Chose talent

The other day I had the opportunity of hearing a friend discuss my book with someone. She started talking about the painting on the cover of my book which I also did. Repeatedly my friend kept saying, “Yes, she is very talented.”

About the third time I heard my friend say “talent,” and mind you that she didn’t know I was overhearing this, I had to laugh to myself. How often do I say that everything we do in life is a choice? Here I was listening to a conversation I’ve had in my own art show booth with that word sparkling in the air all around. Talent.

Go on, say it. Talent.

Even the word feels good on your tongue. We often heard it said that artists and writers are born. How many arguments have you come across where the discussion of being born with talent is true or not? Do you believe it? Do you feel talented in your own art?

Here’s what I came to realize in that moment. Talent is not in question. We all know that if you work hard enough at something, you can learn how to do it. To someone who doesn’t know how to do it, it will appear to be talent. What it is is work at craftsmanship. I have chosen to put in the time in a certain area. To my friend, it looks like talent.

Even more, one step beyond that, why shouldn’t I chose to be talented? I have and I do put in time towards mastering my craft. I know I have a lot to learn, but to someone who has never stepped on this path what I do now already seems good. I look up to other artists and hope that I can someday reach their level. They have chosen talent too and worked for it.

Whatever art form you have decided to take on yourself, you have chosen talent. No matter where you are along that path, beginner, intermediate, advanced, or master, you are already talented. Hurrah!

Now, keep your feet moving.

Being Whole

Sometimes we hold onto regrets from our past longer than we should. We think that “we should’ve done this or that” and our lives now would be different.

I often regret that I didn’t spend more time drawing, doodling, and creating as a child. I once loved to paint. I remember sitting at the table with my mother as we painted with watercolors all over scrap paper. I loved her paintings, usually trees. I remember drawing ducks, well, actually the profile of a swimming duck — it was the only thing I felt I was good at drawing. That and a little smiling face based on Ziggy with rock star hair.

Yep, that was my image. I drew him on everything. Not that good, but he made me happy. That, and my duck. Other than that, I was a writer. I didn’t need to draw.

Yet I still loved doing things with my hands. I loved picture books. I loved comics. I loved photographs. I should’ve seen the signs all around me that I had a calling in art. I didn’t see those signs until I had some time to reflect on them. That’s when the regret seeped in.

I recently had an experience where I realized that I needed to stop piling more guilt onto these regrets. It wasn’t helping. In fact, it was actually hurting because I was bemoaning the fact that I could be so much further along if I hadn’t “wasted” all that time. Forget the fact that I was actually spending that time learning to tell a story and daydreaming. Nope, I’d wasted all that time! I’d never get it back. So, why even bother trying now because I was so far behind.

I realized that I needed to push that nagging voice aside and focus on the real truth — I had to get over wanting to heal the wounds of the past and discover that I am a whole person. I was not meant to start my art career earlier. I did need that time to play, dream, and write. It makes up a large part of who I am now and my work process. I wasn’t ready to sit down and learn to draw and paint like I am now. I am now ready to do more than just a flat face smiling back at me. I needed it then. Now I need to be more dynamic. Everything I have ever done has gone into this moment of creating myself. I am not a series of regrets, a rapid fire of success and failures. I am a creature of my own creation through success and failure. I have to learn what works for me and what doesn’t. I have to know, understand, and accept my own strengths. It is from this vantage point that I must do my work.

What regrets are limiting you? Have you realized it is better to be whole than looking back on the past with self irritation? How have you stopped wishing that you “had done” and started doing?

Success

I have to admit that since my mother’s death last year, I’ve been asking myself if she was happy in her life. I know her goal was a to have a family and I know she loved being a mother, but did she find the fulfillment in it that she always thought she would?

It’s made me examine my own life a lot deeper. I don’t want my own children wondering the same thing about me.

Success is one of those slippery things to define. We all think success will make us happy. In truth, happiness makes us successful. Yes, it is the other way around. Try this: the next time someone praises you about your art, really think about your immediate actions. Do you discount what they have said? Do you feel successful, like you’ve accomplished something? How long does that feeling last? Chances are, when someone says your work is beautiful, you say, “Thank you,” and move on. It doesn’t really touch your heart. It doesn’t last long. Now, the next time you find yourself really happy, take a look back at all the things you’ve accomplished with your art. Doesn’t that make you feel awfully dang successful and proud of yourself? It’s easy to discount your feeling of success when someone else says it to you, but harder to discount it when you are already happy in your life.

So, yes, when I think back over my mother’s life, she was successful with her goal of having her family but I often wonder if it was a “be careful of what you wish for” time. I don’t know if she was every happy. I look back over pictures of her life and I see a beautiful woman smiling back. There is a whole other side that I never realized was there. I don’t even know if she realized how beautiful she was. I think if she had found herself beautiful, she would’ve been happier. But she could never allow herself to see it.

That goes back to what I was talking about earlier this week: choice.

We choose to be happy. We choose our emotions — we create them much like we create our art. Moment by moment. We could be angry at the person who cut us off in traffic, or we could be grateful they didn’t hit our car, or we could remember that they might just not have seen us or realized how close they were. Our brains are full of flotsam all the time and we can screw up on occasion by thinking about something else. Strangely enough, we chose to think about that flotsam rather than driving!

Don’t look for success. Find that which makes you happy and you’ll always be filled with abundance. Well, that and remembering to choose wisely for your happiness is a choice only you can make.

Thinking

Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers. –Isaac Asimov

Artists have a tendency to think with our hands. We shape ideas to put thoughts and feelings into a physical form. Even in writing this, I wonder how my thoughts get translated across the keyboard to the screen your are reading. The thoughts and feelings I put down here can only be a pale echo of what I’m really thinking and feeling unless you have the same mindset as me. To a non-artist, this blog would be near meaningless. There is no context. Still, I have to create these words to communicate to artists an emotion I hope they find inspiring.

Our art shows what we really feel about the world, whether we find hope or despair. Our fingers cannot lie. Our fingers show us our true selves. If you ever wonder what you think about the world, go and look at your most current art. The answer is there.

Choice

As always, it is your choice.

It is your choice of what to make, what to create. It is your choice of when and where to work. It is even your choice to not work at your art.

What’s important is that you make the choice rather than chasing your guilt in an endless circle.

Choose. Choose wisely. But make the decision and have no regrets.

Gratitude

I just want to take a moment to thank all of you who have been “liking” my posts and sharing them around the web. The fact you take that time means a lot to me. That you feel it’s worthy of sharing with all your friends means the world to me! I hope to inspire you all. Creativity is so subjective and it’s easy to feel like you’re creating in a vacuum, or worse, in a world where the din is so great no one is even listening any more.

Thank you for keeping my faith up too.

My Illustrated Dip

Last time, I talked about The Dip. Strangely enough, shortly after I posted the blog, I found an illustration on my journey into the dip. Here it is:

In case you can’t read it, I’ll tell you what it says. The first little lady walks into the dip saying, “Cool, I’m an artist.” She gets further down the slope (a.k.a. slide) saying, “This is easy!” At the bottom, life becomes more difficult and you can’t skate by anymore. “Oh crap, this is hard!” But the little lady keeps walking up the hill. It’s slow going and unless one looks back here, it doesn’t feel like progress is being made to the next level. “I’m such a newbie,” she moans with regret. It will continue to be an uphill climb, but “Learning is good!” I’m currently at the point of trying hard to convince myself of this last part.

After I drew that, I pulled a card from a set of my Wayne Dyer cards. The quote seemed to fit and inspired me, so I’ll share it here:

Failure is a judgement, an opinion. It stems from your fears, which can be eliminated by love — love for yourself, love for what you do, love for others, and love for your planet. — Wayne Dyer.

Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about!

Moving through

I think back to when I started writing. Right now, the best thing I’ve ever done has got to be my Sacred Knight series. Even still, I know that it’s not nearly as good as I wish it could be. I have come to realize that what I’m in is, as Seth Godin calls it, The Dip. What I feel coming on with this dip is a certain amount of fear.

Godin’s solution is simple — just keep moving forward through it. Reality plays a different part and causes havoc on the mind.

But even in walking through the dip, it’s important to remember how I got here. I didn’t start off writing Sacred Knight. No, I started off writing about cats and dogs. I tested horror tales, love stories, and young adult novels. I put twists on words of other writers. I’ve seen myself improve as I’ve learned the craft.

Now, as I realize I’m also in a dip with my painting and illustration, should I expect it to be any different? Just recently I’ve been sketching faces a lot, trying to really memorize the structure. I realized that I wasn’t really challenging myself at the moment. I was trying to master a learned skill. Is that really the action of a newbie? No, I was trying to move to the next level — I was working through the dip. I realized that I have actually hit an intermediate stage of my art. I am no longer a beginning and more importantly I no longer feel like a beginner. I once posed the question of when does one feel like an artist. I do believe I’ve found that moment.

Strange that I never had a moment where I never didn’t feel like a writer. That may be the blessing a being a child though. I was merely following a passion and too naive to know any differently. I, however, also do know what it feels like to not be a writer, but it was more like a light switch being turned off.

Seriously, where ever you are at, you must just keep moving forward and keep working at what you love. This is not about could or should, need vs. want, it is only about the doing which you either are or aren’t. If you “aren’t” then you are stopped — game over. If you are, then you will see improvement. It may not be the great leaps and bounds you wish you were making. I know that for my so-called illustration skills it isn’t (and it shouldn’t be since a majority of my time right now is going into writing). What has become important is that I can now look back and see my progress. I’ve come a long way. Someday I’ll look back on my face sketches and compare it to my current “masterpiece.” It’ll still be far from where I want to be, but at least I’ll see where I once was. Then I’ll be able to look forward again and continue through the dip.

A weird thought

Came to me one night awhile back. Maybe I was really tired. For whatever reason, it struck me so much I just had to write it down and share it. Here we go:

Zero is a concept that use to not exist. After all, if there wasn’t anything of something, why bother to count it? Then someone came along and said, “Well, because we have to know when we are out.” — okay, not really how it went historically, but I can see how the logic of zero’s existence came to be. Zero was like the vacuum to show empty space — a void, a hole for the missing. Now, do you realize that there are actually people out there in the world today that believe the same thing about artists?

Yes! I kid you not. There are actually people out there who believe that artists shouldn’t create. Why create it? Why tell the story? Why mold the sculpture? Why paint the picture? Especially if it’s an art they don’t understand.

Now, this could easily be spread to the technology world. Why build a microwave? A computer? An iPad? A car? A lightbulb? The very same person asking why artists bother to create might say that it’s because technology makes life easier for humans. What could art possibly contribute?

What is your answer?

I know mine. I create to entertain and engage thought. I want to create an interaction between me and view, to maybe give them a different view of the world, one I want to see as a peaceful place. I like it when someone walks in my booth, points at a painting, and says, “I want to be right there.” I’ve engaged. I’ve taken them on a journey. For a moment, even a brief one, I have taken them into my world (or what I would like the world to be like).

What is your answer? This is it. Time to prove your worth. For if you aren’t creating, then there is a vacuum of zero you are leaving behind.

Losing yourself in your art

Do you have unconditional love for your creation? Do you believe that loving your art without criticism is a good or a bad thing?

Too often, I believe we are our own worst critic. We see the flaws in our art because we are so close to it. We don’t feel we can sell our art because we don’t believe it is worthy of other people’s attention. Worse, we have to be “in control” of our talent and never produce a bad piece. We want to “have grown” as an artist without “growing.”

Do you find yourself on this spiral wondering where “out” is? If only we could have a moment to stop and think out the situation, then we’d miraculously have the answer. But we never take that moment. If we do, we feel we have to be doing something and thinking isn’t a true action, right?

Here’s the real answer to the carousel: Don’t think about it, don’t worry about it, just get to work. The answer is in you and in your art. Share your own unique observations with those that wish to hear your “song.” Those are the people that matter — the like-minded individual you wish to reach that need to see what you have done so they know they are not alone with their mad thoughts. But if you don’t do your part, they will never know.

Go now, let yourself get lost in your art, and return with the unique ideas that only you can show the world.