If I had done that, I wouldn't be trying to fix my last painting.

I have a comment for Jackie Jean: your logo and menu take up half the screen and only the artwork scrolls, which means you can't see most of the illustrations in full.

This was really great. I am hard on myself for not wanting to draw in front of others… I did it in art school without a problem but I don’t like the feeling of anyone out in public watching me draw. It’s very distracting! You two professionals saying the same helps me lighten up on myself. Thank you! Also, the casual storytelling is really fun. Reminds me of listening to my grandpa tell stories while sitting in his Archie Bunker chair. 😂

The music is like out of a Tim Burton movie. XD It was a little bit distracting for me, but besides this the video is absolutely cool! For me it is not "easy" to make so many studies before going into the final piece, because it needs a lot of patience to work this way, but I aknowledge that the result would look much better if I'd work this way. ;)

I'm a live painter from Germany and I paint at weddings almost every weekend. Sometimes I'm at weddings with 800 or 1000 people. I just learned to focus on my painting and ignore everything that's going on around me, as long as no one wants to talk to me directly. There are only very few times when people said something negative about my painting. Most of the time everyone is excited to watch the painting process and the children are my biggest fans. 😄 I love the podcast and listen to every episode since 2019 🩷

Great tips, thank you. (I could do without the background music, though - it's just distracting.)

good for Jake! I'm rooting for him and his goals.

Loved it as always. Samantha, thank you, your portfolio advice about stereotypical colors and people was so, so beneficial. You guys did well also, no worries, each episode makes me laugh. Looking forward to your next story time.

I would like to put forward the idea of convergence of skills. Drawing daily is a must for me, but I have recently been playing with technique. Little 4" × 3" Bristol paintings, using my supplies and pivoting the process has excited me in new ways. The time commitment is small due to the size, but the reward is vast. The convergence is applying the new technique to the larger drawing, bringing the two together. Love the podcast!

Sam I totally understand how you feel about the block and I’m glad you are coming out of it. Every time I get burnout after drawing too much I go back to playing doing 3D sculptures in my iPad, or doing polymer clay, writing, and sometimes all I need is to spend a whole week decluttering my house , gardening , doing some forgotten home projects like installing wall shelves I never got around to do or things like that. But art hobbies are my go to because is still creative but different form ❤

Some stories might be hard to illustrate 😅 I still remember the story about Lee being held hostage in his own house and Will getting hit by cars and Jake breaking his face 😂 😨but the story about the gerbil would be so fun to illustrate! The advice about the portfolio was great! Sam gave a lot of tips that I never thought about and Lee’s and Wills advise was great too! 🎨🖼️

the hotmale episode, apparently

Great stories 😊 I’m imagining the little gerbil cozy in bed lol

I did a talk at an elementary school, and I said as I was drawing "I am not the best at drawing" and it kid yelled out "No you're not!". I am now scared of kids.

I've never understood why people throw away the first crepe. Maybe I'm making them wrong, but that butter-soaked goodness is the one we fight over. Especially if you cook it longer than the rest so that it gets crispy bits.

I feel so much better to hear you all confess that you’re self conscious about drawing in front of people! I am the same…I can’t even make process videos because it feels so performative and I get all wigged out about the camera. I even had to turn the stroke recording off in my iPad because I felt like it was watching me!! 😂

Great advice. Sam's tips were new ideas that I haven't heard much of.

⛳ 🛒⛵ 🏯 Gold Cart/Boat/Japan!

Great advice! Thanks Lee! Excited about the new SVS website😊✨

@willTerryArt - Thanks for sharing those early paintings. As with all things, you gotta put the work in. And then some. And then some more. Forever and ever. Maybe that's my aha moment.

I agree Sam! I also wait till the very end for the banter and bloopers at the end of the video :)

I’m enjoying having Samantha as an alternate perspective. It’s a nice change of pace, even though I love all you guys 😁

I loved the comments about busting stereotypes, especially of older people. Grandmas are getting younger and look much younger than portrayed in many picture books. In response to the comments about not making grass green, sky blue, etc...YES!! In my book about a seahorse who plays the ukulele (it's a two-book series currently), I made rainbow water instead of blue. It was actually in response to how how terrible blue looks printed on print on demand and I remade all my watercolor illustrations using rainbow colors. That was also before I started illustrating in cmyk, so I have definitely learned a lot and implemented changes in my subsequent picture books. Still learning, still growing, still hoping to join SVS someday to really learn how to tell a story and transform my art. Keep up the great work with the podcast. I've loved having Samantha on.

I had a big ah-ha moment while watching one of Lee's courses on SVS. I think it was light and shadow. He did a section on stylizing light and shadow, and mentioned that it doesn't necessarily have to be realistic. Placing light shapes on dark shapes and vice versa works! It was like a puzzle piece clicked into place. Realistic lighting doesn't fit very well with the style I like to work in. Before watching that class i used more realistic lighting because I didn't know how to do it any other way. After learning that i was finally able to stop thinking so much in terms of light sources and cast shadows, and instead use value simply to define shapes. It made a huge difference!

My aha moment was when I realised to not be precious with my sketches. They're just sketches. They're supposed to suck. I'm just pushing ideas around until I get something worth investing more time. This mindset also helped me with my writing to not overthink every single sentence. Also Sam's sweater is adorable!!

Fighting negativity was a great subject. Makes me think about elections and voting. Some will say "It doesn't matter who you vote for. They are all corrupt." That is such a defeatist attitude. Vote! Also, pursue your passion and do the day by day work at building your future work. Great talk, guys!

I love the podcast, but would have liked it if Will's contribution of thinking outside the box had been pursued by Jake and Lee. I think that was a good nugget and is worth brainstorming as a group. Maybe not come up with a computer program to do realistic vector drawings, but the spirit of innovation is gold, in my opinion.

Whoa!! SVS is moving? BRT.

Thank you for reminding about this steps!

I work at a daycare where we hold book fairs every fall and the teachers can ask what books they would like to have at the book fair and I put in for Pickleball Paul, little bot and sparrow and this pretty planet. So hopefully one of those wholesale orders was from me lol.

👻✈️🦷😊

I LOVE the images for your tarot deck! I have two decks already but would buy these in a heartbeat as well. To me, they look like a combo of some my favorites things--tarot decks and children's picture book illustrations. Hope you'll let us know when the deck is coming out. 💗

Wow, great tips Lee. And you look just like Ethan Long btw LOL

Excellent and simple breakdown of the illustration process. Thank you !

I'm definitely the kinda artist who makes the drawing completely tight and a perfect before even thinking about color. My steps after that are the same (value and color) but Lee seems like the kinda artist who can just wing it with the drawing part. (though I guess winging it is easier if your characters are so small they don't involve any perspective ;-)

🚔🌲✈️ Lee’s mom gets super mom points! I’d love to hear some of her stories of Lee growing up. 😂

Wow this is great! I've been trying to streamline my system. Thank you!

Thanks for sharing this! It was super helpful. Do you use an overlay layer to add color to your value study for the color study? It just occurred to me while watching that this would probably work. Don’t know why I never thought to try it before!

Less an Ah Ha moment and more a Word of Caution: If you want to be a professional artist, draw everyday. If you want to break your back working blue collar gigs and only pump out something creative once every year or two, follow the muse, lol.

26:25 again with the gospel truth! I took the graphic novel/comics class myself. A phenomenal workshop from Jake on SVS. I’ve wanted to make comics since I wanted to be an artist as a kid but I never did them. Learned so much from the course but also realized it isn’t what I really want to be doing. But I had to do it to get it out of my system.

24:19 Sam! Yes! I feel seen. This is exactly how I feel and what I have struggled with. It made me question if I was really an artist and if I should keep striving. But I love it so have persevered. Thanks for sharing this.

👻🦷✈ Great stories!

KZbin deleted my comment, not sure why, but basically my Ah-ha moment was about composition and creating focus in comics. My first several comic projects tried to cram all my ideas in at once and the same level which muddied the focus and readability was lost. But I started reading more western comics and seeing how creators maintain focus and while also building out their worlds. I had also recommended two of my favorite independent comic creators I thought would be good for an interview Aaron Lopresti and Fabrizio Aeillo.

Always love the stories 😂 🛬 🚓 🎄

My big ah-ha moment was inviting our kids (4 & 8yrs at the time) to draw in my sketch book. One of the best decisions I ever made as a dad. Another helpful episode. Thanks guys!!

I feel like i haven’t had a career shifting "ah-ha" moment, but rather a lot of little "oh-ok" moments... The most recent being from the weekly art challenge I am doing, where I found out that I can still create good pieces of work even when I don’t feel like doing the drawing or am not excited about the topic.

Jake, Samantha, and Will, thank you for the presentation.

Ah ha moment was during a critique, teacher had us lay our drawings on the floor, and as he walked around talking about them was walking on them. Made me realize each drawing is not so important. I started drawing a lot and throwing away a lot of drawings and still do.

Big Aha moment: I'll choose one of my favorites, and it was after I dug up two books I had illustrated years ago, for an author who was totally art directing everything, I will not put these books on my website, or anywhere! They ARE AWFUL. So bad... I was doing all the wrong things, And the subject matter for the 2nd one was so tasteless and embarrassing I know for a fact this was my moment. RUN, from this client. Nothing good ever comes from me if I am drawing for someone else like this, and to only do projects I fall in love with. You guys helped me to realize this. I agree, learning will never stop, and it IS so good to crank stuff out... but keeping your eye on the ball makes you focus and stay hungry to create.

Ah ha moment would be when i learned not to draw hard lines from the get-go. Instead, draw lightly, and then not only is it easier to erase and fix things as you go, but you can go back and render after you have the shape. I used to render as i drew the pictures just to end up with a badly proportioned finished product.