Culture
The Intermediate Plateau
In this episode of 'The Intermediate Plateau,' hosts discuss the challenges artists face when stuck between beginner and advanced stages. They explore feelings of frustration, boredom, and c...
The Intermediate Plateau
Culture •
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Interactive Transcript
Speaker A
What does that sound you like my ball? Oh, they're just ice balls. Yeah, since last time, I've combined two of my drinks into one.
Speaker B
Yeah, but there's nothing coming out of that.
Speaker A
I'm shaking it up, Marshall.
Speaker B
Oh, well, why are you holding it upside down?
Speaker A
Ginger was at the. At the bottom.
Speaker B
What you're doing, it's confusing me.
Speaker A
Ginger and turmeric. Freshly juiced. Ginger and freshly juiced. Turmeric.
Speaker B
Say it again slowly. Ginger.
Speaker A
Turmeric.
Speaker B
Turmeric.
Speaker A
That's it. Freshly juiced. Both of them.
Speaker B
Oh, freshly juiced. Yeah.
Speaker A
So it's not turmeric powder?
Speaker B
There's no orange juice in there?
Speaker A
No. And then this is apple juice. This is delicious. This is. This is like my alcohol. I make this. I put the big balls in there so that it. It's like a cocktail. Wow.
Speaker B
Well, you've just got it all going.
Speaker A
It's so spicy. Here, you try it. Get a good gulp of it. Yeah. Marshall, what are we talking about today?
Speaker B
Well, you just want to get right into the subject of the.
Speaker A
I was getting bored. So if I'm getting bored, they're getting bored.
Speaker B
Oh, I don't know. I wasn't getting bored at all. I was having a ball. Now I was having, too. So you showed your turmeric thing. Hey, what's that book on your. On your.
Speaker A
That's yours. It's your book. I don't know what it is.
Speaker B
Oh, you look it up and tell me anything about it.
Speaker A
It says Animal Anatomy for Artists.
Speaker B
It's by Joe Weatherly and his student Shannon. Former student Shannon Beaumont. Okay, but what else about it?
Speaker A
There's a monkey.
Speaker B
Keep going, Keep going.
Speaker A
That's a lot of text on this page.
Speaker B
Two thousand words.
Speaker A
And then there's text on this page, too.
Speaker B
Yeah.
Speaker A
Oh, that's a beautiful painting by Joe Weatherly.
Speaker B
It's a beautiful painting by Joe.
Speaker A
Did I skip over something important?
Speaker B
Yeah, no, not really. It's just, like, 1% of the book and.
Speaker A
Yeah, no, these are beautiful sketches. Marshall, are these yours?
Speaker B
They are. They've all been seen before.
Speaker A
Why is this one so fuzzy? Did you spill water on it?
Speaker B
Yeah, that was a mistake. I figured lead with your weakness.
Speaker A
No, these are great. I love your watercolor sketches.
Speaker B
We're not here to talk about the pictures. We're here to talk about the. Should I just take charge of this?
Speaker A
Your animal sketches are really good.
Speaker B
It is a new book. It is a new, big, impressive, expensive book on animal anatomy. I got to write the forward.
Speaker A
There's his sketches. Yeah. And Then the next page and then. Is that it?
Speaker B
We used to have that horse behind me.
Speaker A
Yeah, I think I remember.
Speaker B
Yeah. So we've focused on the art and ignored the words, but that's okay. That's okay. Let's just go right into this.
Speaker A
Do you want me to read the book right now?
Speaker B
Yeah, I was hoping you would read it. We've gotta kill time here just talking.
Speaker A
About your horse's ass and my balls.
Speaker B
Well, aren't you proud of me for writing that 2,000 word forward?
Speaker A
Oh, you wrote the foreword.
Speaker B
I wrote the foreword. What did you think?
Speaker A
Did you say that he did?
Speaker B
Yes.
Speaker A
I'm not listening to you.
Speaker B
I wrote it to the 11 year old me, or at least the early adolescent me. So that if you read this, it will help you a great deal with learning how to draw without wasting a lot of time. I acted as a mentor to the student who is trying to learn to draw bodies, human and animal.
Speaker A
If you are reading this, I assume you care about animals and how to draw them, including from imagination. If you're a beginner, you that could be a challenge and that's why this book is designed for you.
Speaker B
Cheers.
Speaker A
All right.
Speaker B
Okay. Gotta be careful. Oh, careful there. All right. What are we talking about today, Stan?
Speaker A
The intermediate plateau.
Speaker B
Those are big words. Intermediate plateau are big words.
Speaker A
No, the intermediate plateau. I guess they're big words. Intermediate is the phase between beginner and advanced. And then plateau is like a straight line. When you're not improving, you're stuck in intermediate mode. You don't go from intermediate to advanced. You know how with most things, the last like 5, 10% is the hardest? That's the same thing as, like, as you're getting to mastering drawing or painting or anything. That last 5, 10% is extremely difficult. And so a lot of people just never are able to cross into that category.
Speaker B
So our viewership voted for this?
Speaker A
Correct. My Kickstarter campaign, people, funders, they voted on this one and the last one. Thank you, guys. Hope you like it.
Speaker B
Why do you think they voted for this one?
Speaker A
I have a feeling a lot of people have this problem.
Speaker B
I do too.
Speaker A
But not this viewer. Not the one that's listening right now.
Speaker B
That's the one that's focused on you. Or are you talking about the ones.
Speaker A
Watching you are all beginners? Yeah, they don't have that problem either. They haven't gotten to the intermediate.
Speaker B
So the ones watching you, they're all advanced. Are all advanced. So they've gotten past it.
Speaker A
They're trying to learn beyond the advanced stages.
Speaker B
Do you have valuable wisdom to share with our viewers?
Speaker A
Not much.
Speaker B
Well, neither do I.
Speaker A
I.
Speaker B
Do you want to go first?
Speaker A
Sure. The way I'm seeing this is. This is an episode of just a giant list of things. Here's a problem, here's a trap you can fall into, and this is how you fix it. And it's kind of random, so we could just. We can just keep randomly ADHD this thing. Okay, cool.
Speaker B
Sure.
Speaker A
What's the first thing that comes to mind? Okay, that was a question.
Speaker B
Two words come to mind. Frustration. Another is boredom.
Speaker A
Yeah.
Speaker B
Those are the two words that come to mind about why this intermediate business. How come can it be phrased like this? How come I'm not getting better? How come I'm not getting better? I want to get better and I'm not getting better. Is that how it is?
Speaker A
Yes.
Speaker B
Okay.
Speaker A
Sometimes there's another case where they're not frustrated, but they're complacent.
Speaker B
They're happy.
Speaker A
Yeah. They don't take risks, and they don't go out of their comfort zone.
Speaker B
That is a person that I wouldn't really spend any time with.
Speaker A
You dislike them that much?
Speaker B
If they're complacent, I would spend a little time to ask them, are you really happy with this? And I've learned if they're really happy with it, you might ask them again six months later or a year later if you're in that kind of relationship. But if they're happy with it, that means they have nothing in them.
Speaker A
I think the happiness is unrelated, actually. Okay, so the person I'm talking about, they want to become professionals. Their goal is to work as an artist, but they don't truly see that. They're lacking in a lot of departments. Yeah. They are not there yet. And because they don't see it, they don't work on those things. They don't go out of their comfort zone to get better. And because of that, they never reach their goal of working in the industry or whatever it is, whatever their goal is. And eventually they get older and older and then realize, like, I never did it.
Speaker B
Yeah, I have an opinion about that. If a person wants to get better, but they are complacent, they aren't dissatisfied with what they do. I kind of want to get better than to gently ask them, what is it that's bothering you about it? And they say, when I look at these illustrations and I see that there's an oomph. Oomph to it that mine doesn't have. That's a learning moment. Because we say, I think what you're seeing is that they design their shapes and their lights and darks and their abstract composition and all that. And then you can teach them. The other alternative is to are you happy about it? And they say, yeah. And you say, well, you shouldn't be. And then you're in the role of wounding before healing. And that's something I try to avoid.
Speaker A
So you brought up frustration and boredom.
Speaker B
And you mentioned complacency.
Speaker A
So frustration. Why are they frustrated? Is it just the lack of the ability to do something? Just skill isn't there? Or what are they usually frustrated with?
Speaker B
Yes. And the frustrated student is the student who is prepared for instruction. Because there's definitely something wrong here. I need help with it. Your problem is not new. There's still going to be difficulty, but there are definitely ways through that. That's an important thing to the frustrated.
Speaker A
Student and the bored student. Why are they bored? There's so much to do.
Speaker B
I had a student who went to the most expensive art school in the world and who was quite prodigy and really talented, really hard working, who would call me every several months and we'd have a conversation about his boredom with what to do next. And so we'd talk about it. And I realized you just get bored so quickly that I can't keep up with you. If you looked at this, if you've done this. Yeah, I've done that. So what you're dealing with there is a person who's bored and they want more challenge is, I'm not your teacher. I'm not giving you assignments. Find things that don't bore you. Find things that make it harder. Find a bigger challenge. I don't know how you can help a person who's bored. You can help a person who's frustrated. I don't know how you can help a person who's bored. Do you? If you've got someone who comes to you and they're saying, I'm bored with my education.
Speaker A
It sounds like one of the things that I. I was going to bring up. Well, I actually brought it up, the comfort zone thing. So somebody who's in their comfort zone all the time and doesn't take risks, doesn't experiment, they get bored. It is boring to do that, but it's also comfortable because it's scary to do things that you're going to fail at. I'm talking about. So people who constantly draw the same thing, right?
Speaker B
Yeah.
Speaker A
It's like you tell them, you tell people that sketchbooking is a great Way to get better. And then they go and they sketch all the time, but then you look through the sketchbook and it's the exact same face over and over and over again. You're not going to get better at that. You're just not going out of your comfort zone. It seems like that might be the same person that might get bored.
Speaker B
Yeah, I can see that. Oh, I had that a lot when I was in middle school, high school, because I didn't have any instruction of value. So I could do a side view of a face and I could get a little better at it, and I'd keep doing it, and it was the same head over and over. And I remember thinking, you've got to be kidding me. You look at these Mad magazine artists that can do all of this incredible stuff and you are in a different world from them by doing the same side view of a head over and over. But that was a good sign because now I'm not complacent. I'm frustrated. I'm bored with what I'm doing and I'm frustrated for how do I get to. Or you could. Here's another word. It's could be confused. I was confused. How did they learn to draw like that? What do you need to know? And I wanted instruction, but I guess here's what I'm getting at. The person who is bothered by their intermediate plateau in their development as an artist, if they're bothered by it, that's the best thing that could happen.
Speaker A
At least they have the energy and the desire to change it.
Speaker B
That's.
Speaker A
That's what you're getting at.
Speaker B
Yeah.
Speaker A
Yeah. Okay, that makes sense.
Speaker B
So if you're aware of the pain, it means that you probably have it in you to do better. Some people are not aware of and don't have any pain from not doing well, and they're happy all the way through and they don't get better.
Speaker A
I think another cause or another trap is just developing a lot of bad habits or a few very big bad habits that prevent you from becoming advanced.
Speaker B
I'm giving an example.
Speaker A
Go to our Habits for Success episode and pick any of the opposite of those. There's a lot of things you could be doing consistently wrong that is going to prevent you from reaching the next stage. A really good way to get out of those is having a mentor again.
Speaker B
That's right. Somebody else that sees through other eyes.
Speaker A
Because one of the reasons those bad habits stay is that you don't know that it's there. Another one is that you might know it's there, and you just can't. You either don't care enough to. To change it, or you just don't know how, or you're. Yeah, you just can't change your habits. But the first step is identifying that you have this bad habit. And then if you're. You're frustrated enough with it, you'll change it. So, yeah, definitely. Seeking help or like, seeking critique is huge. It'll speed it up. Like, a lot of people, I think, are stuck in the intermediate mode because they're progressing through it very slowly. It might not be a plateau, but it might be a very long kind of slight slope upward forever. And the best thing that you can do to increase that slope is having a mentor, because they identify your mistakes faster so you can work on them and they can prioritize your mistakes for you. Okay, do you know any bad habits?
Speaker B
I am thinking of how George Leonard's book Mastery affected me so much that when I finished reading It's a short Book, and I mentioned it here before, and I mention it a lot. I read it short, read, read it right again. And I had read it because a student said, you've read George Leonard's Mastery? I said, no, I haven't. He says, you have. You're teaching the same thing. I said, no, I haven't. He lent it to me the next week, and it was on the road to mastery. There are three enemies. The dabbler who drops out as soon as it gets hard. The hacker who camps out, reaches a level plateau, and says, it's good enough. I don't need to get better. And then the third one, who was what I was, the obsessive. I gotta get better, gotta get better, I gotta get better. All three of those personality types are enemies of mastery. And the solution for all of them is to work in a relaxed state. And the inner relaxed state is what the obsessive needs. I'm turning it in my own words now because the obsessive is. And it's like there's many metaphors for it. My brother was surfing. You can't plan the wave, but when the wave is not there, you don't say, there's no wave. There's no wave. What's going on surface. So you watch and you ride the wave when it happens. And he makes a graph of the plateaus going up. Now there's the opposite, which is the dabbler. The dabbler is not willing to work. They might be in a relaxed state. And as soon as it gets difficult, well, I'll just move on to something else. And the hacker just repeats the same motions over and over. It's up to a level where the client's paying me. I'm a professional artist. I'm doing the same thing every week. It doesn't have to think about it. It's not hard work. So they are in a state going through the motions. But it's hard to really call it work with that capital W, where you've got to confront some problems that are difficult. So anyway, that book was important to me, even though I'd been teaching it. George Leonard's spirit was so much like a mentor that I never met him, but reading his book several times made me feel like you have put your finger on what my problem was. I knew I wasn't a dabbler and I knew I was a hacker professionally.
Speaker A
Oh, damn, son.
Speaker B
Well, sure, because when you can do technical illustrations and you can do it over and over and you can meet the deadline. I can meet deadlines, incredibly. And also, there was no innovation with it.
Speaker A
I'm just imagining you as a professional hacker.
Speaker B
I mean, the one who camps out on their level of competence. But when it came to trying to do anything, that is. I really want to be proud of this work and I've got to move into new territory. I found it more frustrating than other personality types I knew who could say it's not good now, but it will be. It'll do better later. Just hang in there, keep working. You'll get it. You got to go through the trouble yourself. I can't solve that problem for you. You're going to have to solve it. And they would look at it and see that you're really in a state of tension, which is short circuiting your ability to get better. You care too much. And it's like trying to make a good impress, trying too hard to make a good impression. You can't make a good impression. Now, you said examples. I'm giving not an example, but a framework that was important for me for illustration, for teaching, for all sorts of different things.
Speaker A
On the subject of being bored, could it be that some people are too focused on one particular problem and are making progress, but just focused on one tiny little aspect of it? Yeah. Choosing the wrong things to work on for a very long time.
Speaker B
Right.
Speaker A
It's like you have your fundamental things that you have to work on, which is enough for, you know, five, 10 years. But some people, too early on, choose the fun stuff. That's not the right word. They choose the sparkly Stuff that is way too early and will never look good without the fundamentals. You know, it's like we were talking about color last time. It's like jumping into the full palette because those full colored sprinkles look so good and yummy, but you just can't even control your values. When I was teaching at Watts, I saw that all the time, where a lot of students would be taking more advanced classes because they thought they were beyond the fundamental classes. And they weren't even close, but they just. They couldn't be honest with themselves. It was like an ego hit to think that they've been doing this for so long that they have to go back and take like a fundamental class to work on stuff. But the thing is, though, like, those fundamentals should never be stopped. You should always be practicing those things. So it's not embarrassing to have to go practice your fundamentals again. But they thought it was. And they would never bring themselves to dip that low. You know what I mean?
Speaker B
Yeah.
Speaker A
And so they would stick with the advanced stuff.
Speaker B
An embarrassment is social pain. And I had that happen in my late 30s when I was doing some of my best illustration and getting rewarded for it and making good living. And one of my teachers, who I was now teaching alongside at the junior college, I was feeling confident enough, and I admired him so much, but I was feeling confident enough to say, if you were to give me advice for what I need to reach the next level, what would it be? And he answered so quickly that I was aware that you'd been waiting for years for me to ask this question.
Speaker A
It was so obvious, huh?
Speaker B
It was so obvious to him. Work bigger, work bigger, work bigger. You're doing these tiny little drawings. You're going, oh, see, I'm dancing, Marshall. I could have told you that I'm dancing.
Speaker A
I want to point out the little color study, or not the little study. The little charts that you made. The font on that is like a negative 2.
Speaker B
My eyesight was so incredible. I bragged about it a lot. I also had the assumption it'll always be. But my eyesight was enough to where I could see the fibers of paper just by putting in front of me. And I was glad about that. So when I would write, I would want to get it all as small as it could be so that I. I can look at this thing and I can see everything on it and take in the whole gestalt. But we're getting off the case when he.
Speaker A
But I mean, I'm just saying I understand why he said Work bigger. I could see that, like, just in the thing you brought in.
Speaker B
Well, I didn't accept it. And the reason I didn't accept it was because of Rembrandt and Leonardo da Vinci.
Speaker A
Oh, not your son.
Speaker B
No, no.
Speaker A
Okay.
Speaker B
And others who did Little tiny masterpiece. I had no idea how small that great master worked. And they didn't have a problem. So it's like, well, I'm in. Good. But I heard what he said, but I didn't ingest it until several years later.
Speaker A
Okay.
Speaker B
When I was around becoming a graffiti artist. No.
Speaker A
Okay.
Speaker B
Actually.
Speaker A
Oh, yes, tell us.
Speaker B
Yeah, Well, I was around students that were animators. It was when I was first starting to teach animation students. But, yeah, I've had a lot of graffiti artists and tattoo artists, and people were doing stuff that I learned from them because they were doing it. But, yeah, graffiti artists that can move their arms or around like that. And also, I did work big all the time on whiteboards in front of classes and. Yeah, but it's not. I know.
Speaker A
It's presentation. It's not a.
Speaker B
Here is the thing. It took several years before I started to see. No. I started to feel that my stuff was. I'm dancing. I'm dancing. See, look how I dance. Yeah. I started to feel it, and when I felt it, it was a big part of my midlife crisis.
Speaker A
Ooh, the intermediate life crisis.
Speaker B
Artistically, it was a major. It might have been. The main part of my midlife crisis is you have got to stop being so careful. And I did thousands.
Speaker A
Not everybody's midlife crisis. Stop being careful. Get a Lamborghini. Drive it really fast.
Speaker B
No, it's not everybody's midlife crisis because some people aren't careful enough and their midlife crisis that you'd better be careful or you're going to destroy more people. And your.
Speaker A
I don't know. I wouldn't know. I'm not in my midlife yet.
Speaker B
I think midlife crises often have to do with balancing out what you've. What you've overcompensating for what you did before. Okay. But back to the reason that I was able to do those little pen and ink drawings, which they're little, but they are accidental and lots of letting go and do another bad one and do another bad one, and then a few of them work. So now I don't know how this is relating to middle. This is relating to midlife crises.
Speaker A
Yes. Got the word in it.
Speaker B
Yeah.
Speaker A
Did you just get that one?
Speaker B
I wasn't consciously thinking about it.
Speaker A
You weren't listening to me. I said intermediate life crisis. That was my joke.
Speaker B
I guess my mind was on plan to say next. And obsessively, compulsively trying to make a train of thought that their audience would care about. Oh, gosh, I'm so sorry.
Speaker A
I'm trying to distract them from this.
Speaker B
Next time.
Speaker A
Oh, God. What do we do now?
Speaker B
I was gonna ask you the same thing.
Speaker A
I'm just gonna mention another bad trap.
Speaker B
Okay, let's go.
Speaker A
Not setting clear enough goals. And this is related to deliberate practice, which we always talk about, but it's huge. Like, if you have a growth mindset, if you want to get better, you have to practice with intent, with a very specific thing you want to get better at, which means you identify your mistakes, specific mistakes. And you have to have clear goals of what you want to get better at and where you want to be and when and what you want to do. When do you want to have your one man show really specific things? And I think too many people have just, like, a general idea of like, I want to be a better artist. Great. That's a good start. But like. But, like, what do you want to get better at? What do you want to do as an artist? You gotta identify that stuff and then aim a little higher.
Speaker B
Instead of a general, I want to get in shape. It's. Want to get in shape for what and in what way? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A
So then you can actually create a plan. Which exercises are you going to do? How many days a week? What are you going to eat in order to make that actually work?
Speaker B
So being specific here is where I need to get better helps. It narrows down the field.
Speaker A
Yeah. You have to have clear goals.
Speaker B
Yeah.
Speaker A
Otherwise, if there's no clear goal, you don't know if you're even going in the right direction.
Speaker B
Right.
Speaker A
I think that also comes from the boredom. A lot of it is connected to that. The laziness, boredom, complacency. Just not doing enough, not having enough energy to just do more, try more, take more risks, fail more, analyze more, just doing more.
Speaker B
Well, you have mentioned over and over in these years of podcasting the value of the feedback loop. All learning is the feedback loop. And so when there is boredom or frustration or complacency that is starting to bother you. Awareness that you're not growing. That is stage one of the feedback loop, is it not?
Speaker A
Kind of. Yeah, yeah. It always has to be there. Well, wait. Awareness that you're not growing.
Speaker B
Awareness that there's a problem.
Speaker A
That there's a problem. Yeah, yeah. Identifying the problem, getting that feedback, and then attempting to fix the problem. And then getting the feedback, attempting to fix the problem. And you're not going to fix everything perfectly every time, but you attempt to fix it. And if it gets worse, then that's your feedback. You're like, oh, that didn't work. Don't do that.
Speaker B
You are moving us in the direction of Daniel Pink's wisdom in his book. I read this book about a year or so ago. I read it carefully. I want to read it all the way through again with people. It is called when by Daniel H. The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing.
Speaker A
That was great timing.
Speaker B
It is a worthy book. And he has a section in the middle on middles.
Speaker A
You're making dad jokes. I think I'm making the dad jokes.
Speaker B
I don't even get the dad joke that out. Let me tell you how he starts the chapter. It's with a quote from Margaret Atwood. When you are in the middle of a story, by the way, this is probably to the writer, not to the person experiencing the story. When you are in the middle of the story, it isn't a story at all, but only a confusion, a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood. Isn't that encouraging?
Speaker A
Always.
Speaker B
Don't polarize it. This is one of the things that you hear over and over. In one of the visual storytelling classes I teach, I show trailers for masterclasses from filmmakers. One after another after another, after another after another. They all say the same thing, that this is a miserable thing to try to do. I've quoted this before, what Ron Howard said, no matter what film you're making, it will just break your heart. Mira Nair said that it's a disease. Martin Scorsese said, when you watch what you do, you'll get physically ill. And on and on and on. The point is, people who are really high achievers and do amazing stuff must go through the difficult slog that those who will never achieve cannot get through. So to hear that from Margaret Atwood, to hear that from anyone who's a master. Not always. We know not always because sometimes they come out in amazing burps of Create Glory. But so many writers talk about that and creative people.
Speaker A
Yeah, I guess so. A lot of do.
Speaker B
You're saying that grudgingly.
Speaker A
Yeah, I just think a lot of people don't.
Speaker B
And if they don't, it might be because they earned the right, because they got strong training.
Speaker A
Maybe that's part.
Speaker B
Yeah, they made themselves strong enough to where they don't have to develop their immune system.
Speaker A
Well, no, I think even in the beginning, when they weren't strong enough, they weren't so miserable as it survived.
Speaker B
Well, now you're.
Speaker A
I had fun the whole time. I've always enjoyed it. It was. I was never like depressed about it.
Speaker B
Well, here's what you're doing. You're taking us in a direction that can be very difficult. Csikszentmihalyi. I've told you about him before.
Speaker A
Okay.
Speaker B
He wrote a book on creativity. It's like a 500 page book. I read it in the 90s. I'm not recommending it necessarily, but they went after domain changers to find out what creative people had in common. Surprisingly little. But they did have some interesting observations, the researchers who were doing this. And the first part of the book was one of the most discouraging things I had ever read up to that point.
Speaker A
Great.
Speaker B
It was essentially that a great deal of your ability to be creative is out of your control. It's like. No, no.
Speaker A
Where whose control is? Or what is it just like genetics? Is that what he's saying?
Speaker B
Where you're born, to whom you're born, the country into which you were born, whether you are having to fight the Nazis or the communists, all the other stuff that you may not have an opportunity to because it takes a lot of raw material. I had a hard time with it because I felt like I had to nurture a bunch of wounds. You're not as creative because of this, this, this and this. So it becomes outward focused. But that's one part of it. The other part of it is something that I kind of believe in. After all of these years of teaching, which when we just did a podcast on color. This approach to color will get you in less trouble. This approach to color will give you a lot of trouble, but it'll make you better. This approach to color. And then when it really comes down to it, I'm starting to think it's not this approach, it's this student. I think it. Because you can give the same information, the same lectures, the same demos, all of that stuff to a group of students, and two or three of them will run with it and outpace the teacher by far. And then some of them will use it to a level of competence and some of them will not do anything. And there is no way a teacher can change that. So, yes, it does mean that if you've got that feeling that Margaret Atwood has about the middle of her story process, then you probably have it in you to Self direct and say, this is not working and find another teacher, find another milieu, find another medium, find another length of story. I can write an eight minute story, not a whole novel or whatever else, but it is the student who self adjusts, listens to their own feedback loops with that pain. And this will give me better. And I think, Stan, I'm saying this partly because you're saying that it's been easier for you.
Speaker A
No, not easier, no, but more natural. It's not as miserable.
Speaker B
Not as miserable. I think that is because from an early stage you got hold of that dynamic. I think that your parents are partly, at least partly to thank for it. I think that you've got a lot of things that were out of your control that were given to you, but you got hold of that dynamic that you seem like you. You hang loose on things when they don't go well. So you don't spend years nurturing a wound. You nurture it enough to say, not going to let that pain happen again. And also you are enthusiastic about the process. Now, this is not just to compliment you, it's to help explain because there are people who are listening to this who are not like you. And their litmus test is, I should be more like that.
Speaker A
So a lot of this is your attitude, your mentality towards learning and being an artist. And so it's all in your head mostly that you have control of all the other things that you're saying, where you're born, who helps you, all that stuff, that's all mostly physical stuff that you're not in control of. Or that's what I'm getting from this.
Speaker B
And not just physical stuff, but also you can have an abusive older sibling or abusive parent, and that can make a big difference. But then again is you can take two people, both of whom were traumatized in childhood and one of them it crushed and one of them it didn't. What are the factors? I don't know, but it seems like part of it comes from the individual who was the recipient. Not all of it.
Speaker A
That has more questions now. I have more questions than answers from that.
Speaker B
I hesitated to even go there, but I felt like we should go there. I hesitated to go there because it is very. I was bothered for months even when I continued to go through the rest of the book, which was to see this creative person, this creative person, this creator changes people who change the sciences because of their discoverers, really creative people. I'm going through all this stuff that's giving me good positive examples, but I was still bothered, maybe even more for months. More. More for, like, a few years by the fact that I wasn't given everything I wish I'd been given to be the creative genius I was meant to be. It can be frustrating. It can be. It can be discouraging that that's the.
Speaker A
Attitude of, like, the outcome. You're. You're going for the end goal. You're not focusing on the process and enjoying the moment. Because, like, the reason that I fell in love with drawing and painting is because I really enjoyed how happy I was while I was doing it.
Speaker B
Yeah.
Speaker A
I was drawn to it for that reason. It was a thing that made me happy. It was like, reason people play video games or read books or whatever it is that they. Nobody has to make them do it. They just want to do it. Chasing that thing where it's like, I'm gonna be the creative genius, it takes away all that. Yeah. That's why someone could be miserable the whole time they're doing it because they're going for that five minutes towards the. At the end.
Speaker B
Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Yeah. It destroys the ability to live in.
Speaker A
The distracted by that end thing. But at the same time, like I said, you do need to have goals. Otherwise, you're aimlessly doing stuff, but you can't be focused on that goal while you're doing it. You got to be focused on the thing that you're doing. The goals are there in the. For when you're planning your day or when you're, like, figuring out what you want to do. But then when you start doing it, you're focused on the doing. You can't just be constantly being like, ah, I wish I was better.
Speaker B
I'm tempted to read from Think Like a Freak.
Speaker A
Is that a good thing?
Speaker B
Yeah. The first book that I bought of the two Stevens was Think Like a Freak. The guy. Freakonakis.
Speaker A
Oh, here. Freakonomics. Okay. Hi, Christian. Hey.
Speaker B
Hey, Christian's here. This is a perfect time to take a middle break.
Speaker A
Christian, what is the biggest trap for people who are stuck being intermediate artists?
Speaker B
Get. Come over here. Get in front of the camera.
Speaker A
There you go.
Speaker C
Hey, everybody.
Speaker A
How's it going?
Speaker C
I think it's not trying to do a project. I think personal.
Speaker A
What the hell, man? I was about to say the opposite.
Speaker B
Yeah, I don't agree, but I love you, so go ahead.
Speaker A
Oh, wait, Sorry. I think you. We. Are you saying the mistake is to not do projects? Yes. Oh, I completely agree.
Speaker B
Yeah, I completely agree. Well, you turn that one around opposite for me.
Speaker C
I feel like I waited for my own relatively small YouTube channel. I waited a long time thinking I was preparing, and I wasn't actually preparing. I was just not doing it. And I was like, oh, I should get a better microphone or I should research this thing or read this book. And it led to the point where I, you know, probably wasted a couple years just researching.
Speaker A
Right. And waiting to be ready for something.
Speaker C
Yeah. I think it was being prepared to do something badly that that was. That was the thing that. That helped much more.
Speaker B
We just did a podcast just a few days ago.
Speaker C
It was two hours long.
Speaker B
I came down to Christians and we did a completely unplanned podcast for 2 hours and 15 minutes.
Speaker A
We. Completely unplanned.
Speaker B
So you think it was good?
Speaker A
What was it about?
Speaker C
What does it mean to, I guess, make progress on stuff?
Speaker B
It ended up becoming a disagreement on something that was so personal.
Speaker A
Was it. Is it going to be public? Yeah.
Speaker B
Oh, it was professional, but it was a. It was a personal.
Speaker A
What was the disagreement? Did you guys fight?
Speaker C
I think we were talking about, like, trying to do your magnum opus.
Speaker A
Okay.
Speaker C
You know, and how. I think that sometimes attempting to do a magnum opus can be detrimental to someone's progress because you're setting that expectation of it being successful versus just doing the work.
Speaker B
And I totally agreed with that. With the way you just phrased it. Totally agreed with it.
Speaker A
What was the disagreement?
Speaker B
The disagreement was the claim that Christian made that trying to produce a magnum opus inevitably leads to. What was it? Self consciousness or short circuiting. And I jumped on the word inevitably.
Speaker A
Yeah.
Speaker B
And I gave great examples.
Speaker A
I'm sure you did. You probably got lost in all the examples. I mean, it could definitely debilitate somebody. The expectations can be. Can make you feel like you're actually not worthy of it and you can't do it. And so it's like. It's too big for you. Yeah.
Speaker C
I think my whole thing is, like, doing great work that is very popular and is seen by a bunch of people feels the same as doing bad work. You know, I think.
Speaker A
What, like.
Speaker C
Like in the moment when you're doing the work.
Speaker A
Yeah, it does.
Speaker C
You can't. At least from my perspective, you can't keep the audience in mind that much. You have to just like, focus on doing the work.
Speaker A
That is true.
Speaker B
Yeah.
Speaker C
And it's.
Speaker A
Yeah.
Speaker C
I think the focusing on the magnum opus thing. My. I guess my point with the inevitability of the self consciousness is if you're worrying about it being your best work, then you're Worrying about the reception of it. Switch, I think can hurt your emotional.
Speaker A
Can be. It can be.
Speaker C
We brought you up in your anatomy course, at least from a lot of people's perspective. Like the most comprehensive anatomy course, video.
Speaker A
Anatomy course on the Internet, proko.com anatomy.
Speaker C
But in the moment, you're just focusing on studying and describing a very specific muscle. But you weren't focusing on making the best anatomy course.
Speaker A
I was.
Speaker B
Yes, you were. And I think you succeeded at that goal.
Speaker A
Yeah. But it also was trying to make the.
Speaker B
But it was. It became difficult because you. I mean, it became costly and it's.
Speaker A
Why it took six years.
Speaker B
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker A
If I wasn't trying to make the best one, but it was just trying to, like, make a course and it was my job and I'm just trying to make money, it would not have taken that long. Yeah. There were a lot of times when I was like, no, let's delay it because it could be better. Let's keep going. I'm gonna know. I'm gonna keep. I'm going to take a long time on these illustrations that are going to be on screen for two seconds because I want it to be the best. And it made absolutely no sense.
Speaker C
Yeah.
Speaker A
A lot of those decisions were stupid, but they were driven by that goal.
Speaker B
When you say it made no sense, it made no sense financially.
Speaker A
Financially, even just, like, to make a bigger difference in people's lives. I think if that's what the goal was, you know, I could have finished that one faster and then done another thing that would have also helped them in other ways, like having a better diagram or some illustration that show is on screen for two seconds.
Speaker B
Okay.
Speaker A
Is not going to be worth it all the time. Sometimes.
Speaker B
All the time.
Speaker A
Like if I'm just trying to improve it 10%, but I'm spending an extra full day on it.
Speaker B
Yeah.
Speaker A
No, that's not worth it.
Speaker B
Not worth to you now?
Speaker A
Constantly. All the time. That's why it took six years. All of those things added up.
Speaker B
Yeah.
Speaker C
I think my problem with the magnum opus thing is that there's always another thing to do if you're trying to make your best work. And I think it's at least from a student perspective, if you're trying to do the best thing every time, you're never going to finish anything.
Speaker B
So there's the every time thing. What about not every time? It's like this one. We're going to make our best. That's why we got the 1940 Pinocchio. It burned everybody out. It damaged the studio. It damaged Walt's relationship with the animators, but. And it's flawed, but nobody ever did anything like that. And Walt wanted to airbrush the highlight on the nose of Pinocchio and, you know, cheeks and that kind of thing. And Roy said, why? It's spending this money? He said, yeah, but it'll make it a better. It's not going to sell the film better. He said, it'll make it a better film. And that may have been misguided financially, but in retrospect, when you look at those bits of late 30s animation and you look how beautiful they look, they would not have happened without a personality who cared enough to be the perfectionist that he was. So there's an argument for either way. You can say, if you're never going to do a magnum opus, then do great work. It'll just happen because you're doing it. Or if you're going to always do a magnum opus. Okay, I'll get to the Freakonomics thing in a moment.
Speaker A
Yeah.
Speaker B
I have a set of slides halfway through the genre class that I'm teaching this semester, if you're in California, halfway through the semester, about the options. If you're going to Blue Hat your project, get up in the sky over your project and ask, how does this relate to my career? How does this relate to my life? How does this class relate to my career in my life? And there are several options. One is to. To quit. Quit now. Another is to quit later. Just carry through. And when I'm done with this, then I can quit. But they have a chapter in the Think Like a Freak on the upside of quitting. And you should hear their stories. They would have not have had the success they had if they had not quit. Quitting has an upside. It has an upside. Quitting is the best thing you can do. It sometimes is. Quitting has an upside. Another one is to plow through, because you have. You're in that middle that you've got to work through the wreckage. Another one is to consider it version 1.0. I'll redo it later and I'll learn my lessons. I've talked about how that happened with me with a.
Speaker A
Are you doing middle of projects?
Speaker B
Yeah. Middle of the semester, Middle of the projects. Middle of your training here.
Speaker A
Middle of your training. Plow through.
Speaker B
Yes. Because you're at a discouraged point, but keep going with counsel and you will get through that particular frustration. Now, I have two more. One is to consider it the magnum opus. And the magnum opus says, this is the greatest thing I'm ever going to do. And I immediately show that that can be the worst thing you can do because it burned out a famous artist who did his magnum opus. And it is a great magnum opus. It's Bernie Wright's in Frankenstein. And he spoke to my students a number of times, and he said, when I finished Frankenstein, something inside me died. He could never do his best work after that because it was the magnum opus. Once you've landed on the moon, then you come back to the Earth, and what do you do? Become an alcoholic? Go to trade shows?
Speaker A
Is that what happens?
Speaker B
Astronauts who broke new barriers had trouble afterward because now it's done. It's done. Okay, but here is a way to shift it.
Speaker A
Does that happen to athletes?
Speaker C
Yeah, for sure. Fighters, climbers, football players, totally.
Speaker A
Because a lot of them retire, like, in the 30s, and then do they just, like decades of.
Speaker B
We're going to get to. We're going to get to what one of the Freakonomics guys did. Here is another option. I give. Consider it a magnum opus.
Speaker A
I'm with you on that one. You have some breaks, you relax for a few projects, and then you do another big one. You need that energy back, and you also need some time to decide what the next one is going to be.
Speaker B
Now, here is what Levitt, Stephen Levitt did. He mentions it in one of the books. It was the upside of quitting and Think Like a Freak, that he was an economics major. He didn't care about it. He could plow through. He could quit and move back with his parents. But one of his options was to find an interesting take on economics that nobody else has ever done. And he watched a TV show called Cops, which I've never seen, but he watched it for, like, a long time. And that was the trigger for where to Go, which is he was interested in crime. Why does crime happen? How can you study crime? How can you take an economic model and see what makes a criminal and why criminals move to this thing and that thing. And he said, it's an underserved market. Nobody's ever applied principles of economics to understanding crime. And so he found a new take on it.
Speaker A
Like, nobody's ever applied economics to crime.
Speaker B
Not in the way he did, which is to figure out what the causes of them, and they can be hidden causes from way previous. So there's another option. Shift gears on how you're approaching this middle section. I'm going to quote from Freakonomics now.
Speaker A
Okay.
Speaker B
Or, excuse me, from Think Like a Freak. You may have noticed a common thread. In some of the stories we've told about solving ulcers, eating hot dogs, and blind tasting wine. The people involved seem to be having a good time as they learn. Freaks like to have fun. This is another good reason to think like a child. Kids aren't afraid to like the things they like. They don't say they want to get go to the opera when they'd rather play video games. They don't pretend they're enjoying a meeting when they really want to get up and run around. Kids are in love with their own audacity, mesmerized by the world around them, and unstoppable in their pursuit of fun.
Speaker A
I have a shirt that says, don't forget to have fun.
Speaker B
Let's recognize this is an important part of getting through a middle. Is that I love to do this.
Speaker A
Yes. I think you have to have a childish energy in order to be a good artist. Like my son. He's really into basketball right now, and he's constantly mad about it. Right. Like whenever he misses, he's like. Right. He's frustrated, but you cannot get him to stop. He's still having fun. So there's a difference between frustration and not having fun. He still loves it.
Speaker B
How long has he been at it?
Speaker A
Three months or a little more.
Speaker B
And he's seven.
Speaker A
Yeah.
Speaker B
Yeah. So it's a big portion of your life.
Speaker A
Yeah. He's part of, like, a team, all that stuff.
Speaker B
Hey, a new take on it has to do with what athletes do too. Right. How do athletes succeed when they're past their prime?
Speaker A
When they're past their prime? Well, that's different. So this is like you've gone past your intermediate plateau, you've become advanced, and now you're coming back down. Yeah. That's like a totally different.
Speaker B
But wait a second. You've devoted your life to this, or.
Speaker A
Are you coming back down backwards? You're going to the other side?
Speaker B
You've devoted your life to this sport.
Speaker A
Yeah.
Speaker B
And you're in your 30s now, or 40s.
Speaker A
Yeah, sure. Okay.
Speaker B
Okay. But you know this sport and you've been around other competitors and teammates.
Speaker A
You talking about coaching? Is this what you're talking about?
Speaker B
Yeah, because now you're staying with it, but you're just taking a new. A new take on it.
Speaker A
How is this relevant to the intermediates trying to become.
Speaker B
It's relevant to the intermediate because you can say, what have I got? This is one of the things Daniel Pink talks about. You take stock in what you've gotten so far. What have you accomplished? So far, can you use that for what you're going to do next if you're going to shift gears? You called it pivoting. A few years ago in our podcast, I wrote down the word pivot because I was thinking I'm definitely in a second or third pivot in my life. And I like the word pivoting because pivoting means that you've got a lot on this side. Now we got this pivot. Where are you going to bring that over to what you're doing next? So pivoting is a part of a new take, using what I've done before. Not quitting, but seeing this as not version 1.0, but seeing this as preparation for the next part of the journey.
Speaker A
Also, Stan, I know you've talked about how teaching helped you learn a lot. If someone is in an intermediary plateau and, like, are having trouble seeing what they're missing, then maybe teaching would help bring that into clarity. Yeah, you're absolutely right about that. I think the reason. One reason that teaching helped me so much was that it lit the fire more. I already had a lot of fire at that point. Energy to, like, to get better. But when you forced me to go teach it to somebody, it just, like, cranks it all the way to 11. Yeah, is that the quote? These go to 11. You could just lie down with Skelly over there.
Speaker B
Snore in rhythm for us.
Speaker A
Bye, Christian.
Speaker B
Goodbye. Great seeing you.
Speaker A
It's the social aspect of it, though. It's like the same reason that people say to make your goals public, because you got that peer pressure. You don't want to get embarrassed when you fail. It's the exact same reason why every topic I was going to teach, I went home and I studied and I practiced my demos because I didn't want to be embarrassed in public. And I think it's real. Like, that is a huge part of getting better.
Speaker B
It is.
Speaker A
I mean, we're humans. We don't want other people to know how bad we are unless we're trying.
Speaker B
To get out of something.
Speaker A
Tell us more.
Speaker B
Actually, you know, what I was thinking about has nothing to do with this, but I was thinking about a movie that I've watched about 15 times. I should say that it is rated R. It's called Sexy Beast.
Speaker A
Oh, God. Better than I thought.
Speaker B
It's about a retired criminal in Spain. No. And anyway, I'll just say this here is someone who, at one point, in order to survive, has to feign or has to claim incompetence. Now, I Don't know how that was applied. He's trying to get out of something.
Speaker A
No, the sexy Beast.
Speaker B
Sexy beast, right.
Speaker A
Yeah. That's why I said it was about you.
Speaker B
Oh, well, thank you. Should have put my beanie back on.
Speaker A
And you said he's retired. All the pieces fit.
Speaker B
Yeah. Okay, let's get back to the subject. We have not even dealt with Daniel Pink's thoughts about midpoint. Because what we talked about.
Speaker A
What's his thought about midpoint? Bring it back to that.
Speaker B
Okay. Do you remember what he prescribes when you're in a middle?
Speaker A
No.
Speaker B
One of the first things is what we've spent the last hour kind of talking about.
Speaker A
Cool. Let's repeat it again.
Speaker B
It's to name it.
Speaker A
Okay.
Speaker B
When you say deliberate practice, I am in a period of frustration. I am in a period of non growth. When you name objectifies it, you get it outside of all of this mesh of emotions. So you can say, you are not alone in this. We have got middles of weeks. We've got middles of lifespans. We've got middles of civilizations, We've got middles of conversations. All of these different middles, they all have something in common. And it's consistent with the claim of the scientific secrets of perfect timing. It may be too big a claim, but he is looking at scientific research where they know that the smallest and biggest things have a ubiquitous shape. It's everywhere. They studied the pattern of energy during a day. They particularly had a study of women, but they found it was with everybody that a day tends to have a peak, a trough and a rebound. This drove me crazy because I don't have that rhythm. But he addresses that later.
Speaker A
This is a chart about your energy.
Speaker B
Level, about your energy level and your mood level and your ability to solve cognitive problems. That was another thing to solve math problems or other things. But they studied these three graphs. You've got the graphs in the book. Now here's what I want to mention about them. They know that there's the trouble of the middle. Middles sag. They sag with almost everything, including midlife crises, including your training toward being an artist. But here is the encouraging thing. With the study with the women, the rebound at night was higher. On all three of those graphs, the rebound was higher than the peak was.
Speaker A
Oh, the first one was not as high as the second one.
Speaker B
Isn't that great news? The natural pattern is you've been sleeping. We could call that an energetic trough in your torpid. Now you wake up and it's contrast You've been up high. What's up high has got to come down. Now you've got a trough. It happens in the afternoon. He's got a lot in there about the problems of afternoons for most people. And then the rebound is higher. This is related to midlife crises. It's related to all middles. Here's what he said. In that middle point, it can drag you down or it can spark you. And that thing about the basketball players who they studied when they were one point behind at halftime, they were more likely to win.
Speaker A
Yeah, the fire, they're bothered.
Speaker B
And that can create a powerful rebound.
Speaker A
The more that we talk about this, the more I think that the biggest thing here is the energy at which you approach your practice and your creativity.
Speaker B
Elaborate.
Speaker A
If you just are going through the motions all the time and you're not waking up super excited to go draw or paint or whatever it is you're doing, you're probably not going to make much progress. It seems like this is the main reason. Like everything that we're mentioning is connected to this. It's about your energy. Because when you have more energy, you have more inspiration, you're having more fun, everything goes up with it. You're more likely to get past the difficult parts. You're more likely to actually sit down and draw. You're. When you have more energy, you're more likely to draw for longer periods of time. You're better, more likely to have better ideas. You're more likely to just make good decisions. Everything gets better when you have more energy. And if you're stuck in low energy mode, you might just be stuck there forever. You might be. It's kind of like going to the gym with a low energy where you're always maintain. You're in maintenance mode. You're never going to reach the next level. You're just going to stay. Your body is going to stay where it is. Make sense.
Speaker B
It does make sense and we've always believed it since we've given it any thought. Two things when you're in the middle of something. One is if you are behind, that is, I've been working on this for 15 years and I look at these young people and they're so much better. You can do what Chemo Nicolaides recommended with gesture drawings. Throw them all away, but keep one every now and then so that you can look at them later and say, hey, I got better. From here to here. If you are behind, look at what you have accomplished. It can be encouraging. If you are ahead, look at what you've got left to do. And you can say, I'm over halfway done. And it can spark you to. If I can do that, get that far halfway, that means this next one, I am raring to go. And it will keep you with your eyes on the prize and know that it's maintainable.
Speaker A
I want to bring this up again. Christian mentioned it, but passion projects are huge. Passion projects are great because it'll bring the fun back into it.
Speaker B
Yeah.
Speaker A
It'll let you do the thing that you want to do. You get to choose. And it's not the magnum opus. No, that's not the same thing. You're not trying to do the big thing that everybody is gonna know you for. This is the thing you want to do. You get away from the things that you feel like you have to do, or the things people are paying you to do, or the things your teacher is telling you you got to do to improve. You just figure out what you actually want to do and then you'll have more energy probably doing that. That's how I, I think I kept my passion into it is that anytime I got bored or even started to feel like I might get bored, I always ran away from that feeling and I would just go towards that other thing that was driving me to have fun. I guess though, I was lucky that none of my passion projects were easy. None of them made me comfortable. Because that could sound like I'm saying, yeah, that one face that you keep sketching in your sketchbook. Yeah, keep doing that. That's your passion. I'm not saying that at all. That's just a comfort from, you know, maybe a fear of taking risks. I mean, that passion project that you haven't done that you really want to do, just go do it and, you know, take some time for yourself.
Speaker B
I used to be around illustrators who had agents and it was interesting to throw out.
Speaker A
Jesus Christ. Just the opposite. Right? You just, you're like, well, let me.
Speaker B
Tell you the story of agents, passion and unpassioned project. Most, most illustrators when they'd get together, would whine about their agents, but not all illustrators. I remember there were a few agents who illustrators really liked and they tended to be ones that had some really great illustrators. And I remember one couple of illustrators who had an agent that she encouraged them, she tried to make enough money because of the work I'm doing, to encourage you to do passion projects, to do your own things, to do, to play around, and because she also knew it was self serving to some degree because styles will last for a certain number of years now we don't want that style anymore. So she knew that if I'm going to keep the continuity of these good illustrators I've got, it's good that they might come in with their top notch skills and show new work. And we say, I haven't seen that kind of thing before and it's good. So she was doing a favor for herself and for them and for her clients to be ahead of the curve. And it comes from exactly what you pointed to, that when you're doing this because you love to do it, you're bringing energy to it.
Speaker A
That idea that someone's letting me do a passion project just sounds so dirty. Why? It's just, I don't know why.
Speaker B
She's the one in charge of their income.
Speaker A
I know she's the one who can.
Speaker B
Make them enough money to where you can afford.
Speaker A
I understand the dynamic.
Speaker B
Yeah, right. So that is doing them a favor. There were other agents who would nickel and dime their, their illustrators and just figuring, I don't have to do that. Once I've got this thing, I get 30% of it. They have to do the work. And so they. That's what a lot of the complaining was about.
Speaker A
It's the reason I stopped doing the whole fine art thing.
Speaker B
Your agents weren't.
Speaker A
No, I did have an agent, but she, she never actually told. Well, kind of, I guess she told me sometimes, but it was more about just like telling me what the market wants at the moment. Yeah, but no, it was shooting. She was fine. It was great. I left because I wasn't doing the things that I wanted to do. Yeah, it was more about what's going to sell. And then, oh, this commission. I got to do this guy's grandpa. Just like I could see why somebody would not want to get better. It's like, why did I get better? So I could do more of this. So I could draw this other guy's grandpa, even with more detailed mustaches. So I found like when making videos on YouTube, at least nobody was telling me what's gonna work. I could just discover it on my own. There was no market that was gonna tell me what to do. I had complete freedom. So that's why I was drawn to it.
Speaker B
How would you sum this up? Energy, attitude, Energy of the love, of the pursuit.
Speaker A
To the listeners. Try to. If you feel like you've been stuck, you've been intermediate for way too long. I would evaluate your energy levels and your inspiration. And like when you Approach drawing. Are you, like, full of excitement and you just can't stop? If not, you just. I don't know why, but just try to figure it out. I'm not going to point you to the solution at this moment, but try to make that something you try to solve. How do I increase my inspiration energy level? Your advice to them is just quit.
Speaker B
No, hang on a second. My advice is if you are struggling in the middle of your training or in the middle of anything, there's two big options. One is to quit, and quitting can be the case.
Speaker A
You are agreeing? I was just kidding. Marshall.
Speaker B
Read that bit of Levitt and Dubner, Stephen Levitt and Steven Dubner. Read that bit about the upside of quitting because you're getting stories of people who the best thing they ever did, and it may be that this being stuck and this being frustrated is because this is really not where you're going to shine. So that's one option. The other option is the reality of the second wind. Runners get exhausted if they keep going through it. They get a high afterward. In other words, you plow through and you find out, I wouldn't have gotten this if I had not plowed through.
Speaker A
So in that metaphor, what is the wall in the case of the person stuck in the plateau, you know, runners hit a wall and then if they get past the wall, then they hit that.
Speaker B
That's right.
Speaker A
So what is that wall?
Speaker B
There is a few things about that wall. It's a lack of growth, a boredom, a frustration, a complacency. One solution to the wall is that you keep at it and you will break through the wall, but you might hurt yourself. Another thing is to get a mentor who can say, you know, there's a door over here. We could go through there. Just shrug out under the wall, or you can shimmy through this window. It's not going to be easy, but you can do it.
Speaker A
That'd be great.
Speaker B
A third is to go another direction and so on.
Speaker A
Oh, just turn back?
Speaker B
Yeah. Or another one is to get a jackhammer or something that's gonna help you through.
Speaker A
Yeah.
Speaker B
Yes. That is using the metaphor of you're up against a wall. That can help you to say, I've got a few options to get through this wall. The metaphor can help you see it from a new angle. There are ways through, there are ways back, there are ways out. There's ways to get help. There's tools that can help me break through it. Okay.
Speaker A
Yeah.
Speaker B
Well, I think we're done.
Speaker A
You think caffeine would help.
Speaker B
Caffeine did get me through a professional job that was. I won't say where I was working, but I had a part time job before I became a full time illustrator. And it was in an art department. And I was not addicted to caffeine. But I would go in in the morning and the art director would say, here's what we're gonna do today. And I had a wave of fatigue. I don't want to do this. Just give me five minutes. I'll be right back. And I would go pour a big cup of coffee, and then I'd be ready to hear him. And I'd get to work. Because the caffeine would carry me through a job that I didn't want to do, which could be good because I did my job. It could be bad, because it's like the only way you can get through this work and this relationship is to take drugs.
Topics Covered
freshly juiced ginger
freshly juiced turmeric
apple juice cocktail
animal anatomy for artists
artistic frustration
intermediate plateau
artistic complacency
drawing skills
mentorship in art
bad habits in art
overcoming boredom in art
artistic development
George Leonard's Mastery
artistic growth challenges
sketchbooking techniques