You aren't a procrastinator, you're just going about it wrong

Hey guys, I'm Adam from Lucid Pixel and welcome back. You may not know it, but there are many things in my life that I love and that I obsess over, that I worry about, that I reflect on, and that may have nothing to do with art in general. For example, I have my three-year-old Himalayan cat, Link, who I have to take care of and I take care of his diet and I take care of his litter and I make sure he doesn't get mosquitoes and I make sure he goes to the vet when he needs to and he has his vaccines and his drops for when he goes out so he doesn't get ticks and whatever, I get obsessed with him when I'm not playing with him, I get obsessed with him, maybe I don't know either, but about five days ago I bought him a brother small, a two month old Himalayan,

just

like Lancusa Himalaya, also called Gimli, who I introduced to some of you recently, my new addition to the family two months ago.

An old kitten, sweet as a button, but when we got him very underweight he was supposed to be closer to two pounds at two months, but he's actually about 1.2 to 1.3 pounds, so I've I've been weighing him every day, reviewing his diet and making sure he's the right weight. the right kind of food and making sure that he's getting the right kind of hydration and making sure that he's playing and that he's getting a lot of love and that he's getting enough sleep and that he's in a clean environment and that videos like jackson galaxies and me videos i read your whole book, the mode cap mojo book and everything which is highly recommended by the way really amazing and I've been watching Kitty Lady yeah I've been lost in Kitty Hood lately so that's

just

been a big concern that I have.

Chloe, my 12 year old daughter, who started her first week of secondary school this year, which is really exciting. Lucas, who has a new teacher who, by the way, has the same name as my daughter Emily. Her name is Madame Emily, which in French means Emily and him. She loves him very much and treats him very well, he himself approaches high school. I have my daughter Emily, who is starting her first year in classical film animation at Concordia University, exactly what I studied where I studied over 25 years ago, so there is an apple that hasn't seemed to fall far from the tree and I'm also very proud of her.

I worry about them and think about them every day. I care about everyone's relationship with each other. I have been decorating my house and changing all the things. the lighting, the laps and the switches and delving into interior decorating and you know how I'm

going

to furnish things and how I plan my space and the space for my family and how I make it more productive and more functional as a home because we are a big family, so making sure I keep the house clean is a big effort, so it takes a lot of organization there, so I teach full time, I have my classes, I do that and I teach five days a week and I take that job very seriously. serious and for me, every time I sit down with a student it's not like I'm not just sitting there and doing what they paid for, no, I want to give them every ounce of me to listen to me. to offer the best help that I can offer and I take that role very, very responsible, responsible and very seriously and then I like to be in the ring.

I love video games. I have my ps5 sitting next to me, the remote is there, everything charged. and ready for me, I'm coming, honey, don't worry, I'm on my sixth or seventh playing spot with elden ring. I'm currently

going

through the complete guide, all missions completed, boy for the youtuber, he is destroyed who he is. probably my favorite youtuber from uh soulsguide i also like the sound of his voice it's nice to listen to so i also like to play games and sometimes i get nervous oh yeah i just got a new road caster pro 2 for recording audio which is a very fun tool, but I had to learn how to use this.

There is a lot of learning curve to learn all this equipment and I am setting myself up with different microphone arms and adjusting the lighting in my setup and I also do a little bit of interior decorating in my setup and then I have to eat and then I go to the gym three days a the week and then I go to sleep properly. I have to take care of that too and one has to wonder how the heck, how can I find time to record a video like this let alone sit down and draw, paint and create art every week for these videos?

How can I do that with everything else going on? In my life, well, I had to find a way to do it, and over the years the demands on my life became greater and greater as I put more and more care and seriousness into every endeavor I undertake. . priority I have in my life I had to adopt certain habits I had to adopt certain skills and develop them in order to grow, flourish and be productive but it did not come overnight I had to face obstacles that I had to overcome There are many mistakes along the way and I see these mistakes in my fellow students.

I see these mistakes in fellow YouTubers and fellow artists and people who aren't even artists, people who are just trying to live a productive lifestyle and struggle with it sometimes. What I want to do today is teach you the tools I've learned over the years to help me be very productive, how to set my priorities, and how to make this process fun, consistent, and easy when you sit down to draw and paint. It's not a struggle, you're not pressing a reset button, you're just sitting there and you're getting started, you're getting the ball rolling right away, the first thing I think is the first thing that goes without saying is kind. from to, it is something impossible if you do not have this ingredient and that, of course, is passion, love, I would not dedicate any of my time to any of these things, to my family, to my students, to my pets, to myself If I didn't care If I didn't care If I didn't have the passion to pursue these things If I didn't have the passion to draw and be creative If this wasn't something I cared about at my core, well, then forget all of the above, you're fired , you can go home, forget about it because that's not going to happen, but if you have that ingredient, that essential ingredient, then the first most important thing that I think you need to realize is something. that I had to learn over the years and something that after learning it I began to realize was something much more consistent among many very productive artists out there and it will be a surprise to hear that this sound is not. how interesting think about it for a minute you're sitting right now listening to me talk there's music playing in the background beautiful music and I didn't produce it myself unfortunately that's great that's great there are great artists out there that are taking care of that work for me and you're in good shape mood right now and when you listen to my videos there is a constant mood in my videos, well that's not a mistake.

I'm an artist, you're an artist and when I sit down to draw, one of the things I've learned over time is that sometimes it's not an intuitive lesson for a visual artist is that your soundscape, what's going on around you. , not only influences whether or not you can enter it. a productive mood, but it's also what can maintain a consistent mood or break that mood, and in turn, when you break an artist's mood, you break their art or their ability to produce it in the first place. place, what do I mean by this? Well, if we move away from the visual arts and think about a form of art that, for example, is directly related to sound, such as being a singer, being a musician, being a dancer, being a comedian, comedians make sounds with their mouths. , No? right, they talk, that's their thing, that's their thing, one of the things you might learn very instinctively on the first day is how sensitive you are to sound when I go out dancing.

I used to go swing dancing all the time. and then I got into jive and now I like salsa more and things like that. I've been doing that for over 20 years if I'm at an event if I'm at a club and a song is meh, it's good, it's fine, whatever happens, if the lyrics or the beat or the sound doesn't fit me in that special way, then I'll do one of two things, I'll politely accept an invitation to dance from someone. Have fun, we'll dance, we'll get to know each other and things like that, but it won't be this, you know, it won't be this magical moment, will it be you?

I know it will be fun either way and once it's done I'll sit down or the other option is to use those less interesting songs to relax and dry off because I'm all sweaty from dancing so much to lower my heart rate. to something that's a little less heart-stopping, right, and I'll use that song as an opportunity to rest because I don't feel obligated, I don't feel drawn to stand up, but if a song comes on that really connects with me where the sound, the rhythms , the voice, the music, the horns, all these different things, they all come together and just click, flip that switch in my soul, so I don't care if I'm on the verge of a heart attack. arrest if I'm on the verge of collapse you can't stop me from dancing to that music I just pressed a switch it lit this fire inside my soul and I can't and when songs like that come on I get up desperately like a you know, like a wild cat looking for prey , I need someone to dance with quickly and I'm going to find the first person I can dance with because I have to dance to that song and usually when songs like that sound familiar to you.

I can see everyone else doing the same thing, it turns into a room of people standing in a club and a room full of predators, it's so much fun and when that song comes on, man, the song can be 15 to 20 minutes long. I remember this event live. I was in a club that I loved to go to, unfortunately they closed, it's called Cubanos en Montreal and I love Cuban music, which is my favorite type of salsa and we were in Cubanos and there was a band called Valentin who lost directly from Cuba, I think it was probably one of the first shows they did in Canada.

At that time they were singing songs, playing songs that I remember to this day that sometimes lasted 12 to 15 minutes and they just kept building and building and building. the excitement that they're building and building until you're on this damn euphoric high that you just are, it was crazy and I remember, I remember getting to this point, this kind of I don't know if it was just like this dopamine rush. that I got from dancing that my body was starting to fail my legs were starting to fail and I couldn't stop dancing I couldn't and when the song finally ended it was just as explosive as the end of the song And it was like one of the most memorable experiences I've ever had.

I had when dancing and I went to sit on the chair and I almost lost the chair because my legs gave way when I went to sit and my butt hit the hard chair because my legs just gave way, I had completely exhausted myself and I almost got up to dance to the next song Even though my body was saying, dude, stop, it's not healthy, stop, okay, and I sat down, I sat down for a couple of songs to listen to my heart rate go back to normal, but that's my point, I listened to jo , if you listen to the biography of chuck jones, my favorite film director of all time, at least an animated film director, and he taught that he would talk about when he made rabbit if seville you know like this the barbershop quartet about the barbershop and He said in that I is for me when it came to my animated films it was music first animation second he listened to a song he heard a melody and he would close his eyes and that movie would develop in his brain the music was his catalyst it was his trigger to put into action.

This story goes if you listen I was listening to a podcast with Joe Rogan and Louis C.K where they were talking about their I experienced meeting Dave Chappelle for the first time because I'm also a big comedy fan and Louis C.K was talking about how Chappelle listened to music, he had He had his headphones on and listened to her. He carried these sound systems with him everywhere and he was listening when he met him, he was listening to Nina Simone and he was getting into this head space and he was like, listen, listen, listen, he said, listen to that moment and then she's saying this verse and he just said he would listen to this before every show before he went on stage he would get good like jackson galaxy would say his mojo i'm going to steal a term from jackson galaxy the cat dad uh mojo that's a good word mojo refers to when a cat he has his rhythm when he got there when everything is aligned his tail is up his ears are forward he owns his space and he has his mojo and everything is fine humans need his magic too and sound is a very important facet of that and that brings me to the reason why I've mentioned many times that I've been very open about it why I have a vatividia bookmark in my shortcut bar in my safari window because I want a, I want to do a click, a click, a click, stop listening to his videos now, why is it for any specific reason?

Yeah, for some reason, when it comes to the sound of his voice, the BGM in his videos, the way he moves, the thing about him talking about soul games, which of course I'm a big fan of. , even the little jokes that he makes and every once in a while he throws in these funny little jokes in his dialogue it has the right rhythm for me it's the right texture it's the right rhythm it's the right topic and his videosyou immediately get that charm no matter where you are you just put me in your place it's the right thing it's the right thought process it's the right everything and I know I can rely on that every time you post a video with the confidence that you don't burn out because you work like he works like a horse, right, but you know I can always rely on rewatching these videos, rewatching these videos over and over again and letting them play in the background while I paint, that's why I listen to him, but if I change the subject, If I change songs if I suddenly click on Philip Defranco, which I can see in moderation.

I like your videos, but your tempo really wears me out quickly. It makes my ears a little tired from listening to it too much. It's not an insult. it's just that the rhythm of his videos is very intense or if I hear something that really attracts me but it has no relation to the painting it's a different vibe it's a different energy a different thing like I don't know if I'm listening to darius or if I'm looking to listen to uh johnny harris or if I'm watching you know, gerald undone if I start watching you know videos or I start watching conspiracy cam videos or whatever if it's not my vibe, if it's not my energy, then that immediately is like flipping a light switch in my brain and it turns it off, it takes me out of that headspace and that has a very detrimental impact on my productivity.

I have learned to select my soundscape very carefully. when I'm painting, some people prefer not to hear anything at all, some people prefer absolute silence. I remember my professors in college when I studied fine arts and things like that, they said no. When I'm painting silence, I mean. I can hear dogs barking outside and people talking, but I can't listen to music because it influences me too much and I like to be in a very clear mental space, so some artists prefer silence if that's your style, that's great, but if you listen to music it pays attention to which sounds which frequencies keep you painting and which distract that thought process is exactly the same reason I produce these art talks the way I do, well I play the music I choose the intro my dialogue the tone of my voice, the rhythm of my dialogue, the thoughtfulness I put into what I say, are all tied to my magic as an artist and I am trying to share that magic with you.

I'm trying to be your dance partner. your painting through the sound of my voice and through the music I choose is for that very reason if you have been listening to my art talks for several years why I changed the intro music my intro music used to have this kind of fun jazz song at the beginning that I still love to this day, but at a certain point I realized that in that intro, if you're watching my videos back to back, you're going to get this nice calming energy, this nice consistent vibe, and then all of a sudden, You're going to jump into some catchy music and then rewind it to throw you off the beat and that irritates me when I listen to things.

A good example is other soul lore youtubers, some of whom might speak with a calming voice like this and the supernatural blah blah blah did that and then more god said blah blah blah and they do this, they talk like this throughout the whole video which is great okay okay and then at the end they say thank you for Looking at everyone you realized that that threw you off because like someone kicked you off the stool thank you for watch and don't forget to like and subscribe. I thought, oh god, don't do that right, it irritates me to the point where I won't listen to her videos vati is much more sensitive to the sound of her own voice she's much more sensitive to the rhythm of her videos it's no coincidence it's no coincidence that she's so famous as a souls youtuber why as famous as As a youtuber in general, you know that you are very aware that every choice you make in terms of sound is of crucial importance and you also want to make sure that those who work with the artists, the editors and the musicians with whom you sometimes collaborate I'm right, I reviewed your book on soul arts, it was chosen very carefully, it was chosen very carefully, you need that kind of compatibility with the people you associate with, okay, but there's more to it, yeah, I'm going to move on.

As for sound, not only is it important when it comes to being in the right mood, it is also very important in maintaining the mood and what I mean by this is that a painting, whatever you are painting should have a soundtrack that accompanies it depending on the theme and for In my particular case, I hear myself dividing a lot because I make a very consistent art style, this type of dark art in the frazetta style, in the miyazaki style, in the soul style, uh, great shinsuke, type of art i produce vatti videos i beat that music, sometimes i listen to other types of true crime videos like maybe Mr Ballin, i really like to listen to it or do you know other folkloric stuff, some other things i can listen to, they are good for that type of art, but for example, when I was working on some illustrations for the game. from Thrones and one particular piece I was doing had to do with a kind of sea captain, it was a sea captain character from Game of Thrones, a lesser known character, but that was the theme, it was supposed to be the emotion of the ocean, some of the passionate water creature type of sea captain type of thing and I looked I spent a couple of hours looking for the right soundtrack for that painting that I knew I was going to be working on for at least a couple of weeks , so I ended up choosing the Master and Commander soundtrack because the sounds of the cello and the yo-yo ma and that song when the doctor and the captain play with the cello and the violin and their thing are so happy.

I could feel that I could smell the wood, the wet wood and the salt water and I could feel it in the music and I thought that kept me in the right vibe and I would constantly listen to that song only when my stylist was on my hand and I were painting if any time that sound changed that song guaranteed it's like someone threw me off the train I lose that trail of thought that actually happened to me by accident when I was working at Ravenloft painting another YouTube video I made a couple of years ago, it was kind of fan art of the Raven Loft series with Dance of the Dead by Christy Golden, one of my favorite books and I was listening to it, I don't remember. sort of old classic fantasy music from the 1970s, 60s, 70s and stuff like that gave me a little bit of a vintage fantasy vibe and that got the ball rolling and my colors were really nice. and kind of saturated with going with that older generation of pre-Frazetta fantasy, more colorful kind of work like the old Star Wars stuff and stuff like that, they just kind of got my head in that headspace listening to this music and then, like if I did.

I started listening to more Dark Souls and stuff. I started listening to the Bloodborne soundtrack and stuff halfway through painting and I swear to God, that day I spent about three four hours working on painting and I completely changed the colorscape of my painting, not voluntarily. no not experimentally just my mojo changed my vibe changed i changed the channel and my painting fell apart i lost control of the scene i lost control of the mood to the point where i ended up contacting my friend tyler edlund who you should definitely go to and subscribe to him he's he's a magician with a paintbrush um I contacted him on messenger and I said tyler here's my painting help me this is a crisis man I was doing great and then I just lost it and he said.

Sure, and a couple of hours later, he sends me a little touch-up, a little bit of paint to my painting, I looked and went, you've got to be kidding me, I don't know how. I made it like he said the guy is a magician, he read my mind when he sent it back to me, it was literally almost a carbon copy of my original plan. It had a more colorful, more old school vibe to the painting and I don't know how we recognized it because he didn't even see the original, he looked at it and just felt like that was the direction it should be in and he sent it back to me and I sent him back side by side. side comparison i said tyler look what you just did i showed him my original and then i showed him my painting of it and i said literally you reverted my painting back to its original do you realize you did it anyway it's in the kind of indifference of him ?

Great, you know, I'm glad I could help you, I thought, "Damn, that guy's good" and yeah, he called and I realized that moving forward, I made the mistake of changing the soundtrack, I changed the sound that was listening and that changed my mood now. Next is planning. I can't emphasize enough how important it is to have something to do, to plan something to do before you sit down to paint. In fact, I'm planning a video very, very soon talking about planning, if that's not meta for you. I'm planning a video soon, I actually contacted a company that I'm completely in love with because they probably make my favorite productivity app especially for visual artists, it's called milinete and I have it on all my different devices, it's my When it's about my painting, my brain has become that, at least over the years, because it's fast, it's intuitive and it's visual, it's like thinking about a to-do list, a visual to-do list, It's kind of where you can bring all the things together. your video references and your photo references and all that, all on these nice little modular panels that you can line up really well, it's also very aesthetically designed.

I like pretty apps. I don't like apps that look designed. For programmers, I like things that look like they were designed for artists with appearance sensitivity, but are extremely functional, extremely simple, aren't too clunky and busy, are very, very simple, but have all these magical little features that I like. they love it. and sometimes I spend days planning dozens and dozens of different paintings, planning themes, researching, looking for links, watching, searching for youtube videos and I compile them all into this planner that I'm going to share with you like I said. Make a big video talking about my productivity and my productivity apps because I'm obsessive about that kind of stuff and I'm sure there's a lot of cool stuff that you can check out so definitely subscribe because it's coming soon yeah.

I actually put out a call for a subscription, look at me, I'm being a YouTuber and that way when I'm ready to paint I know what to paint, I'm not sitting there thinking about the worst thing you can think of. which is mmm, what should I draw today? Should I make an elf? Should I make a weapon skin? Should I do a vehicle design? Maybe I should do some landscaping, maybe build. How's the architecture? If you enter a painting. If you come in on an art day. with that in your head hang up your pen and walk away you're wasting your time it's going to be a nightmare I guarantee it I guarantee it you absolutely need to have an idea you need to have you need to think a little bit some visual planning First, for me, for example, since I'm someone very interested in folklore and I'm someone who's starting to love crafting and I love doing dark themes and stuff like that, my productivity app is very organized and it's categorized under folklore and then when you go into folklore you find yourself in different nationalities of folklore, such as Greek, Vietnamese, Slavic, Canadian, South American, indigenous, etc.

I have these apathetic lists of different cultures and then when you go into them, you have I got these panels with visual references, checklists and links to YouTube videos that are very well organized in this big panel and I will color code the ones that I think might be easier to approach if I feel like I just want something easy to draw and I have all that there. I do the same with interior decoration. I do the same with my YouTube videos. I plan everything in Millinode. Well, now there are many different applications that you can use.

This is not a paid promotion. Millino but that's the one I like, but I have it there, so what do I do? I sit down to draw. I click on the fat video thumbnail. I open Photoshop. I open Pinterest, which is where I make all my visual references. 99 of the time I open Millinote, look at the list and say, I want a new one today, the whole process of turning on my computer, mentally preparing, drawing, gathering references, planning and getting my drawing. going is usually a maximum of 30 seconds it is usually faster than that. I've kept up the pace.

I even have my little Elgato streaming platform that has everything, shortcut to a pop-up button. I press four buttons. I'm ready to start. It's that simple, I'll even set it up sometimes because I'm on a Mac, I set up default layouts so I can just want one, I want it to be a one stop shop so I just click a button and everything is laid out like that. I can't emphasize enough how important it is. It's a nice segue into the second part of this, which is streamlining the process, one of the things that makes me able to do all of these things and get them done throughout the day is the fact that it doesn't take me very long to set up, so The way I work is that I want a one-stop shop for productivity when it comes to recording. ayoutube video in my old house because I didn't have a designated space setting up lighting wiring microphones arms uh lighting gels if I needed to clean the space setting things up making sure everything is good making sure I have nice clothes and I groom myself so I don't look like I had just woken up, that took me a long time, it took me hours and then, as I described in previous art talks, that's exactly when you're ready and you press the record button and that's it, the phone rings and the school calls and says yes , Chloe is feeling a little sick today, she said she wants to come home, can you come pick her up and I'll come, okay? be there, I'll be there in 50 minutes and I press stop and then well, I have to take everything out because you know I'm not going to leave everything out so people can't use their living room, so what did I do?

I made it so that, as much as possible, I can sit in my chair. I turn on my camera. I turn on the lights. A remote control turns on my audio. I just received a rode caster pro 2 that I am recording here for the first time. today he is right next to me in a vesa arm. I have my camera monitors set up right in front of me. I turn on my audio device. I bring my camera closer and the microphone closer to put on headphones so I can listen. I make sure to check my audio levels.

I make sure all the lighting is set up correctly in my studio. I'm doing all that sitting in my chair. I don't even get up and then pick up my camera. remote and I press record and I even have an edelkrone remote so I can set my camera keys when I'm making videos with the camera slider and I do all that sitting on my butt. I have three remote controls sitting right next to me. I don't even have to get out of my chair, so again the process of turning on the lights that are all set up and ready to turn on my audio devices, preparing my camera and my camera keys for my camera slider and pressing the record button.

It's a maximum of one and a half to two minutes if it took longer than that, there are too many things that will get in the way and distract me, so I have to make sure that I have created a very simplified office when it comes to my office being meticulously organized if I need something I know exactly where it is where my tape is where my tape measure is where my books are where all my cables are where my chargers are where my batteries are everything is very carefully organized why because if not I'm going to spend half hour looking for my tape measure I'm going to spend half an hour looking for my cat scale for my kitten gimli because I'm weighing him every day I'm going to have to look for things and looking for things baffles me and before you know it my productivity goes down. has gone, I got distracted and something else came up and that work day is over so the quicker you can get started the better I can't stress enough how important it is to make sure you organize your space so that it takes you the least amount of time possible to get started. your work and if you combine that with a well planned painting, if you combine that with quickly getting the right mojo with a good vibe, a good music, a good playlist, a good YouTuber that gets you moving, gets you going , it gets you into the right song, it gets you into the right rhythm that you're going to have. up and running in no time, but wait, there's more, there's one more thing I want to talk about and I mention this because I have a 21 year old daughter who is a social butterfly that she is addicted to and her friends that she is addicted to . being busy and with that can, if not monitored closely, can lead to some setbacks to some potential dangers and that danger is your life, the pace of your life can be complete chaos, which is a very easy trap into which drop if You are in the 18-25 demographic, which I know many of you are.

In fact, I think I think demographically I don't look at it. I don't watch analytics much, but I'm pretty sure that 18-35 is the most common age group that listens to my videos, so what's

wrong

with all of you if you don't have a rhythm, if you don't have a schedule to your life, which is very common? I was in my twenties, I was out all the time, I told him my life, my life, there was no schedule, I just went out and did the right thing and as a result of that, my sleep, my diet, my energy, my concentration. just everywhere remember something your thoughts your productivity your lifestyle is a product of what you do to your insides right what you eat how you sleep uh whether you have an upset stomach or not because of what you're eating what you What is the diet?

If you exercise regularly. Are you getting the right nutrients? Are you taking supplements? If not, are you getting enough sunlight? Do you go out and hang out with your friends? Are you giving yourself the opportunity to rest? All these different things. What do you do every day if there is no set rhythm then you are at odds with your own biology your circadian rhythm your hormones your diet your mood your energy your your your temperament everything will be ruined if you don't have these things aligned within reason, of course, I mean it's not a military school, right?

But the more you have this semi-consistent rhythm, if you say, "Okay, I go to bed at 10, 30, or 11 at night, I wake up." at this time I have my breakfast at this and this will be my breakfast have a healthy breakfast have some oatmeal and blueberries or something really good for you and you know, have a healthy lunch, make sure you eat some vegetables make sure you eat protein every days don't do it don't drink too much don't eat too much sugar that shit will just burn you don't eat garbage don't put garbage in your body make sure you're doing some kind of activity go for a walk with your friends go for a walk alone skateboard outside go to the gym now you know any type of physical activity you need do this at a consistent time during the week think about your rest time when it's time to decompress when it's time to sit down and draw if you do all these things at a pace you start training your body to prepare it so if for me, for example, after I've given my morning class and I've had lunch, that's when I sit down to draw, I know on certain days, at 12 o'clock or 12:30 p.m. m. once I've had lunch once it's done then my brain, my hormones prepare me for productivity, I want, I sit down and I go, okay, now I'm mentally ready to draw, I sit down, I click on the video of my body, I prepare my thing, everything is ready, bang, I'm off to the races and I'm ready to draw and it's a lot easier for me to get into that vibe, so I'm not just planning, I'm not just planning to paint, no I'm not only in a good mood, but now my body is on top of it. my rest my digestion everything is aligned with that at the same time so I'm not fighting discomfort I'm not fighting fatigue I'm not fighting staying connected I'm not fighting you know, feeling bad that day or in a bad mood because I was up until four in the morning doing things and now I'm trying to draw the next day.

I'm not fighting my work schedule to be productive and that makes life so much easier. Well, now like I said. within reason, if you know, if you want, if you want to eat something someday, eat, you know, have your cheat days. I'm not against cheat days. I like to eat healthy, but you know, a cheat day every once in a while. although once in a while it's okay perfectly cool you know you want to go out with your friends and have a couple of drinks totally cool you want to stay up late watch a movie with your love totally cool do it it's okay just be aware of that pace and be Knowing how to recover, don't let yourself get lost in the chaos of whatever happens every day, because if you do that, you will be fighting yourself all the time. and the problem is that what this all comes down to is that in the end you have taken for granted all these facets of productivity your diet your sleep your lifestyle the influences on your organization the workflow how well your area is organized how well your workflow is organized, you take all those things for granted, you don't even consider any of them, instead you walk over to your drawing tablet, grab your pen, open Photoshop or clip or you know, Procreate or whatever app that you are using. draw and you sit there and you look at this blank page and you think what am I going to draw today what am I going to draw today and then your stomach turns and then you and then your cat starts crying in the other room so you have to go and take care of them and you go down and you sit back down and then you look and your TV is actually playing something and someone you're watching, you're watching a fighting cowboy doing a soul play on your dark souls and you're like, well, that looks like fun and then you look back at your drawing tablet and then you say, what am I going to draw?

I don't know what to draw and I'm so tired I haven't slept in the last 26 hours. I'm very exhausted, but I really need to do something. I'm a pain. I haven't drawn anything in a month, oh my god, and you do it for like 45 minutes and you're like. Okay, forget it, I'll try it tomorrow and you hang up the pen and don't do it. It all sounds familiar and you do it day after day after day and what you end up doing is the biggest mistake you end up making is blaming yourself. you blame yourself when in reality you are not the problem your ability to be productive is not the problem your creative abilities are not the problem your ability to learn the fundamentals is not the problem the problem is that you were at odds with yourself, you were literally waging a creative war against your own brain and body and you took it completely for granted, but if you start not taking it for granted and start being more aware of all these other factors that influence productivity, you have my absolute promise that you will be I'm going to see a difference between day and night and how easy it is for you to just pick up your pen and draw sounds good said of course I love you all with all my heart more than you can imagine and happy painting, you I care