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Your Creative Push

Your Creative Push is the podcast that pushes YOU to pursue your creative passion, even though you have a busy, full-time life. Twice a week, Youngman Brown interviews artists, musicians, writers, photographers, graphic designers, and other inspirational creative individuals in an attempt to get them to inspire you to put aside your excuses and START DOING WORK. Each artist opens up to YOU, revealing the things that hold THEM back on a daily basis, and how they FIGHT THROUGH IT. They then give you one final push, in an attempt to motivate you to start doing work as soon as the episode is over. If you have a full-time job or full-time responsibilities and WISH that you had the COURAGE and MOTIVATION to FINALLY do that thing that has been on your mind, this podcast is for you!
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Now displaying: August, 2017
Aug 31, 2017

Tracey Fletcher King is an artist, illustrator, printmaker, and teacher from Brisbane, Australia.  She has been creating and selling her art for years, but after surviving advanced breast cancer, she decided to stop second-guessing the business side of her work.

Tracey has two "main arms" to her creative practice, watercolors & painting and lino prints, both of which can be found on her website.

Full shownotes: http://yourcreativepush.com/traceyfletcherking

In this episode, Tracey discusses:

-Her experiences at school and how they shaped her as an artist.

-How the decision-making part of your brain and the creative part of your brain are interconnected.

-How the creative path is a U-shaped curve, and how it is never too late to start up the other side.

-Being diagnosed with advanced breast cancer and the deal she made with herself to say “yes” to everything.

-How she has worked on her time management as a result of going through chemotherapy.

-The way in which everyone is curating their lives on social media makes it difficult to not compare yourself to someone else’s perfect version of themselves.

-The importance of making decisions (and having them in the first place).

-Her take on creating art while you are in a dark period and whether or not it is beneficial.

-The notion of “positive censorship” and only allowing positive things to come into your life.

-Her advice for creative individuals who have had a long gap in their creative pursuits.

-The importance of keeping your old work so that you can look back to it and compare it to how far you have come.

Tracey's Final Push will remind you that you are on a U-Shaped curve and your best creative days are ahead of you, even when things get messy!

 

Quotes:

“It made me realize that all my best creative years were ahead of me.”

“The older I get, the more creative I’m going to be.  As long as I get out of my own way it will happen.”

“We all think we need these massive blocks of time, but the reality is that you never have enough time and that’s just an excuse.”

“Everyone’s curating their lives so heavily with social media that I think then when you’re doing something creative, it makes it even more high stakes.”

“Try to realize that it’s not high stakes.  A bad painting is not going to really damage you in the long run.”

“If you’ve got to just hide and do it and not tell anyone for twelve months until you’re ready to show someone, what’s the big deal?”

“Always keep your bad things, because there’s going to come a day that you’re really pleased that you’ve improved so much.”

Links mentioned:

Cressida Campbell

Connect with Tracey:

Website / Facebook / Instagram / Tumlbr / YouTube

On the next episode:

Rob DiTeodoro : Instagram

What letter of the alphabet represents your creative journey?  Join the discussion in the Facebook group!

Aug 28, 2017

Tara Roskell is The Idea Medic, providing first aid for your idea muscle. She lives in a world where ideas are cool and creativity is king.

Tara is passionate in the belief that everybody has the ability to be creative. They just need to believe it and learn more about the idea generation process. Her mission is to make idea generation and development more accessible to everyone.

Tara has worked in the Creative Industry as a graphic designer for over 20 years, for both national and international companies. She found that when she had to do similar jobs repeatedly she would lack inspiration. This led her to explore the world of creative thinking techniques which completely blew her mind. 

When she’s not freelancing, Tara can be found blogging, scribbling ideas for products and cartoons, reading books on creative thinking, walking the dog or practicing her not-so-high kicks learnt in her karate lessons.

Full shownotes: http://yourcreativepush.com/tararoskell

In this episode, Tara discusses:

-The various paths she took to get to her to become a freelance graphic designer for thirteen years.

-How her fascination for idea generation came to be.

-Using random words to help new ideas to be birthed.

-At the end of your day, writing down what you did and who you talked to in order to pick out ideas.

-Having a specific goal of producing a certain amount of ideas every single day (even if they aren’t good ones).

-Her process of mind mapping and looking for Eureka moments.

-Using a website like Pixabay to use images to start generating ideas.

-How to use free writing to generate ideas.

-A recent experiment with Sandra Busby in which they tested the effects of alcohol on creativity.

-How building a habit out of your creativity (especially after 100 days) takes the decision-making process out of it.

-The importance of having an accountability, even if that means writing it down in a journal or a personal blog.

-Her hesitancy to want to put certain things out into the world.

-Getting to the first step of a creative idea within five seconds so that resistance doesn’t have enough time to stop you.

Tara's Final Push will inspire you to set yourself personal creative challenges.

 

Quotes:

“Some people don’t seem to know how to have ideas, when there are actually a lot of techniques that you can use.  You don’t have to sit there and wait for this Eureka moment to happen.”

“If you say to yourself that you’re going to do something for 100 days or longer, then it starts to no longer be a decision you’re making.  It’s something you do.”

“I have more of a resistance to putting things out there than physically starting it.”

“Stop the resistance before it catches hold.”

“Set yourself personal creative challenges.”

Links mentioned:

Creativity Workout: 62 Exercises to Unlock Your Most Creative Ideas by Edward De Bono

If Creativity Could Be Like Walking Your Dog (From Tara's blog)

Pixabay

Does Alcohol Increase Creativity?

David Zinn on Your Creative Push

How to stop screwing yourself over (Mel Robbins TED Talk)

Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques by Michael Michalko

Pictoplasma - Character Portraits

Jon Burgerman

Connect with Tara:

Website / Podcast / Facebook / Instagram / Twitter

On the next episode:

Tracey Fletcher King : Website / Instagram

What are your best methods for generating ideas?  Join the discussion in the Facebook group!

Aug 24, 2017

Dan Thompson is a painter and teacher who was born in Alexandria, Virginia, and graduated from the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C. He earned his M.F.A. from the Graduate School of Figurative Art of the New York Academy of Art, and supplemented his training with several years of private study and studio apprenticeships along the east coast of the United States.

He has been awarded two grants from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation and has twice received the Ethel Lorraine Bernstein Memorial Award for Excellence in Painting from the Corcoran College of Art and Design. In 2001, he won Best of Show in the American Society of Portrait Artist’s International Portrait Competition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Since 2003, he has demonstrated portrait and figure drawing and served as a juror and board member for the Portrait Society of Canada’s International Portrait Conference in Toronto. He has also lectured at the Dahesh Museum of Art in New York and served as a speaker at Studio Incamminati’s Advanced Portrait Workshop and Symposium in Philadelphia.

Dan's work can be found in public and private collections throughout the United States, and in Canada, Europe, and the Middle East.

Full shownotes: http://yourcreativepush.com/danthompson

In this episode, Dan discusses:

-How he got to the point that he is at today as an artist and a teacher.

-The advice he gives his students who are afraid to jump into the path of an artist with an unknown destination.

-The importance of searching within to determine what success means to you.

-How the technical side of things is such a vastly underappreciated aspect of what artists do.

-How to deal with the unrealistic expectations of what it means to be a “real artist.”

-Not allowing the constant “noise” to infiltrate into something as personal as the creative process.

-Why you shouldn’t deal in abstractions, but rather set specific tasks to complete or skills to acquire and then move on to the next thing.

-Grasping, maintaining, and extending a middle strategy.

-His advice for when you get stuck in the middle stages of a piece.

-Channeling your passion and keeping it as a positive force, rather than a destructive one.

-His advice to take a break and completely disengage from something that is giving you particular difficulty.

-The importance of notetaking.

-The benefit of working on multiple pieces at the same time.

-More about the Certificate of Fine Arts at the New York Academy of Art.

-What it is like to be an ARC Living Master.

Dan's Final Push will inspire you to bring the moments that you will never forget into your creativity.

 

Quotes:

“Things have turned out so much better for me, precisely because of the fact that I did not have an exact sense of where I was going to be positioned in years to come.”

“The fulfillment that you get out of life is so much more important than anything else.”

“The human figure is the most mysterious thing ever.  We’re just completely mystified by ourselves.  By who we are, why we’re here, and what we do.  And I don’t think that’s going to end anytime soon.”

“I think it’s hard for people to commit to abstracts.  I think people have to commit to tasks.  Tasks that are fun, by the way.”

“We’re so driven by the passion for what we want to achieve, and that passion can turn on us and become not just a negative force, but a force which torpedoes the entire endeavor.”

“You’ve got to try to channel your passion and keep it as a positive force.”

“Exploration of what you want to do with those skills is just as important as mastering the skills themselves.”

Links mentioned:

Certificate of Fine Art from New York Academy of Art

Art Renewal Center Museum

Youngman Brown on The Idea Medic Podcast

Connect with Dan:

Website / Facebook / Instagram / Twitter

On the next episode:

Tara Roskell : Website / Facebook / Twitter

Join the discussion in the Facebook group!

Aug 21, 2017

Joby Harris has worked for the past 20 years as a designer & artist in the film, television, music, print, theme park & aerospace industries.  He now works for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a Visual Strategist.

All in all, he tends to operate more like a kitchen than a drive-thru.  He aims to create work that triggers peoples imaginations so what they imagine does most of the creating.

His work has traveled to Comicon, the TED Conference, the Super Bowl & to space.

Full shownotes: http://yourcreativepush.com/jobyharris

In this episode, Joby discusses:

-Some of his earliest creative moments, including his 21-book series, “What Ninjas Can Do.”

-Being willing to wear many different creative hats along his journey and how that all added up to him being a well-rounded creative person.

-The opportunity he created for himself to work with a local special effects artist.

-The importance of teaching, mentorship, and surrounding yourself with likeminded creative peers.

-The story of the exoplanet posters for JPL.

-How he didn’t think that many people were going to see the exoplanet posters, yet he still pulled an all-nighter to create them with excellence.

-How he responded to the posters going viral.

-Giving your audience as much possibility to put themselves into your art as you can, so that they are able to tell their own story through your creativity.

-How outer space and space exploration can help to bring people together, especially if the arts are involved.

-How he realized that he is actually more creative in the morning, whereas he used to think he was a night owl.

-The importance of being a voracious reader.

Joby's Final Push will inspire you to leave people better off than before they met you!

 

Quotes:

“You don’t have to really teach anything, you just get people around each other and they naturally elevate themselves.”

“Whatever I do, I’m going to do it with excellence.”

“These were real worlds that could exist and people imagined themselves there and they had the NASA meatball stamp on it.  So I think it was kind of lightning in a bottle.”

“It’s the thing that you do, that you don’t think anyone’s going to see, and that’s going to be what launches you.”

“I’m stoked that NASA and JPL are really investing in the arts as much as science, technology, engineering and math.”

“Arts are a powerful weapon to inspire people and to get them looking away from each other, looking away from themselves, and getting them looking up to something that we can unite and work towards as humans.  Because this is all we’ve got, this planet.”

“Like space, there’s a momentum that will naturally take you to the top.  And it’s quick, so you better be ready.”

Links mentioned:

JPL

Invisible Creature

Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal and Ryan Hoover

Star Talk Radio

George Lucas: A Life by Brian Jay Jones

Beautiful Dust Specks

Connect with Joby:

Website / Instagram

On the next episode:

Nikki Rae : Website / Twitter / Instagram

Join the discussion in the Facebook group!

Aug 17, 2017

Full shownotes: http://yourcreativepush.com/investment

What can we, as creative people, learn from millionaires?

In this episode, Youngman Brown cherry picks five of the best investment tips given by millionaires and financial gurus, and applies them to the creative process and your creative journey.

All of these tips are simple mindset shifts that will drastically affect the way that you see the time, pain, and daily effort that you put into your creative passion, and how it will exponentially benefit you in the future.

The goal is to see that you are going along an exponential creative curve, and the more daily deposits you make to that account, the quicker your gains will be multiplied.

Here are the five ways that you can exponentially increase your creativity:

  1. Invest in yourself FIRST.
  2. Utilize compound interest.
  3. Stop checking your accounts/stats.
  4. Make multiple income streams.
  5. Invest in your mind.

Quotes:

"What are those projects that you want to get to some day?  Ask yourself how many days have you been putting them off?"

"Invest in your creative muscles."

"Don't trust yourself to have time at the end of the month.  Do that thing right now."

Links mentioned:

Acorns!

Youngman Brown on The Idea Medic Podcast

Tony Robbins Warns "The Crash is Coming"

Compound Interest Explained

Art, Money & Success by Maria Brophy

Links mentioned:

Joby Harris: Website / Instagram

Aug 14, 2017

Drew Brophy has been a professional artist for over 25 years.  He says of his profession, “It’s my job to make things look cool.”  A life-long surfer and world traveler, Drew’s career exploded in the late 1990’s when he began painting his edgy artwork onto surfboards. 

Drew’s love of surfing has led him down a path of studying weather, its effect on waves, and how the sun influences earth.  This has all led to a deep interest in physics and how it all interconnects.  He has studied physics extensively and it has influenced his artwork.  As such, his distinctive art style has evolved to include sacred geometry in an effort to decode the knowledge that ancient civilizations left for us.

Drew wants to share with the world the message that everything is energy and we are all connected.  He strives to create art images that help people understand the true meaning of life; that life is meant to be enjoyed.

Full shownotes: http://yourcreativepush.com/drewbrophy

In this episode, Drew discusses:

-How he felt as if he didn’t fit in at school, but how the surfing community brought him in.

-Being a talented surfer and being able to travel the world, and then coming home and feeling like a loser because nobody understood.

-Feeling devastation and anger when a guidance counselor told him that he wouldn’t have a future as an artist or a surfer.

-A synchronistic event that led him to moving to Hawaii for his perfect job of painting surfboards.

-The experience of jumping on a flight and showing up to Hawaii.

-Using Posca paint pens even though nobody else was.

-Being smart enough to say yes to opportunities and then learn along the way.

-The value in something being done rather than perfect.

-Connecting with Matt Biolos and how that sent his career into a completely new trajectory.

-Trusting your instincts that what you’re doing is better than what the gatekeepers say.

-The contribution that his wife, Maria, has made to their creative journey, and how all of the lessons in her book, Art Money & Success, are lessons that they learned themselves.

-The trouble that many artists face when attempting to define themselves as artists or explain what it means to be a professional artist.

-The origin of his motto, “It’s my job to make things look cool.”

-The importance of choosing your words wisely when telling people that you are an artist or a creative person, because that is the way that you will make connections and get work.

-His studying of ancient civilizations and sacred geometry and how they all cared so much more about arts and nature.

-His interest in weather, solar dynamics, planetary physics, and sacred geometry.

-The importance of being authentic and creating things that you are interested in (and diving deep into them).

Drew's Final Push will inspire you to go after the thing that makes you happy!

 

Quotes:

“I was really a square peg in school.  I think a lot of artists feel that way.”

“I just said to him, point blank, ‘Dad, if I don’t go, nothing great is ever going to happen to me.’  And I knew it.”

“I went from Nowhere, South Carolina to Ground Zero for Surfing Madness.”

“I decided right there and then that I was going to become the best surfboard artist in the world.”

“You literally can create your life.  I wish that schools would teach you that.”

“As an artist, I’m making the rules.”

“Every time you’re out in public, you need to be training people on who you are.  And it’s very important that you choose your words wisely.”

“It’s almost like right-brained people used to rule the world, and now left-brained people rule the world.”

“I think the world would be a much better, prettier place if people would step out of their left brain and create every day and unleash it on the world.  Everybody has it.”

“I never really set out to be an artist.  All I set out to do was to be happy.  Strive for that.”

Links mentioned:

Maria Brophy on Your Creative Push

Art, Money & Success: A complete and easy-to-follow system for the artist who wasn't born with a business mind by Maria Brophy

Matt Biolos

Connect with Drew:

Website / Instagram / Store / Facebook / Twitter

 

Join the discussion in the Facebook group!

Aug 10, 2017

Matthew Quick is a painter from Australia who has been named in Business Review Weekly as one of Australia’s top 50 artists.

In the last 5 years he has either won, or been selected as a finalist for, more than 70 major national art awards, including the Sulman Art Prize, the Arthur Guy Memorial Painting Prize, and the Mosman Art Prize, just to name a few.

He’s painted since his teens but was distracted by other careers – working variously as a university lecturer, photographer, salesman, art director, copywriter & interior designer.  Matthew’s paintings have been used as CD covers in Australia, Greece and the US, and as book covers by Penguin Books & Era Publications. His work has been reproduced in many magazines, books and journals including Hi Fructose, Plastik, Juxtapoz, Empty, Colossal, Design Taxi, Communication Arts, Idea, Design World, Graphis & Novum.

Full shownotes: http://yourcreativepush.com/matthewquick

In this episode, Matthew discusses:

-The long amount of time that it takes him to creative his paintings.

-The “naughty corner” where he puts paintings that are not behaving properly.

-How he gets through periods of time in which he “forgets how to paint.”

-The importance of the titles and descriptions of his paintings and what they can do for the communication with the viewer.

-The inspiration behind his “Monumental Nobodies” series.

-How he approaches each of his pieces.

-His “Frozen Pea Moment.”

-How he made his transition into being a full-time artist.

-The beauty of finding stolen moments and how they can add up to something big.

-Balancing what he wants to create for himself and what he needs to create for money.

-How he learned to go in sequential order with his pieces instead of having too many projects going on at the same time.

Matthew's Final Push will inspire you to know when it is the right time to reach out to galleries and to be respectful of the people that are with you in your creative journey!

 

Quotes:

“I try to write something that is the anti art-speak.”

“If the clock is ticking, what do I really want to do with my life?”

“So many people wander through life as if it’s a rehearsal for something else.”

Links mentioned:

ART/WORK: Everything You Need to Know (and Do) As You Pursue Your Art Career by Heather Darcy Bhandari and Jonathan Melber

The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg

Connect with Matthew:

Website / Facebook / Instagram / Twitter

On the next episode:

Drew Brophy : Website / Instagram

Want a critique or some advice?  Join the Facebook group!

Aug 7, 2017

Andy J. Miller is an American full time freelance illustrator with a background in graphic design, currently living and working in Columbus, OH.

Andy was born in Indiana, went to middle school in Western New York, to high school in Indiana, and to the University of Huddersfield in the United Kingdom. He teaches a self promotion for illustrators class to senior level students at the Columbus College of Art & Design. He is most known for his side projects and books; The Indie Rock Coloring Book, the collaborative Color Me _____ exhibit with Andrew Neyer, the daily drawing project NOD and his Creative Pep Talk Podcast.

Full shownotes: http://yourcreativepush.com/andyjpizza

In this episode, Andy discusses:

-Where the “pizza” part of his name came from and how he has embraced it as a part of his identity.

-His history as an illustrator and how the Creative Pep Talk Podcast started.

-The value of teaching and mentorship, no matter how much experience you have.

-The importance of thinking!

-Dealing with critics.

-The purpose of his recent “Creative Destiny” series on Creative Pep Talk.

-The hero’s journey and the role that it can play in any type of creative career that you have.

-Finding your gift and then giving it away.

-How, like in Harry Potter, sometimes our own worst enemy is living inside of ourselves.

-How political correctness sometimes holds people back from creating because they don’t want to make a mistake and then get attacked for it.

-Thinking about 11 dimensions and how our intuition might be tuned into a higher frequency that our animal instincts might be trying to protect us from.

-The idea of “gut churn” and forcing yourself to sit in the uncomfortable unknown.

Andy's Final Push will encourage you to stop looking for shortcuts and start looking for “sure-cuts.”

 

Quotes:

“You can reinvent yourself, and you don’t have to be owned by the person that you used to be.”

“I got obsessed with this idea of drawing invisible things.”

“I found teaching to be the ultimate growth hack because when you have to systematically boil down your truths, all the sudden they become so much more potent in your own life.”

“What is the true, unique cocktail that you have going on inside of you?  What is that work that just explodes and radiates from your very being?”

“All I’m looking for in my creative career is to find my gift and to find who needs it.”

“You need to be willing to make mistakes.  Always have the best intentions but don’t stop yourself before you get started.”

“In my own experience, the biggest breakthroughs come from sitting in that uncomfortable place.”

“Quit trying to go viral.  Quit trying to have overnight success.  Quit looking for shortcuts.  And just get on the journey.”

Links mentioned:

Jad Abumrad: Embrace the "Gut Churn" of the Creative Process

Deep Work: Rules for Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport

Connect with Andy:

Website / Instagram / Twitter

Creative Pep Talk:

Website / Soundcloud / iTunes

On the next episode:

Matthew Quick : Website / Instagram

Join the discussion in the Facebook group!

Aug 3, 2017

Jane Samuels is an artist and psychogeographer from the United Kingdom.  She has developed a love for the arts, politics, teaching, and animal and human rights campaigning.

Currently working as a professional artist from Hare Court Studio and an SpLD tutor in Manchester’s Universities, Samuels continues to develop work grounded in Psychogeography, which challenges the boundaries of legality, public vs. private space, and our relationship with the land.  Her work is housed in several private collections, and she continues to exhibit across the UK.

Full shownotes: http://yourcreativepush.com/janesamuels

In this episode, Jane discusses:

-The experience of teaching in prisons.

-The factors that led to her 10-year gap in art and what finally brought her back.

-Her Abandoned Buildings project and some of the exploits that she has gotten into.

-The inspiration behind her Anatomical Landscapes series.

-The difference between the immediacy of photography and the slow-burn of drawing and her need for both.

-Her practice of landscape writing and walking writing and what it allows her to do that visual art does not.

-Some of the Resistances that she deals with, such as fear, lack of self-confidence, and imposter syndrome.

-Dealing with the things that life throws at you and balancing it with your art.

-Her thoughts on the big social media sites: Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

-Some of her favorite resources for people who might be interested in pursuing similar creative outlets as her.

Jane's Final Push will inspire you to put a little time into your creative passion every day and to realize why you want to pursue your creative passion in the first place!

 

Quotes:

“There’s a very unhealthy dose of fear involved in art practice for me.  It scares the shit out of me.”

“There was all this unrealized stuff in my head and a real need to do something with it.”

“I think if you didn’t have fear, you wouldn’t produce the work in the first place.  If you’re really ever happy and satisfied with what you did, you’d just stop.”

“The beauty of it is that it is always there.  There might be jobs you can never go back to, there might be other things that just end, but your creativity and your process – it doesn’t go away.”

“The beauty of creativity is that it creates more creativity.”

“Five minutes is better than no minutes.”

Links mentioned:

Morag Rose from the Loiterers Resistance Movement: Website / Twitter
 
Fife Psychogeographic
 
Dr. Immy Smith
 
Robert Macfarlane
 

Connect with Jane:

Website / Instagram / Twitter

On the next episode:

Andy J. Miller : Website / Creative Pep Talk Podcast

Share what you created this week in the Facebook group!

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