Welcome to art for all the sketchbook school podcast. I'm your host, Danny Gregory. I'm the author of a dozen or so books on art and creativity. And I'm a sketchbook artist. Artists are dismissed as dreamers, but being an artist takes focus and perseverance. It is a tough job, grounded, firmly in the real dreamers. Our roadkill artists work. That's why they call it the work, the ideas, the notions, the dreams, the visions, the work being an artist means seeing the world as it is, and having something to say about it. Most people don't, most people are content with hackneyed, secondhand points of view, tree hugger, or a tea partier paper or plastic. But being an artist means diving into what is really out there, building your own filter, scratch a filter that, uh, adjusted the contrast, brings out the details, heightens the textures, and look deep into the shadows. If you have nothing to say, you're handled tremble. Your lions will be weak. Your compositions will be flat and your audience will be yawning. You need to reach down. And take a stand on something. Anything being an artist means working to see yourself as well, to figure out what colors you see in what shapes you like, what appeals to you and trying in some way to understand why not, why as in words, but why is in feelings, nuances, shades? What to, I like me. I like bent things, dead things, wounded things. I like things that are beaten by the sun and wrinkled by the years, I like to see their history in their surfaces to feel what's happened to them too, to trace the map of their journey, carved into their flesh to empathize. Why do I like these things? Is it because I know I'm not perfect. I've been ravaged. I persevere and I honor those who do too. Or is it because I cannot actually make beauty. I need to ask myself these questions, even though I don't aim to ever articulate the answers, I need to see in to that ugliness and to share why it is so beautiful to me. You can see it too, so you can see the love inside your own pain. Being an artist takes courage. It takes balls and sweat to see the world through fresh eyes and to develop the skills, to express that vision and then go out on a limb and share it because it's a long road, a ho thankless journey. Most of the way, a trip, no one ever asked you to take. And no one feels obligated to, to cheer you along. If there are any spectators along the road, they're probably skeptical. They probably see you as, as a self-indulgent weirdo, too lazy to get up proper job. But look, don't look to me for sympathy or applause because being an artist is a cause you choose for yourself. The rewards are in the journey and there is no promise land. You have to want to proclaim your vision. To broadcast your voice to change the world. The finish line doesn't lie at the doors of the Whitney biennial. It lies at the grave every day is a lesson and a revelation, and they follow one after the other, to the horizon, providing their own reward, artists accumulate wisdom and depth, and no gallery owner can take a cut of that and no auctioneer can ring a gavel down upon the lessons learned. The only thing to goad you on is your fire and your nerve. Because after all who asked you, who asked you how you see the world what's good or bad? What needs changing? What could be no one, you decided you had something to say, and now you want to say it. No, one's obligated to listen, but you will make them sit up and take heed. Being an artist means being an entrepreneur who imposes his vision, who asserts the value of what she's doing and insists people, get it and take them seriously. No one else will do it for you. No one else will come up with your business plan or a strategy or a new idea. You don't answer to a committee or a board or market research. You make your product. You sell your product. You create your market, you get your ass out of bed each day and punch the clock you built. Being an artist means being a craftsman, a self-promoter and productive without a boss, a company, a client, you were making a product, no one asked to buy, sourcing your own materials, developing your strategy and above all shipping what you make. You can't just sit in your brain pan or your sketchbook. It needs to be stretched and framed and hung up for the world to see and buy and resell and love. Learn from if that scares you. Cool museum show about 2% of the work they already own. There's already plenty of genius in storage, but if that excites you and inspires you awesome. Do the work and bring it on. Thanks for joining me today. I'll dream up something new for you again next week until then I'm Danny Gregory. And this is heart for all.