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Advice For Artists Who Are Too Hard On Themselves

Jun 06, 2021
Hey guys, I'm Adam from this pixel and welcome back today. I want to slow things down and get a little more personal and by personal I don't necessarily mean personal about me, more personal about us as

artists

, professionals and humans, because I find that although all humans are of course humans in that sense of the word We all have thoughts and feelings and we all have good and bad days, when it comes to the mind of an artist the world inside and outside our heads can be kind of a tornado sometimes and we may not even realize it. that it's happening because it's a common thing for us, it's the way we think, it's the way we feel, it's the way we live our lives, so we tend to take for granted how many incredibly crazy things we have.
advice for artists who are too hard on themselves
Juggling emotionally, mentally, professionally, physically, sometimes there are a lot of things we have to deal with and I wanted to give them a little context. I just want to give you an idea of ​​the kind of things we

artists

have to juggle in our minds. To begin with, the very career of being an artist is completely set in stone. There is no artist with a unique form. There is no one-size-fits-all design for the art world. There are many different styles of art. There are many different career ways to advance. about doing your craft, because frankly there are artists and as artists we don't know, not only are there people who have to juggle our knowledge of data information, but we also have to train our hands physically, we have We have to moderate our emotions and use them practically.
advice for artists who are too hard on themselves

More Interesting Facts About,

advice for artists who are too hard on themselves...

We have to be able to see things that other people in the world can't see. We have to be able to visualize gestures in three-dimensional form. We are students of humanity, science and medicine. We juggle a lot. Also, there is no set guide on how to do it. Pursue things professionally What do I want to do? Where do I belong? Am I more of a science fiction artist? Am I more of a realism artist? Am I an impressionist? Am I someone who likes to make dolls at home? I'm someone who works in a studio and works on professional productions it's video games it's film it's both I work in special effects maybe I should learn 3d maybe I should stick with 2d and I'm just scratching the surface I'm just skimming the surface, also, Where do we turn for guidance?
advice for artists who are too hard on themselves
There are a million different places to go for guidance, what kind of guidance do you need? Are you at a time in your life where you need some tough love and practical

advice

? your life where you're done with a technicality for a while and you need someone you just need to express yourself, you just need to explore things in a very carefree way, are you someone who expresses yourself in a very deliberate way, very precise, very way technique or are you someone who just creates and allows your canvas to surprise you there are a million different ways to pursue your career there are a million different careers you can have and there are a million different ways for you to doubt yourself and that's what What I want To talk about today I want to get inside your head and I want to explore some of the doubts or many of the doubts that you may have as an artist and before continuing I want to make something very, very clear: I am not a doctor I am not a psychologist I do not have degrees in none of the above I'm not a philosopher I'm not a fortune teller or self-proclaimed guru I'm just Adam I'm a teacher I'm an artist I'm a father, that's what I am, so I understand that I'm coming from a personal place and I want to share with you some personal

advice

, right wisdom that has been transmitted to me throughout the centuries.
advice for artists who are too hard on themselves
I want to start with a scenario just to illustrate where I want to continue with this, imagine you are young and you have a father who constantly insists on you to watch your temper, now you are not necessarily someone who has anger issues, you manage your emotions and also the following person, but you have a parent who constantly reminds you that every time you lose your cool, someday you could cross the line, you could end up legitimately hurting someone, you could become a domestic abuser or a wife beater or a husband beater who you could convert.
You become a horrible monster and every time you get even a little angry, that phobia comes back to your face day after day and begins to generate in you this belief that anger is bad, it begins to generate in you a great insecurity. that every time you lose your cool, it could be the beginning of the end for you, you could end up in handcuffs, so what happens to you? What do you end up doing right? It begins to manifest itself as an insecurity, a doubt, a fear. and when you are afraid of something, those fears tend to be worse, they show up more when you are in a vulnerable place and what better vulnerable place is there than to be really angry about something, but because you are afraid because you are afraid of hurting someone because you are afraid of what your temper could do to someone else you turn that pain and turn that pain back on yourself I don't want to hurt anyone else so I'll hurt myself so maybe you broke something maybe you put your fist to fist or your foot through the wall, maybe you know, you scream at the top of your lungs in anger as long as you don't touch another person and this happens every time you get angry.
Just once someone bothers you, a bully bothers you, someone pushes you against the wall, someone picks on you or belittles you, you turn that pain on yourself, now imagine after all those years where that parent, that guardian, that friend or that lover filled your head with this phobia with this fear with this inevitability one day they turn around and say I made it all up you've never hurt anyone in your entire life despite everything I've said you're the kind of person that doesn't Even like killing spiders, you pick them up and put them outside in the garden so that no one accidentally steps on them or so that the cat doesn't get to them.
You have never listened to anyone in your entire life, in fact you are the opposite, you have been a protector, you have always been gentle, you have always cared and you have never hurt, you have never even considered hurting anyone else, it is not even in your blood to do that, imagine what that thought was like. how that new reality would instantly transform that person's perspective on

themselves

; Also, imagine how much that reality would transform the way they behave because they are no longer afraid of hurting anyone else, it no longer becomes an option and the next time someone approaches them and calls them names or bothers them or pushes them against the wall, They push that person away, they tell them that they don't like them and they walk away and not even their heart rate increases a single beat.
The vapors remain calm and collected and manage to handle that problem with a lot of diplomacy and a lot of balance. This is what I learned. This is the greatest lesson I learned in my life and it resonates in everything I do. I have done it once and it resonates in all the relationships I have had, even with my family with my girlfriend with my children with my students with my friends people are what you accuse them of being and if they are not what you accuse them of being, They will become what you accuse them of being if you try

hard

enough for long enough if you call someone stupid every day and every time that person screws something up or doesn't get a fact right you nail them to the wall with your ignorance and you tell them what idiots they are, how can they not know something that is such simple information that everyone knows?
Then that person will grow up afraid of being stupid and will do everything in their power to prove that they are not stupid or if they are more passive they will succumb to the reality that they are idiots when they never were idiots in the first place now everything I have done so far I have externalized it I have painted this picture as someone on the outside, doing this to another person is a force external to you that is internalized and changes and manipulates your path in life for better or worse, but what I want to talk about today is from that other person, that other individual, that other entity that is doing exactly that for you every day of your life 24 hours a day, seven days a week, any guess, of course, I'm talking about you , there's a good chance you'll do this to yourself and it makes that situation worse, which makes it worse for artists. in particular it is because we live in a world of so much uncertainty what is our blessing is also our curse we are blessed to be able to adapt to any situation because our passion our path in life requires us to know many different things that we can Not only is it required that we be extremely good at law or extremely good at carpentry, we are expected to be extremely good at a lot of things because as artists we have to adapt to whatever situation we have to face to enter the world. minds of different people from different cultures and different orientations to be able to capture and understand them with an eye of empathy or sympathy depending on the situation and that is why we live in this world of very little solidity there is very little written for an artist, apart from the fact that we love what we do as such, any small vulnerability and vulnerability always comes from ignorance and by ignorance I mean ignorant of ourselves that we end up being our worst trolls, we end up being our worst booers, our worst. enemies and since we don't direct our insecurities at other people, technically speaking we are not doing any real harm, well here is my wake up call to you, you are doing a lot of harm to yourself, you are creating a script. you are creating a reality from nothing with your talented artistic mode you are manufacturing your own reality the reality of your own incompetence the reality of your own inability to maintain competence the reality of your own technical weakness the reality of your own financial situation instability or your your own lack of ability to make money in the first place your lack of ability to fit in your lack of having that style that people look for lack of adaptability to work in different types of studios lack of social skills being able to sleep with big bosses lack of coolness that allows you to fit into those big cool studios when everyone is sitting around having lunch or a group dinner with the studio you're completely riddled with insecurities now of course you could be doing right now what I'm trying to help you get over and that's convince yourself that you are something you are not.
I'm not speaking literally, I'm speaking hypothetically, you may not possess any of these insecurities that I'm describing right now or maybe you possess every one of them and can add another 65,000 to the pile. I know for myself that every insecurity I just mentioned are all the ones that live inside me and I realize that I don't speak in the past tense, I speak in the present tense, I feel this today, I feel it now, I felt it yesterday, I feel it I felt it last week and I probably will feel it in two years, but the difference between 15 20 25 Adam, who is 30, and Adam, who is now almost 45, is I have learned to reanalyze myself.
I have learned to look at myself objectively from the outside and ask myself the question. Have confidence and know how to ask. For me, the question Adam is who are you really and then I can answer myself and say no, really, it's a little silly to think that, but for all my wisdom in my age in all my ears, which isn't that many if you think about it. . Talking about it for decades is not a long time. I still catch myself every day thinking about these feelings and when you reach out to me in the comments or send me an email or message and thank me for helping you through your own insecurities that doesn't mean I'm over them, it just means I said something. out loud that you've been thinking the whole time and never thought to say out loud what I'm doing by sharing these stories with you is I'm making your thoughts a tangible real thing, I'm turning them into a thing because unless you Someone actually verbalizes them, it's just a feeling and when things are just a feeling, they are not due, you can't see them, you can't touch them with your hands, you can't move them and analyze them from different angles, they just float in your head like a cloud and that cloud confuses you and discourages you and fills you with all these doubts and that cloud gets bigger and bigger until someone says hey, there's a big cloud in your head and as soon as someone says that, you say, oh yeah, It's a thing and you get it out of your head and you look at it and when you do that it allows you to let it go.
A lot of people ask me, where do you come up with all these ideas for these art talks? I come up with all these ideas to put on these art talks because I'm always analyzing myself. I'm always in my own head all the time and it's amazing how many thoughts I have every day, as many as yours. I have all these thoughts in my head and I think to myself that it's something that needs to be talked about, it's something that no one ever talks about that's why artists like Bobby Chu Anthony Jones Chris Utley Chris Utley uh, he is fantastic when it comes to these things, they have the ability to verbalize things that all artists deal with but never realize and when you listen to Someone Like Any of Them or Oh Dante is another great example of this when they take those thoughts so intimate and put them on a page for you, right?
I appreciate them doing that. They are darkened. There is anotherthat does that. All of these artists have the gift of being able to shine, hold a mirror up to your face and say, "Hey, look, that's you." You're right, I didn't even realize that's why I listen to them all the time that's why I value what they say so much is because that's exactly what they're doing and that's something I'm trying to do with you today. I'm trying to hold a mirror up to you and say "hey", all those things that bloom in your head are real things and they're actually part of who you are you're an artist you're a creative person so you're not just good at creating beautiful things not only are you good at creating convincing octave emotional magical things you are also very good at creating your own fictional phobias your own realities we are very good at creating believable things out of nothing that we can do with our own lives with such incredible precision that we end up believing it and I want add an ingredient to these thoughts that I have mentioned in the past and that is something that happened to me very unexpectedly. at a gym of all places owned by a friend of mine who is also a fellow 2D and 3D artist who also went to the same gym as me and we ended up getting caught up in a long conversation.
I've mentioned this before, I'm sure. I have done it because this is something that is very meaningful to me and his name is Xavier if you are listening and he has yes, he is a friend of mine who we don't see very often but he has traveled the world quite a bit. He's an incredibly empathetic person, he's incredibly fascinating, he has the wisdom of a 95-year-old, he's like a young, attractive version of David Attenborough, who is from South America and has a beard, if you can imagine it, and he's also in very good shape. We were sitting we were standing in the gym and I was talking, we were filming about art and 3D and all that kind of stuff and at one point we lost attention talking about more personal things and I mentioned the fact to him. that he had hypothyroidism, he had hypothyroidism and nothing too serious, nothing that was ever terribly unmanageable, but something that was an ordeal for me for a while and I went on to say at the time that it was probably because I smoked for 20 years.
I probably did. I said this to myself as a smoker for 20 years and I didn't say it to myself with any level of self-hatred. I didn't feel whole. I didn't feel much shame or guilt when I said it. I was just trying to do it. being objectively critical of myself and saying yes, well yes, I paid, I paid the price for being stupid and doing something irresponsible, luckily I quit years ago, but I said very nonchalantly and he stops me, this is Adam and he looks me right in the eyes. eyes. and I said what and he said what did you just do and like I said, this isn't like we're not best friends, we don't hang out all the time, but he got inside my head, he said, what did you just do? and I said: what did I just do? what I have just done?
What are you looking at me like that? Yes and he goes Where are you? Why do you blame yourself? Why are you being so

hard

on yourself? And besides, I'm not being one. that hard on myself and I just state a fact and he says no Adam it's not a fact there is no reason in the world why you should be so mean to yourself and blame yourself so much for something your body is going through , he says, is someone in your family has hypothyroidism, I said yes, my mother is doing well, that's where you probably got it from, it's hereditary, you didn't give yourself hypothyroidism by abusing yourself now, even if you did, even if I did it, that wasn't his point, he said he stopped doing it. and he told me something that has echoed in my head my entire life to this day in the gym under the lights, Adam said, have some compassion for yourself, those words hit me so hard because we never give ourselves the chance to take care of ourselves.
We spend much of our lives being hard on ourselves and kind to others, don't worry, despite everything, despite the hurricane of thoughts and feelings running through our heads, we never stop and say: you know what, no there is nothing. that's happening to you stop accusing yourself of being something terrible stop accusing yourself of being incompetent of being stupid of being fat being ignorant of being ugly of not being good enough of not being cool enough stop doing that you are none of the above you are exactly what are you accusing yourself of and I spent my whole life unapologetically accusing myself of all these different things and yet you stopped me and he said to me have some compassion for yourself what it did was it stopped me from being a troll with myself, stopped me. of attacking me emotionally, he did to me, we analyzed the words I used to describe myself to other people, which I do very easily because it is a reality in my life when in reality it was not and I began to make a daily effort to that point forward of accusing myself if it's not all those terrible things that I call myself and it's funny how with my students I see these students of mine who have such incredible talent and although they are complete beginners, there is even someone who has spent their entire life life is a programmer and they They are getting into art.
I look at my students and see nothing but incredible brilliance. The ability to overcome these giant obstacles of the mind in order to create art is something we take for granted. The moment, and even a beginning artist, when I see them accomplish something and I see something with their eyes and they capture something with their hands that never existed before that lesson is extraordinary and then at the same time I hear the students say yes, I know it sucks. I'm like dude, if you knew what you accomplished, if you knew you literally created new synapses in your brain that didn't exist, how many people in your position, how many programmers are engineers, can accomplish things like this, most people just get upset and that is.
The reason we artists live in such a lonely and unique place is because very often what we value as people and as professionals has absolutely zero value, zero weight and zero meaning to many other people and what I'm saying it's everything you think and feel it's something real I feel it you feel it and your whole community all those people out there every artist you see at art station it doesn't matter if they're from Dubai or Singapore or Frankfurt or they're from Wellington or they're from Montreal or they are from Vancouver or they are from Santiago it doesn't matter each one of us has that point in common each one of us and you my friend my very talented beautiful compassionate, wise, well trained, exceptional friend, you are all of the above and I want you stop doubting yourself.
I want you to understand that art is something that you will never completely master, it's not the point that makes art great it's not the fact that being great at art it's that you become great at drawing it's that it connects you with the world around you makes you a professional human being it makes you a professional observer of life and the one you should observe more than anyone else in the world is yourself and when you do, I recommend that you avoid the color of the thing, okay, you have to make a little time to dodge the color on yourself, so I hope it doesn't get too heavy today and that it doesn't seem like I'm too wise a character.
I do not want to do that. I'm very anti-cult, but I hope this seems like healthy, balanced advice and I hope it gives you a chance to take some of the weight off your shoulders because I know you're probably dealing with a lot of that, so with that being said, I love you all with all my heart and happy painting, take care.

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