If you want to make sure you’re going to do something, tell everyone you are going to do it.
We’ve all heard something similar to this. The idea being that if you tell everyone what you are going to do, you are now accountable to them as well as yourself.
I’m in a bit of a transition creatively-speaking. I’m fascinated by the thought of building out my fine art business, but I’m also searching for the best styles, techniques, and approach to do that. I have an idea of where I’d like to go, but the path is unclear.
Since I’m on this journey of producing my own photography/painting fine art, I thought it might be helpful to share with you what I’m learning along the way. With that in mind, I’ve decided to start publishing more content to my YouTube channel. To get started, I decided to create a weekly “show” (for lack of a better word), where I talk about what I’ve learned, what I want to accomplish for the next week, and how it’s (hopefully) helpful to you.
The first episode is below, followed by a transcript. I’d love to hear your thoughts, and if you’d like to follow me along on this journey, I invite you to subscribe to my channel here. Besides the show, I’ve got other videos planned:
- a review of one of my new favorite pieces of hardware (drops this week)
- photography/lighting/post-processing tips
- copywriting images
- miniature set work
- hopefully some interviews too
and much, much more!
Transcript:
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Hey there – my name’s Eric. Thanks for stopping by for Episode One of.. something. I don’t know what I’m going to call it yet. I don’t want the big production show kind-of verbiage. I think for just today we’re going to call it Weekly #1 and go from there. Let me give you some background on myself. I’m a commercial photographer based in Austin, Texas. I do editorial work, commercial work, some advertising work as well and then I also dabble in the fine arts space. So, fine art photography and fun, colorful painting work is what I enjoy.
This channel has been around in some form for 7 or 8 years, and then just neglected for many years. I’m bringing it back because I thought it might be helpful to talk about steps I’m taking to improve my work, and specifically the fine art painting that I’ll get to in a little bit, and how that can apply to what you might be working on, and see if these lessons that I’m learning as I go are of some benefit to you.
Like I mentioned, this channel’s been around for several years. I started shooting in 2005. I started shooting weddings and families, and I even went through a newborn baby photography phase which did not work at all. I did that for several years and then I got into editorial photography around 2009/2010. I shot a lot of magazine work here in town. Lots of cover shoots for Austin Woman magazine, ATX Man, Real magazine. I also did work for magazines outside of Austin. If they had people they wanted to focus on that were based here, I did those shoots. I guess around 2 or 3 years ago I started getting really interested in the fine art space, if only because it was an opportunity to either shoot or paint images that told stories that were interesting and funny to me.
I really love humor in my work, and so this looked to be a way that I could have an outlet for that and to share that work. I started doing paintings maybe about 2 or 3 years ago. It’s all been brand new and I’ve had to figure out my style. Much like on the photography side where it took me 4 or 5 years to figure out how I really liked things and how to do the post work on them. I’m kind of going through that right now on the painting side.
So I thought I would create this new weekly show content to talk about what I’m learning as I go through it, because to me I feel like it’s going to be a couple of years to get to somewhere where I want to be, and if there are tips and things I learn along the line, if I pass them on maybe they’ll be helpful to you. Especially if you’re like me where you find yourself creating in different kind of areas. So for me, photography and painting. You might have something like that going on and you might be looking for ways to merge them a little bit.
So, that’s the focus of this. I’ll be looking for ways that I can use all that information to create new artwork and through that process share that information with you. So here on the channel I’ll be doing some sort of weekly episode thing like this where I talk about what my goals were during the week, and what I got through, what I learned form that and to share that info with you. I’ll also be tossing in some other videos, like reviews. I’ve just done a review on a piece of new hardware. Plus I ‘ll share extra little side thoughts or rants or whatever. As they come up I will be sharing that as well.
But by doing all this I’m hopeful that two things will happen. One, I can get you information that’ll be helpful to you for your projects Also, by telling you what I want to do and what I plan on doing, that kind of makes me accountable to you. So for example if I say I’m going to do a certain number of paintings or a certain number of sketches or whatever, I feel like I need to show that. That’s kind of what this, it’s like a two prong thing. It helps you, and it helps me. With that, let’s talk about some goals.
For this coming week I think what I really want to work on is improving basically my sketching, my drawing. Because I’m still trying to figure out that style that I want to do. What I’ve noticed on the photography side, if you do photography work or art I’m sure on the drawing side as well, it’s going to take you time to figure out what style you like. What defines you. Where people look at that image and say “ah that is their image. I can tell by the way that’s created.” In photography that took me four or five years and the way I got there is basically copying a bunch of styles just to get little pieces that I could then merge all together to create something that I thought spoke to me.
So I have to go through that now on the drawing side. I thought for this week I would try to spend an hour a day sketching things and for those sketches, this week I’ve got a book on creating art where you’re basically drawing Disney characters. Certain Disney villains.
So I thought that might be fun as a way to kind of break the ice on that. For the next episode I’ll have those to show. If you’ve got tips on how you helped develop your style, I would like to hear about that for sure.
So please leave that in the comments below. Or if you have any questions I’ll be happy to answer those too. If you’re interested in following me on this journey and hopefully getting some tips to help you in your own work, please
Subscribe to the channel because I hope to build this out and really create something that’s helpful to a lot of people. Alright so I will see you guys for the next video and thanks for stopping by.