Weird but true secrets that make you a better artist

[@nintai6656]

That first point can’t be overstated. This world desperately needs more selflessness. If 10% more people thought about how their actions affect others and how they can help improve the lives of others this world might be worth saving. I refuse to live in a world without selflessness so I must be selfless. That way any world I am a part of will include selflessness.

[@TheArtMentor]

I’m so happy to find more people like you saying that! Also, doesn’t that perspective enrich your whole artmaking experience??

[@mlghardcolt9865]

10:40 sometimes scrolling without caring about art ideas that social media gives you makes your mind wonder. For example , Scrolling through discord without looking at the art channels.

[@TheArtMentor]

Ah that’s true. What kinds of ideas have you acquired from doing this?

[@mlghardcolt9865]

@@TheArtMentor I prefer to not to say but it depends on person to person since many different circumstances exist on social media and real life.

[@TheArtMentor]

Fair to say. Any other ways you encourage boredom in your life?

[@mlghardcolt9865]

@@TheArtMentorlong slient car drives. I don’t wonder too much in these since I focus more on driving.

[@TheArtMentor]

Yeah those are great! Even if you can’t do it in a car, I wonder where else you can unplug and just be alone in your thoughts?

[@ThomasCurrie1024]

As someone who has been a long-time writer, reads constantly, and who is working to also become a digital artist, it fills my heart with joy to see you go into detail about the importance of having a story to tell and a vision to execute with my drawings. Creating new concepts and ideas and building upon the ones I already have is something I excel at, so videos like this give me hope. Thanks again man, fantastic content as always.

[@TheArtMentor]

Awesome to hear your thoughts and thanks for sharing! What writing projects do you enjoy as well?

[@ThomasCurrie1024]

@@TheArtMentor I write about Gods and Goddesses of my own making that exceed the concept of absolute Omnipotence, semantics be damned.

[@richbailey819]

Finding energy after work and taking care of my family is a frequent struggle for me. One trick that works pretty well if I sit down and don't feel it is to do warm up drawings. Geometric shapes, gestures from memory, generic forms, just basic stuff. If after 5-10 minutes of that I still don't feel anything I hang it up and go to bed. But most of the time it's enough to re-engage my brain and I can work on art until one of the children wakes up or my wife insists I come to bed.

[@TheArtMentor]

That’s so true! In fact I’ve advocated very similarly. Did you also happen to watch my video on having infinite art energy?

[@richbailey819]

@@TheArtMentor I know I have. I tend to listen to these when I'm at work.

[@TheArtMentor]

Ah that’s why this sounded familiar! I thought so haha. Yes that’s a great idea for getting warmed up. It builds momentum and then you can draw for hours most of the time, right? That’s been my experience

[@zinzolin14]

A solid video jam packed with good advice, especially the part about sacrifices. I just had a lazy day this week when I had so much that I needed to get done, and wow do I feel bad about it now. It's just as you said, too much sleep, eating poorly and succumbing to distractions. I wasn't replenishing my energy properly 😥

[@TheArtMentor]

It’s so easy to fall into our earthly desires that we forget what fills our souls, isn’t it? Not to say you can’t have a rest day. But that’s called creative recoil, ever heard of it?

[@zinzolin14]

@@TheArtMentor Yeah we all deserve regular periods of rest and day offs or weekends, even from art. This is the first time I've ever heard of creative recoil. I'd like to hear about it more and maybe how to overcome it.

[@TheArtMentor]

Absolutely! I take days off too. I just often schedule it or reschedule what I planned to do to stack into another day or two. Does that sound doable? Exhaustion is real, but so is disappointment. And sure I’m happy to talk about creative recoil! Should I talk about that in a future video?

[@zinzolin14]

​@@TheArtMentorthat's good, planning your days off sounds better than just working and taking breaks whenever. Yes id love to hear more about creative recoil in a future video 👍

[@TheArtMentor]

@zinzolin14 will do, thanks for the suggestion!

[@CarlosMartinez-pv5kl]

Thank you keep up the good mentoring for artists, it is helping me and just wanted to let you know that. 👍👍

[@TheArtMentor]

thanks so much for saying so and supporting my content! What did you enjoy most in this video?

[@ramseydoon8277]

This video is a practical manual of instruction on how to achieve the Great Work. In fifteen minutes. Men and women have been burned at the stake to keep some of this stuff from spreading among the masses. I wish I was joking. Thank you for refreshing & upgrading my perspective. Thank you for sharing your wisdom and expertise and your Art with the world.❤

[@TheArtMentor]

Thanks for all of the appreciation! Which of these tips did you find most helpful for you to start doing now?

[@ramseydoon8277]

@@TheArtMentor remembering to be of service with one's art and artistry, and the importance of spending time doing nothing in order for ideas to fully gestate and stew and rise to the surface in the mind. I'll rewatch your video, though, I know you said some other crucial things.

[@user763-k5t]

Getting a good night's sleep is really important-it's like the cornerstone of our well-being. Experts say aim for at least 8 hours. Forget about the whole 'work while they sleep' talk. Think long term. Your health is more valuable than any work or money in the grand scheme of things.

[@TheArtMentor]

Yeah nobody’s preaching being unhealthy, right? Yet studies show that the average healthy adult only needs 7 hours of sleep to operate at maximum capacity. Furthermore, variations in that are common. Like would it surprise you to know that 6 hours of sleep for me is a fully charged battery? Sleep quality has a lot more to it than a duration 👍 Also, if you’re miserable and behind on where you want to be in life, what type of counter effect does that have on your physical health? Stress and anxiety kills more people every day than sleep deprivation does in a year 😅

[@user763-k5t]

@@TheArtMentor The ideal amount of sleep can vary from person to person, experts says: children 10~13 / 9~11, teenagers 8~10, adults 7~9 But these are just guidelines (and these can be a bit biased because we are in capitalism). People should sleep until satisfied and completed all their REM cycles. That's why 'sleep less' is bad advice. for someone that is miserable and feelling behind, this grind mentality can be devastating. It can double the problem. Can be a downward spiral. In addition to worsening health in the long term (obesity, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, depression, and all-cause mortality), It affects the day itself (daytime sleepiness, daytime fatigue, depressed mood, poor daytime functioning, and other health and safety problems). A bad sleep night increase the chance of work acidents, transit acidents and injury in athletes. Can make attention and mood worse, and treating people worse. Can affect creativity and how we see the world. For artists it should be brutal. Imagine you breaking the last REM phase to wake 30 min earlier. Will this 30min-1 hour improve your destiny or worsen it? It's not necessarily about the exact specific times. It's just about having enough cycles and not breaking them. Because for one detail the mind and body can function worse the whole day (and its cumulative). It's not worth worsening 15~ hours to gain 1~2 hours more. We have to think in how we improve/increase our sleep.

[@gvanzillust8729]

I think learning about sales is not something that is hard to learn for artist, because some of the skillsets like empathy is already possess as a high quality attribute that artist already have that a high quality sales people need, yet most sales people don't really have that attribute, base on my personal experience it's the thing that I'm afraid of that having this skill maybe will take away the time of making my art but being a salesy person that have to do things like run to house to house and pitch something and get rejected many times, but later on I realize that it's the skill not only make money but it also amplify everything I do significantly as a storyteller so I can do things right and faster for the creation of craft itself, for an example working on project like manga where I have to understand different perspective of every person in the story and draft a sequential panel accordingly to not make the person looks too fake or unrelatable and ended up not being an interesting story. I wish I could tell myself to have the courage to learn this skillset and integrate into my artistic carrier as early as possible, if and only if I truthfully learn sales as a skillset that is stackable with art correctly. Thanks for sharing the tips!

[@TheArtMentor]

It’ll seriously transform your outlook and potential! Glad to hear you’re so excited to learn and apply that principle. Have you ever heard the old saying that the best time to plant a tree was 10 years ago, and the second best time is today? It’s never too late 😁

[@barbi111]

To get more energie can also help for me when I close my opened cycles, like I really trying to clean my room for a while and finally doing it. Hope it's understandable, english is not my primary language 😅

[@TheArtMentor]

So true! Being in sync with the energy around you, especially in your environment, is crucial to your working state. Those open cycles become mentally taxing, don’t they?

[@barbi111]

Yup!@@TheArtMentor

[@TheArtMentor]

That’s a great strategy! What else are you doing to promote better energy for your art?

[@ashe5704]

These videos really made me realize there is a world of art that hasn't have to deal with Pokemon or Furries, so very life changing ❤

[@TheArtMentor]

Glad to hear! What genre do you like to make art in?

[@jetboyblue4478]

For expanding my creativity I’m usually focusing on old science fiction movies comics been working on literature even published two graphic novels and started doing animation on top of that. Thanks for the upload

[@TheArtMentor]

That’s an impressive workload! Good for you man 👍 what’s the next big ambition you have?

[@jetboyblue4478]

@@TheArtMentor it’s actually three, one is to finish and release the rest of my graphic novel and to release another original comic on top of completing a animated feature based on my original comic

[@TheArtMentor]

That’s an ambitious list! So which one has priority?

[@TheArtMentor]

Which of these concepts do you want to work on and why? Anything else you think should’ve made this list?

[@Sephira91]

Really nice video you got here! I recently was watching a video from Matthew Dobrich on art advice and he is also a big advocate of reading in order to feed your imagination, so it's good that you mentioned that! He has a lot of really inspirational advice generally speaking and does a good job at explaining his artistic process as well. Would you have a list of the people you mentioned in the video? I would love to listen to what they have to say.

[@TheArtMentor]

Thanks and I’m glad you enjoyed! Which of these tips did you want to try out or do more of? And sure: tony Robbins, Jim Rohan, Chris Harmozi, Leila Harmozi, David Goggins, and Steve Harvey

[@Sephira91]

@@TheArtMentor I definitely need to get comfortable with "putting myself out there" first out there first of all, and also providing great customer service for potential clients. Nowadays, with a lot of online transactions being done though google forms and the likes, actually talking to people has kind of become a foreign concept. Recently I found myself asking myself this question: "What can I do to provide great customer service that you can't get from simply using a google form and calling it a day?"

[@ramseydoon8277]

Is there a way to translate the dimensions and megapixels of an image as a way of determining its actual size? Does that question make any sense?

[@TheArtMentor]

Sure so you want to know the physical size of digital art? Your program should be able to compute that. PS and the like can. Have you tried that yet?

[@ramseydoon8277]

@@TheArtMentor no, not yet, but I will. Thank you!

[@TheArtMentor]

No problem! Not sure which program you’re working in, but it’s view>actual size (or CTRL + 0) in PS

[@ramseydoon8277]

@@TheArtMentor sorry for the late reply, but I'm using two apps on my android, glitchlab and chromalab. I uploaded a test image to a site made for this purpose that I found; if I were to print my pieces as is they would be just under 40 inches square. I'm glad, I was worried I was working on a smaller scale than I realized and would need to drastically upscale pieces for printing or online display.

[@Lilas.Duveteux]

For me, my drawings are connected to relaxation, portfolio building and my masters degree. I do a lot of research, and it gives me a lot of ideas. It's also a great exercise of visualisation to imagine a space described in birds eye view and 2d with words, to try and imagine it vertically, from the point of view of someone entering that building. I want to be an artist for Ubisoft after I graduate from my History degree, so yeah...I need to build my interior design portfolio. Since it's XVIIIth century, I also try to get better at drawing clothes, so it gives me an excuse for character art. Sometimes, it's specifically XVIIIth century clothes, sometimes it's teaching myself to draw better lace, color variation. I think I need to stop procrastinating and finally start some interior and architectural design. I also want to teach myself to draw plant species, but keep procrastinating: naughty me. Namely apple trees and rowan. I want to focus on drawing. I am also planning to illustrate the Little Mermaid, the original. I decided to give the Little Mermaid green hair, as a way to harmonize the yellowish undertone of her rose petal skin and her deep blue eyes. I tried to also do bright pink on Snow White...It was a mistake, and I should have not tried to copy natural dyes and simply put her in sakura pink, which was my original idea anyways. My health is pretty poor now, but now that I am not swimming in debt, I'll try to get some exercise.

[@TheArtMentor]

Sounds like you have some great ideas and your references align to a lot of my advice here, huh? Looking forward to seeing those designs! Have you started them yet?

[@Lilas.Duveteux]

@@TheArtMentor One, I started. I started with a few illustration. I am so happy my professor told me that walls were plastered in the XVIIIth century, since my early attemps had visible raw stone. Fun times ! Right now, I am working on one just for fun. I will eventually move to 3d, but I first want to get comfortable with 2d.

[@TheArtMentor]

@Lilas.Duveteux sounds like a terrific project! Looking forward to seeing how it develops 💪

[@Lilas.Duveteux]

@@TheArtMentor Thanks. It won't be soon though...It's very much a master's degree.

[@TheArtMentor]

@Lilas.Duveteux all in good time! You have the right direction and that matters the most 👍

[@Envy_Level_Zero]

Have you guys tried making a story with its own world and characters? Do it.

[@TheArtMentor]

Yeah it’s a great experience! Is that what you’re doing lately in your own art?

[@Envy_Level_Zero]

@TheArtMentor yes, I have a set of stories that connect with each other. One of the stories is about an isekai band with members from diffirent worlds.

[@TheArtMentor]

@hyperspaceshow that’s so cool! Have you been looking on that for a while?

[@Envy_Level_Zero]

@@TheArtMentor the world has been pretty much living in my subconscious. Im bad with dialogue expositions (show don't tell) So a chapter looks like a story teller reading from a script. Which is dry.

[@TheArtMentor]

@hyperspaceshow you’ll get better over time with scripting. Do you watch other channels for tips on that too?

[@ThomasCurrie1024]

I do definitely need to drink more water and get more exercise as well, hehehehe. I'm working on eating healthier though and have significantly reduced the amount of sugar I consume. I drink Coke Zero, and that's the only thing I don't compromise on, but I will try to include more water in my liquid consumption as well. Just straight water, no flavors, no enhancements. I don't care for water flavors anyway, so that shouldn't be hard.

[@TheArtMentor]

That's a great goal to have! I'm also a diet soda fan here lol. Do you have any particular health goals to help cheer you on?

[@ThomasCurrie1024]

@@TheArtMentor A few, but most of them are tied to my art goals. I’m going to use the thought of improving my creative energy as incentive for improving my fitness and overall health.

[@TheArtMentor]

@ThomasCurrie1024 they’re definitely interconnected!

[@SylvesterLazarus]

I'm so early The Art Mentor has's said "Y'all"..

[@TheArtMentor]

Lol! Congrats on the first comment 🎉 what did you enjoy in today’s video?

[@SylvesterLazarus]

@@TheArtMentor I found the idea of letting yourself be bored more helpful. I sure don't do it as often as I should.

[@TheArtMentor]

@SylvesterLazarus I know it’s so weird right? Can I say it’s been immensely helpful for my own creativity and mental health? It’s so great when you have a busy or stressful day to actually unwind instead of mediate yourself

[@ramseydoon8277]

GROK

[@TheArtMentor]

At the risk of sounding old, whats that mean? 😂

[@ramseydoon8277]

@@TheArtMentor it's from Robert Heinlein's "Stranger In A Strange Land". The simplest definition would be something along the lines of "I understand", though I can't do the word justice so here's some quotes from the book that I snagged from Wikipedia: Grok means "to understand", of course, but Dr. Mahmoud, who might be termed the leading Terran expert on Martians, explains that it also means, "to drink" and "a hundred other English words, words which we think of as antithetical concepts. 'Grok' means all of these. It means 'fear', it means 'love', it means 'hate' - proper hate, for by the Martian 'map' you cannot hate anything unless you grok it, understand it so thoroughly that you merge with it and it merges with you - then you can hate it. By hating yourself. But this implies that you love it, too, and cherish it and would not have it otherwise. Then you can hate - and (I think) Martian hate is an emotion so black that the nearest human equivalent could only be called mild distaste. Grok means "identically equal". The human cliché "This hurts me worse than it does you" has a distinctly Martian flavor. The Martian seems to know instinctively what we learned painfully from modern physics, that observer acts with observed through the process of observation. Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed - to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science and it means as little to us as color does to a blind man. The Martian Race had encountered the people of the fifth planet, grokked them completely, and had taken action; asteroid ruins were all that remained, save that the Martians continued to praise and cherish the people they had destroyed. All that groks is God.

[@TheArtMentor]

@ramseydoon8277 wow this is amazingly thorough and interesting. I grok you now!

[@tristen_grant]

Way to wordy. Please get to the point.

[@TheArtMentor]

Which point are you referring to?

[@lumpystilskin5367]

Hey, have you encountered a particular client that doesn't let you post your finished work online? And how do should o deal with it?

[@TheArtMentor]

So before I give my take, did you sign a contract or NDA agreement for the client you’re referring to?

[@lumpystilskin5367]

@@TheArtMentor no not at all. The client just went straight into the project.

[@TheArtMentor]

Okay and have you already been paid for the project? Or have you given them any of the assets involved?

[@lumpystilskin5367]

@@TheArtMentor oh yeah i got paid recently, and a good price too. But the issue is, I'm not allowed to post it online except for him, or else his reputation could be ruined. That's what he claimed

[@TheArtMentor]

@lumpystilskin5367 what kind of art are you making for someone that would potentially ruin their reputation?