has been helpful! I’ll see you soon, next week! Love you!

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  • Resources for Artists: Creating Your Own Graphics + Promo Materials

    March 19, 2022 /

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    CAPTION FOR THE VIDEO ABOVE:

    Hey friends! Welcome back to my website and my blog and thanks for being here with me. I’m so glad that you’re here! Okay, so last week, I talked about the getting your shit together website and ways that I’m helping myself and hopefully helping you get more opportunities as an artist. So, this week, I wanted to talk about a couple of other like, free resources that I use to help me as an artist.

    Many of you probably already know about this, but I’m going to talk about it anyway, just in case you don’t, because it’s like extremely helpful for me and my life as a like an artist and a self-employed internet person. So I mean everybody needs graphics and like visual design things right? For websites, for social media posts, for banners, for all kinds of stuff. There is a website where you can do all that for free and it’s really easy to use and they have all kinds of everything you’ll need basically. They have templates, they have stock photos, they have graphics, they have the ability to make it into a video, like, gifs, kinds of stuff.

    So this website is canva… canva.com. This is not affiliated or anything, I just really love it. I use this website all the time. So if you need to make any kind of like visual content, it’s really easy to use canva to do that. You can make a free account. They have paid accounts too but there’s so much you can do on there even with just a free account. You don’t even need the paid account, unless you want the extra extra perks from the paid account. So I use canva for so much. Most of the banners on my website that you see a lot like the gifs and stuff that I or not gifs. The, the memes that I’ve made in the past, the thumbnails for my YouTube videos, the banners that I make for my events, a whole bunch of stuff has been made with canva. It’s so easy to use. You can add text and graphics, you can add images, you can use their images, you can use your images. It’s, I just, I love it. It’s so useful. And I love that it’s free and I love that it’s online. They also have an app. It just makes everything really easy. And when you download it, you can choose from a different a bunch of different kinds of files to download whatever your design is. 

    They have a ton of templates. So if you’re like, I’m gonna make a worksheet, then there’s a bunch of worksheet templates. I made my resume on there, made it look really fancy. They have templates for resumes. They have templates for like Facebook posts, Instagram posts, YouTube thumbnail. Banners for your website, they have templates for basically everything, and you can either use their templates or you can create it from scratch on your own. You can be like, I want this very specific size, I want a specific color, I want this specific font. It’s so useful and helpful, and I love it a lot.

    Yeah, so that’s a free thing that I use to help me with my business, my art, my lots of things. If you haven’t heard of canva, now you have. I hope you enjoy. Go search and look for it and make an account and do stuff and make, you know, have fun. Make some graphics. Yeah, it’s been really helpful for me. I hope it’s helpful for you.

    Yeah, if there’s anything else that you are curious about in terms of what I use for my business, for my art, put a comment below or send me an email. I’d love to hear from you. I’ll also put the survey below if you want to just answer my survey with a bunch of questions that I would love to hear about from you. Yeah. Thanks for being here. I’ll talk to you next week about more things that I use in my art and business that are free. Yay. 

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  • Resources for Artists: How to Write An Artist Statement

    March 5, 2022 /

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    CAPTION FOR THE VIDEO ABOVE:

    Hey, friends, I’m here again to talk to you about stuff that I think will maybe help you. So hopefully it does. I’m going to Dive Right In. Because so January/February is talking about goals and ways that I’m like helping myself and ways that I’m finding opportunities as an artist. And I thought that for March, I would talk a little bit about the tools that I use that help me do all the artists things.

    So for this video, I want to talk about kind of an extension from think it was last week or the week before where I was talking about the call for entry website and submitting application for residency. So part of submitting an application for a residency is writing an artist statement, and I don’t know about you, but that was really hard for me to do. I consider myself much more of a visual artist than a writer. So writing an artist statement was a struggle. I feel like I’m not as strong of a writer as I am an artist. And I think that with the way that we are required to submit applications for people to look at our art to consider us for opportunities, we have to know a lot about writing in order to submit those applications. So, I feel like that automatically kind of, like, cuts out a whole lot of people that may or may not actually be wonderful artists, they just struggle with writing.

    So, in order to hopefully, help more people have more opportunities as an artist. I want to talk about the resources that I use to help me write my artist statement, because hopefully it will help you too. I feel like a lot of us want our artwork to speak for itself and most of the time, it does. But sometimes in order for the right people to see it, we have to write the right things too. And not just have the right images or paintings or visual or whatever art is. So here we go.

    This is how I wrote my artist statement. Well, this is the resource I used to write it. Your artist statement is going to be very different than mine. And the way that you write it is going to be unique to you and your art, but the resource that I have found and used to write a lot of these things is the getting your shit together website. They have a book too, I think, when I was in college, they had us buy the book and use the book as part of one of my art classes. And then I learned later on that they also have a website with a whole bunch of resources for artists. So this getting your shit together website is very different from the call to entry website. The call to entry is for artists to submit their applications for opportunities and like to find opportunities. The getting your shit together website is like all of the kind of back-end stuff that artists need in order to be able to request those opportunities. So, like how to write an artist statement, how to write an artist resume, a whole bunch of stuff like that. Like how to find…

    I just got really distracted by a really cute bird out of my window! Okay, sorry.

    So I use the getting your shit together website as a resource for how to write the artist statement, because I was like, I don’t know. I don’t know what to write. I don’t know how to write it. I don’t know what is expected to be in it. I don’t want to write it incorrectly and then they just like throw out my application for this residency. So this website has all the information that you would need in order to write something like an artist statement. Like, for instance, I learned that artist statements are written in first person. So you say like, I me my… that kind of thing in the artist statement. And then of course it has like in the first section, it should say something like this and the second section you should include these things, and the final part you should do this. So it kind of gives you an outline of the types of things you would need in an artist statement, which will help you write your own based on what your artwork is.

    Yeah, artist statements are really hard. So yeah, I don’t make this video way too long and I have told you most of the really important information and in order to not repeat myself a lot of times because I think I’d do that… I’m just going to share the link to the getting your shit together website below, and it has a whole bunch of resources for artists in that way. Like, writing artist statements, writing your resume all that kind of thing. So, yeah. I hope it helps you, it definitely helped me. Yeah, I hope you have a wonderful day. I’ll talk to you soon. I love you! Bye! 

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  • Resources for Artists: How to Find Opportunities as an Artist

    February 26, 2022 /

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    CAPTION FOR THE VIDEO ABOVE:

    Hey friends. Thanks for coming here again to my website. So happy you’re here! Excuse me. Hi. So, in my last Vlog, I talked a little bit about this residency that I’m applying for, by the time this video comes out. I will have already applied, but as I’m recording this I haven’t submitted it yet. I wanted to follow up about it because I think that, or, I’m pretty sure that a lot of people would like to put themselves out there in that way, for opportunities as an artist, but they don’t know where to freakin start at all. And don’t even know how to find these opportunities. So I wanted to share with you where I find them and how you can do it too.

    So there’s this amazing website called CaFE or call for entry. I believe it’s call for entry dot org. And what this website does, is it connects artists with a bunch of opportunities, things like residencies, things like workshops, public art, exhibits, grants, awards. All kinds of opportunities that are geared toward artists. So if you’re an artist and you are like, I really want to put my stuff in the gallery show, but I don’t know where to start you go to this call for entry website and sign up as an artist and then it’ll… you can search through all of the calls and you can search for certain kinds of calls, and if you only want to look for exhibits or if you only want to look for residencies, or if you want to look for anything at all that is potentially available to you. They have all kinds of stuff on there and there’s, it’s constantly being updated. That’s where I found both of the residencies that I’ve applied for. I applied for residency last year that I did not receive, which I was sad that I didn’t get it, but I also can’t expect myself to get everything that I want always. Especially if it was like my first time applying for a residency ever. But that experience applying for residency last year really helped me with applying for one this year because I already had my artist resume created. I already had a lot of like generic kind of responses written out for the kind of questions they would ask for residency. So this one they did have more questions and different questions, but it didn’t take me as long to complete this application than it did for the one that I did last year because I already had a lot of stuff already figured out and put together and I already had kind of figured out a system of how to like figure out what I’m going to even say. So that helped me a lot, just doing it last year, even if I didn’t get the residency, that really helped me to be able to do it this year a lot quicker and easier, and with less stress and less time.

    So back to call for entry. If you sign up as an artist, you can search. And you can also sign up for their email list, which is really helpful because they’ll send out like new opportunities to your email that they think might work for you. And they also, I think it’s the… it’s either the most recent things or the things that are about to be due, like expire in terms of like you have until this date to apply but they’ll send out a whole list of like, here’s a whole bunch of potential things that you could apply for that are due in the next two weeks, or month, or so. Or here’s a whole bunch of stuff that is brand new that you might want to apply for. So you can get emails sent to you of all these potential opportunities and then you can just scroll through your email be like, oh, this one sounds cool and click through and do your thing.

    Another cool thing about the call for entry website is the applications to all of these things like the residencies gallery shows, exhibitions, like workshops all the things, you apply through the website. So not only does it help you find the opportunities, but it also helps you like put yourself in the running for those opportunities. When you apply and say you submit images or something for your portfolio, it’ll have those images in this website already so you can just reuse them for different applications. If you want to use the same photos. So it’s helpful because everything is all in one place. Yeah. It’s been really helpful for me. I think it would be harder to find the opportunities if I was just searching randomly and I probably wouldn’t be able to see as many all in one place if I was just on the internet somewhere else.

    So this website is call for entry dot org, that’s spelled C-A-L-L-F-O-R-E-N-T-R-Y-(dot)-O-R-G. This is not a sponsored post or anything. I don’t think they do affiliates, but I just the site has helped me as an artist do I just wanted to share it with you. Yeah, I hope I get the residency we’ll see! And if not, I’ll take another failure because each failure gets me closer to a success and I learn with each one.

    So, yeah. Hopefully this helps you as an artist. If you’re wanting to get yourself out there. If you have any questions comment below or send me an e-mail, or you can like submit stuff through my survey. I’ll link that below and yeah. I hope you have a wonderful day! I’ll talk to you soon! Bye!

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  • 5 Ways to Support Your Creativity

    December 18, 2021 /

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    CAPTION FOR THE VIDEO ABOVE:

    Hi friends! I’m here to talk some more about creativity because I know that that’s something that a lot of you are really interested in and I obviously am also very interested, since that’s like, I’ve turned that into my life. So yeah, I wanted to share with you. I created this like, short list of five ways to support your creativity. I’m just going to dive right in.

    So, I feel like a lot of us think that creativity just like comes to us and we’re just like hit or struck by the like lightning bolt of creativity and it’s something that we don’t really have to like work toward. It’s just something that like happens to us, but from my experience, if I wait for that then it kind of never comes. And you kind of have to like hold space for and create the, like, conditions for creativity to be able to thrive. So this five ways to support your creativity list is something I just came up with this morning because I was thinking about it and I was like, yeah, let me share this with you.

    So the first way that you can support your creativity is by creating a routine, or a ritual, or a habit around it. So whether that’s every morning when you wake up, writing 5 words in your Journal, whether that’s every afternoon after you have lunch you doodle for 5 minutes, whether that’s once a week, you have a day set aside to walk around the park and take pictures. Whatever that works best for you is something that is a repeatable like consistent time that you set aside to do something creative, whether it’s five minutes, an hour, a day. And whether that’s every day, once a week, once a month, just like something that’s consistent that you can be like, oh that’s my day to be creative, and that really helps a lot. Because I feel like if I don’t make time for being creative then it kind of like goes to the wayside and other things become more important than it. So that’s a way that I’m able to make space for and ensure that I have like creative time is what I actually put it on my calendar and turn it into something that’s a regular thing. That’s helped a lot.

    And also I want to say I’m not perfect at any of these. I know that these things work for me, but that doesn’t mean that I always like stick to them because I’m human and things happen and like, same for you. If you miss a week or a day or whatever, like it’s not the end of the world. You can always pick it back up. Don’t beat yourself up because beating yourself up really doesn’t help anything, it just makes you feel worse. So that’s the first one is creating a ritual or habit or routine around your creativity.

    Tip number two is create a space for your creativity. So that kind of goes along with the creating a routine around your creativity. So the routine is kind of like a time a time space, right. So this space that I’m talking about is like a physical space. So whether that’s like I’m going to have a corner of my room, be just for my like notepad and pencil and pens and like all the things that I want like to draw with. I have this like little desk and that’s, that’s my creative desk or it might be you have a whole room. If you have the privilege of having that kind of space, like having like a studio space, and be like, this is my photography studio space. And that’s the only thing that it’s there for, and that is like the dedicated space for my creative photography stuff. If that’s possible, if that’s available to you.

     

    If you don’t have the kind of like physical space like a desk or room, you could also like create temporary physical spaces for your art. So like maybe if you’re a writer, but you don’t have a desk, like maybe you share a desk with another person or you just like have to randomly find a spot in your house to do writing whenever you have time. Maybe to set that space and like turn it into that dedicated space like physical space, you could add some kind of ritual to it, like maybe like get a cup of tea and light a candle and like when you do that your brain is like, “oh I know what we’re about to do. We’re going to be creative because this is what you do every time you’re creative you like get a cup of tea and light a candle”. Like that’s the physical space that’s kind of created through that like repetitive like ritual of like creating like this isn’t my only, you know, I have to share this desk with someone, but when I do these things together, that means that like the space is for creativity.

    Yeah, that’s the second tip or way you can support your creativity and that’s the having a dedicated space for it. Whether that’s like physical or whether that’s something that you set up temporarily.

    The third way to support your creativity is to set a timer and do something, anything. So if I’m like, I don’t know what I want to do. Maybe I’ll just set like a five or ten minute or fifteen, however long timer you want on your phone and just like Doodle Draw Journal, take random photos, experiment like whatever your creative thing you want to work on is, do like five minutes of that. Even if you’re like, I have no idea what I’m doing. Just be like, it’s okay I don’t have any idea. I’m just going to experiment and play and I’m just gonna do it for five minutes. I’m just going to do it for 10 minutes. Whatever that time is that you’re able to alot. So within that ritual and routine of the first like time ritual, the first tip or way that you can support your creativity, that time ritual can be once a week. I’m going to at least five minutes. Every day, I’m gonna do three minutes of doodling, whatever.

    And then you have also that dedicated physical space, that’s either permanent or temporary where you set a timer and do the thing. Just be like, I’m just gonna do it, whether you like it or not like is maybe not as important because you doing the thing is going to help your brain and your body remember like, this is a thing that I like to do and I do it repetitively and… no one is perfect 100% of the time. Like that just doesn’t exist. Sometimes we just need to give ourselves the space to like make a bunch of shitty art and that makes the space for us to have like the art that we super love. The time that you know, everything comes together perfectly. So as long as you’re just doing it, whatever it is and it doesn’t have to be perfect. Let the perfection go out the window, because that’s not important. It’s the act of doing it. When you do it, it’s more likely that you’re going to get something that you like because you’re doing instead of not doing it.

    The fourth way you can support your creativity is through having, whatever your creative supplies are… so like if your’re a writer, your pens or pencils. If you’re like a sculptor, then your sculpting supplies. If you’re an animator or something, then your computer or your like markers or, as a photographer like me your camera, your maybe your tripod, whatever, whatever the tools are that you use for your creativity, put those in a space that you see often, and that it’s easy to reach and like “Oh my camera’s right there, I’m just going to grab it and take a few photos because I like I’m inspired!” If the tools that you use for your creativity are like hidden away, then it’s going to be harder for you to like see them and be like, “oh I have an idea” or it’s also going to be like a barrier to getting you to doing the thing. It’s like, oh, everything’s packed away. I don’t really feel like unpacking all that stuff right now. I’m just not going to do it. 

    Like make it really easy on yourself. Have it somewhere that’s like in plain view, easy to reach, easy to get to. So that as soon as you feel the like creative urge then you can just be like, I got it. Let’s go. Let’s do it! So that’s the fourth way that you can support your creativity, is having your supplies in an easy to see and easy to reach place. Having it just being easy on yourself.

    The fifth and final way to support your creativity is to have an accountability buddy, like have a friend that you say I’m gonna do art every Friday at 4:00 for five minutes or however long. But at least five minutes, every Friday 4:00. Tell your friend, be like is a thing that I really want to do and actually like think it’s going to be good for me and I’m telling you because I don’t want to just hold myself accountable. I’m hoping that you might also hold me accountable to doing this thing every Friday. And you don’t have to do with me. I just maybe… can you check in on me and see if I was able to do it every Friday, like maybe in the evenings like 5:00 or 6:00, see if I was able to do the creative thing at 4. Just having a friend that you can talk to about it and like to remind you or support you or encourage you through doing this thing. It’s really helpful.

    And even if it’s not just like a single person. Maybe you’re going to post, maybe go post on social media be like “hey, this is my day and time to do this thing. Just telling everybody, I’d love to hear what your like art routine is.” Just if you are able to put it out into the world in a way that’s not just like it’s just something you’re doing for yourself, it’s some you’re doing that other people know about you’re more likely to do it and like hold yourself accountable whether other people that are also holding you accountable to doing it.

    You also kind of in that same accountability vein, you could do like a co-working or body doubling session with someone or a group of people. Coworking and body doubling to me, I kindof use them interchangeably, but it’s basically like having a set day of time where you and one or more people get together, virtually, or in person, to do your own work individually, but like in the same space either in person or virtually.

    So like for instance, maybe on Zoom every Friday at 4:00 is the time that I meet up with like two of my friends and we all like, we’re all in the same place, we might like chat in the chat box. But what we’re really doing is, like, focusing on doing whatever projects are working on. We’re going through photos, we’re writing up letters or, you know, but if it’s… it’s not necessarily like these are the things that I’m doing here. Will you make sure I do them? And also this is all the stuff that I’m doing, like, while I’m doing it. It’s more of like, you can do that. You don’t even have to really talk about what you’re doing. You can just be like, hey I’m going to do this thing. Thanks for being here with me. Let’s do it. Okay, bye.

     

    And then you’re like, sitting all on the computer and doing your own individual work. You’re just together in a space. That’s another way for like accountability. Because like whether or not you actually discuss what it is you’re doing, which you can, or you don’t have to, just having another person working alongside you on their own stuff is like a lot of encouragement and accountability for you to also do whatever your stuff is. So yay, that’s the five ways to support your creativity! And I’m going to go through those again really quickly just because I feel like I rambled.

    So here’s the list, five ways to support your creativity: create a ritual routine or habit around it. Have a dedicated space for your creative project or idea or thing. Set a timer and do something, anything, even if it’s like five minutes. Get accountability buddy or co-worker or body double. And store your supplies and a place that’s easy to reach and see so that you can use them in a pinch really quickly. 

    Yay! Creative things! If you liked this, please let me know. I might do more videos like this if you’re interested, I’ll put the link to my survey below and you can let me know what kinds of things you want to hear from me if you haven’t yet. And if there’s something that you want to like you want me to talk about that I haven’t yet. I’d be happy to hear your feedback. 

    Survey link is below and yeah, I want to make the things that you’re excited about receiving from me. So yeah, hope you have a wonderful day. I hope these tips to support your creativity are helpful to you, and I hope that you have an awesome day, weekend, whatever time it is where you are, okay. Have fun being creative! Support your art dreams! I love you so much! Thank you for being here!

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  • 5 Steps to Produce Ideas / 5 Steps for Being Creative

    December 11, 2021 /

     

    (Click here to watch video in another window)

    CAPTION FOR THE VIDEO ABOVE:

    Hello, good morning, or afternoon, or evening… whatever time it is where you are! I’m glad you’re here. I think this month I’m going to talk about creativity. I’ve already talked about creativity a bunch, but I feel like there’s a lot of things to say about it. So I’m gonna keep talking about it because so far in the survey that y’all have answered. Some of you have answered.

    Most people have said that they’re interested in…

    How to be more creative? How do I get inspiration? How do I love myself more? How do I…. Ah what were the other things that yall have said? How do I be more confident in myself? How do I embody my true self? How do I… How do I make friends? How do I… be happy?

    So I feel like a lot of the answers to a lot of these questions are kind of similar or along the same vein, or like have threads that go through a lot of them. And I think most of us struggle with the same things. Like I want to be creative. I want to be inspired. I want to be myself. I want to make friends. I want to be happy. And I imagine most of you also do. 

    So I recently shared to my my email newsletter that y’all may or may not be on. Hopefully you are. If you’re not I’ll put a link below if you want to sign up for it is free and I share stuff, occasionally. I try to do something at least once a month, but I recently shared on there a really quick blurb about this article that I found a couple months ago, that was kind of like a mini overview of a book that was written by James Webb Young in 1939, and it’s his like technique for producing ideas, which to me is kind of the same as like, how to be creative. It’s a five step technique, five. And I wanted to share some of that with you today because I think it’s really helpful, and I think a lot of us don’t really think about it in this way. So, yeah, I want to share that with you.

    CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR MY EMAIL NEWSLETTER

    So, if you already saw my email with this little thing in it, you might be like, oh okay, I know what you’re talking about but if you haven’t, I wanted to make a video about it.

    So the five steps to produce ideas / 5 steps for being creative.

    Step number one is gather your materials and resources, like gather your inspiration, gather stuff. So like if you’re like working on a project that has to do with trees, of course, you know, I’m thinking about trees all the time, then maybe you’ll gather books about trees. Maybe you’ll listen to a podcast about trees. Maybe you’ll take a walk in the forest to be among the trees. Maybe you’ll sketch trees, Maybe you’ll find some books about trees. Maybe you’ll see if there’s like some movies or documentaries about trees just like, gather all the information about whatever it is that you’re wanting to do or work on or like be inspired by. So just  gather all those materials that step one is gather.

    Step two is digest the materials. So that means read the book, walk in the woods, listen to that podcast, sketch those trees. You know, I’m just going to keep with this tree theme. That’s step two is like actually digest the material like absorb it and play with it and do some stuff with it. And I think number three is the most important part, most important step.

    So the third step is to have unconscious processing, which in other words, is set it down and forget about it and do something else. And I think this is, Both amazing and also really difficult to do sometimes because if we’re like really excited about something we really want to like I want to figure this out and do it. Like I don’t know how to draw this branch perfectly, so I’m just going to try it 5,000 times. Sometimes, the best thing to do instead of like hyper focusing and like forcing and like doing doing doing making it go, go go, sometimes really, the best thing to do is just be like, okay. I’ve like done a bunch of this. I feel like I’m getting frustrated, I feel like I’m getting kinda stuck, so I’m going to set it down. 

    And do something else for a little bit, and that little bit can be a few minutes, a few hours, a few days, a few months. Only you know what a little bit is for you and what that works best for you. So, unconscious processing, let your like rational conscious mind, let go of it for a little bit and let your like, subconscious like instinctual primal mind mull it over in the background while you’re doing other things. So like not consciously thinking about it. This is unconscious, this is most important but also the hardest! Do all those things and then just let it go, and don’t do it. Just do nothing about it or just like set it aside for an amount of time. That’s step 3.

    Step 4 is actually the aha moment, because while you’re in that do nothing step three, step four will naturally come. The, aha moment is when, like things like somehow like click together while you’re not thinking about it and you’re like, *gasp* I know exactly what to do now, or like, I just had the best idea!!! Your mind, and your brain, your body, like, everything’s always doing stuff behind the scenes even when you’re not really thinking about it. So sometimes, once you give it the space to like, not be stressed about it and just, like, doing something else. That’s when that aha moment comes and you’re like, Ohhhh I have this realization. Oh, now I know what to do. Oh, that tree, it just told me it’s story, The aha moment will come if you’re able to release that like force and do. So that’s step, four. Is that aha moment.

    And then step five is when your idea meets reality. So once you have that aha moment, step five is like, okay, now that I know what to do, I’m going to do it, Now that the tree has spoken to me, I’m going to write it’s story. Now that the image of this perfect branch just appeared in my mind, I could now sketch it. When this idea just appeared out of nowhere after mulling over for a while, now I’m going to do something about it. That step five is doing something about it, like, whatever that aha moment was, allows you to get to the space where you could do the thing. 

    Yeah, I think in this society was like capitalistic white supremacist colonialist imperialist, like, all of the shitty systems of oppression that like most humans have on them. It kind of makes us think, in this society kind of makes us think that like, we have to force things in order for them to happen. We have to constantly be going doing in order to be like, worthy of making stuff or anything like, this society makes us feel like we’re not good enough and we have to be constantly producing in order to be worth anything and that is not true. 

    It in a material way, sometimes feels like it might be true because we live in capitalism, like it…. How do I say this? We live in these systems of oppression, and they make us think that we’re not good enough, and that we have to constantly be forcing and doing and going. But in reality, when we allow ourselves to slow down, and to do what really feels best in our hearts and our bodies and our minds, our souls, but really feels best to us, and what really actually works for us, which includes rest and doing nothing that unconscious processing. Then that’s when we can be our most creative.

    When we’re not stressed, when we’re not freaking out, then we can be more of our true selves, which, in my opinion, out true selves are like infinitely creative. That’s like, a part of being a human, is the ability to be creative. So next time you’re feeling stuck and like you really want to do something creative, maybe you just doodle. Just like get a piece of paper and a pen and just do a lot of this and don’t think about it and just be like, what is, what feels good? Let me just scribble a whole bunch and just get some energy out. Like, it doesn’t have to be anything and lets your brain kind of turn off and just be like this feels fun to make shapes.

    And see what comes from that. And if it’s nothing, that’s totally cool. You just like rested your brain for a little bit, awesome. And if you have some epiphany that that’s also cool. And you can do something about it if you want, but it’s not necessary for us to be constantly doing stuff all the time. And sometimes the rest and the doing nothing is just as important. So, if you want to be creative, there’s your five steps for how to be creative and produce ideas from James Webb Young from 1939.

    CLICK HERE FOR THE ARTICLE ABOUT THIS 5 STEP TECHNIQUE FOR PRODUCING IDEAS

    Okay. Yeah, I think that’s all I have to share today. Thank you for being here. I’m going to add the link to the survey below if you want to tell me what kinds of things you want to hear from me. Yeah, I love you so much. Thank you for being here. It means the world and I couldn’t do any of this without you. So thank you so much. I love you. I hope you get some down time and doing nothing time sometime soon or today or tomorrow also.

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