Gwen Seemel posted this little nugget of awesome about selling out and starving artists. As I read it, it struck me that my definition of “sell out” is different. For me someone has sold out when they go against their professed ideals. When someone tells me they are for certain things and they go against those certain things to become successful by compromising their ideals. to me selling out is the opposite of success it’s conforming to whatever need comes up and doing what others expect, so you can make a buck.

What are your thoughts? What makes someone a sell out? Is selling out real?

(I want to be clear that I'm not suggesting that those of us who have a DayJob are sell outs, but people who go against their personal and voiced ideals. haveing a Dayjob is a necessity for most artists.)

I created a tiny little swirl on twitter yesterday when I responded to #talkart and said, “I price to move, reasonably, so anyone can afford”.. Many people disagreed with me. I’ve always thought about art as a by the people for the people sort of thing and frowned upon people who felt that art was a higher calling.

I have always looked at art as a form of communication, a way for me to get these ideas out of my head that don’t  have words, just visuals.

I’ve always wanted to share that with people. Its part of the reason I started the blog, Art Journaling Ning, my zines, and my art. Communication- Sharing

It’s why I was a teacher and why I continually seek to teach, here, ning and now I’ll be doing classes in person.  It’s also why I sell my art at the price I sell it. People tell me it’s low. I tell them it’s my price, my right to set it at what I want. I could do prints but I don’t like the idea of them, plus, for the price of a print you can get an original piece of art to hang.

I want everyone to be able to save up and afford an original of my art. Everyone deserves to have real art in their home.

I’ll price larger pieces differently, but for now, the 5×7 pieces remain at their current price point.

I'm not sure how I missed these videos, but now that I've found him, I'm kinda in love. He offers nononsense BS free art journaling ideas and advice, and it's good. Oh He also uses some images of gears in his AJ. Watch them all, give him some thumbs up love and share his stuff.

Head over to his youtube to see the rest of his videos. Good stuff.

I'm not usually a huge fan of issuing challenges but here's one I can get behind:

This weekend make some art that is destined for the trash. Don't let anyone else see it or feel free to show it on the ComfortableShoesStudio facebook wall. But set yourself free and see what you learn from creating something without the pressure of making it pretty.

For one weekend make stuff that has meaning only to you.

For one weekend make marks on the page that please only you.

For one weekend mix your paints in colors that you are afraid of.

For one weekend use colors taht challenge you.

For one weekend make a page in your art journal taht you haven't planned out.

Scribble. Doodle. Write.

Do somethng in your art journal that you've never done before.

Set yourself free.

Matthew Archambault of Drawing Tutorials Online wrote:

It's super important when drawing that you don't put too much pressure on yourself to draw for the museum wall. Draw instead for the waste paper basket and you too will have that care free attitude when it comes to drawing.

It's a point I've been thinking about over and over and over again for the last few months. A question I've asked myself repeatedly is, "Why do I enjoy sketching and drawing so much but many people I've met don't?" I think Matthew's point is exactly why. When I'm working in my art journal I'm not thinking about making great art or a finished page. I'm simply working on the page, a page isn't good or bad, it just is.

This is a drastic difference from the way I see many new art journalers approach their page. They want each page to be a perfect piece and get very discouraged when the page doesn't end up just as it is in their head. Putting pressure on yourself to create exactly what is in your head is a exercise in frustration and I think it's why so many people give up on art journaling and return to scrapbooking.

I always put an emphasis on process in my classes and on my own art. Process will eventually get you to the end result you seek, it isn't an easy or guaranteed path but it's rewarding.

I had a late night at the DayJob that prevented me from loading up all the videos I wanted to this week, but  it's a good change from the status quo and it also lets me change up my style of posting. I'm probably going to switch frm a daily video post to a 3 or 4 times a week post. I'm starting to do pieces that are much mroe involved and hav a lot of depth to them, as such I'm completing fewer per week, thus, not so many posts per week. I'm debating how I'm going to edit the videos, I'm not sure if I'll go longer with the video or keep them short and simple. I'll figure it out as I go along.

Since it comes up pretty often, here is the offical story of my youtube channel's name.

I intended for it to be ComfortableShoesStudio just like this website. Seems easy right? Except YouTube only allows 20 characters in a name… I Typed in the full name and didn't look to see that it was right. Bad move. CSS is 22 characters long. YouTube dropped the I and O off the end. After signing up I stayed logged in and loaded my first few videos. Then I loaded a few more. 

6 months later I ended up signed out and couldn't log in. I requested my password to be sent to my email on file. It was then that I realized that I was signed up as ComfortableShoesStud. *Headdesk* At this point I'd already loaded up a bunch of videos and had a bunch of views, so I figured, screw it, leave it as is.

Lesson learned though, ANY time I sign up for something I check to make sure that everything is spelled correctly before hitting "Agree" or "Continue!"

May your New Year be full of good things. May you do more of the things you love and less of the things you don't. Follow your heart. Cheers.