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Creative Ideas As Currency: Growth for Artists In The Digital Economy
If content is currency, then artists, you are already wealthy. You have enough unique, interesting and useful creative ideas to turn into a wide range of quality output. In the newest incarnation of our evolving economy, content creation is the most valuable currency. Artists are the original content creators and you are sitting on a potential gold mine. Today we’ll look at pushing the envelope of self-actualisation to mine the rich seams contained within you for profit and self fulfilment. Lets look at how you can start to leverage your creative ideas for increased returns. Unshackle Yourself from a Limiting Belief What would you want your life to look like?…
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Seize the Now: Adapting the Business Model Canvas for Creativity
Here is the problem; you create great work but it doesn’t get any traction. You put it out into the world and most people seem ambivalent or simply ignore it. Of course, there are a few potential causes for this that may be unrelated to the work; incorrect audience targeting, general lack of visibility and lack of a relevant audience altogether. Today, I’d like to introduce you to a model that can help you to reframe your creative concepts in a way that may help them to resonate with a more specific audience. An audience who potentially understand your work better. Today we are going to look at how to apply…
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What is Shadow Work? Understanding The Hidden You
Excerpts selected from Chapter 1 of my book The Creative Shadow: An Art Therapy Shadow Work Journey are compiled in this post. If you register below I’ll send you a download link to the next chapter (PDF file) from the book. “Everything of which I know, but of which I am not at the moment thinking; everything of which I was once conscious but have now forgotten; everything perceived by my senses, but not noted by my conscious mind; everything which, involuntarily and without paying attention to it, I feel, think, remember, want, and do; all the future things which are taking shape in me and will sometime come to…
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The Democratising Effect of AI Vs the Gatekeepers of Creativity
Of course we understand that new and disruptive technologies have a divisive effect and undermine the established norms and structures that support them, that is why, by definition, they are disruptive. The advent of photography had the same impact on painting as the advent (and rapid evolution) of AI tools is currently having on a wide range of creative practice. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth and heralding of ‘the end’ of painting. Did painting end? Of course not. It is very much alive and vibrant and has only been enhanced by the development of the technology of automatic image capture within a little black box. AI tools…
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New Work, Creative Process and AI
It’s no secret that I’m an advocate of AI for creative work. In a recent post on Instagram for The Night Studio, I compared the fear of the rise of AI for creatives to the fear of photography when it first arrived. The tools are in some ways crude at the moment and I understand the contentions that creators have with training data, but I’m clear about my stance. I’m happy for AI to use all or any of my work for training data. Ultimately, painting is about more than just imagery and there are other qualities such as surface properties and actual presence of the object that make painting…
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Sky Portrait Artist of the Year Experience
Well it’s been a busy time round here and lot’s to reflect on in the past few months. Not much new painting at the moment as I’ve been busy on other projects but can’t wait to get back to it now especially after watching Sky Portrait Artist of the Year again. It’s fired me up and reminded me that it’s time to get back to it asap now that the weather for wandering around outside has gone up here. I’d been bracing myself for watching the episode I competed in (series 10, episode 4), I’m a private person by nature so putting myself out there on the TV has been…
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Better Creative Process Will Triumph Over Setting Goals
Do you set yourself creative goals that you never achieve? If you can answer an honest ‘no’ to this question, then you are a very rare commodity. Part of the human condition in modern life is the drive to achieve by setting milestones. This might not be the best way to progress. Let’s consider why you need to stop focusing on goals and focus on refining your creative process. As would-be artists we can often be focused on goals like finishing x amount of paintings by a certain date or getting your portfolio presentable for the next interview. You might also be aiming to complete a body of work for…
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Painting: Ghost Control
It’s difficult to explain fully what this piece of work means to me. It brings together for the first time a series of threads that have been with me for many years and in a language that feels more ‘me’. There is a pre-cursor to this painting and an interesting little bit of synchronicity attached to creation of this work. A little paint sketch exists in a similar vein to this piece with two views of the building superimposed on each other but in a very different colour palette and set of marks. I’ve never posted it anywhere before and you can see it below. The location is a real…
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Visual Artists Should Learn to Love AI: Here’s Why
So no one (almost no one) really expected AI to impact on art and artists so quickly. In all honesty I have to admit that I was complacent about the impact and potential of these technologies for my own practice. Then I stopped using it to create photorealistic dogs in space helmets and started using it as part of my creative process. It has revolutionised how I tackle concept development and it could do the same for you. Let’s get right down to the nitty gritty before reflecting on the pros and cons. How am I using AI in my process? that’s the conversation I’m having most often with other…
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Painting: Portrait of Finn
Around April time I started in earnest trying to cut down the time it takes to do an alla-prima portrait. My target was to get it into a three hour window. This one of those ‘training’ paintings. I started with blue acrylic underpainting and then used oil colour on top of that. You can see progress thumbnails below. Finn is my oldest son, he’s a complex, intense and creative individual. The three hour window aside I think this absolutely conveys something of his personality. If you are lucky enough to know him you’ll agree. For this painting I worked on a white surface on stretched canvas. It’s not how I…