Episode 21: Exhibiting, Printing & Opting Out

In this episode of The Creative Couch, I respond to four thoughtful creative dilemmas from Jen, Laura, Sheena and Nikky, exploring art appreciation, printmaking, selling artwork, creative identity and the complicated relationship between creativity and success.

Jen is preparing for an exhibition in her own studio later this year and has been reflecting on the difference between how artists are taught to critique and discuss artwork and how the wider public often experiences it. Beyond "I like it" or "It's not really my thing", many visitors seem unsure how to respond at all. We explore whether artists can create opportunities for richer conversations around their work, why so many people feel intimidated by art, and whether perhaps nobody ever really taught us how to look.

Laura is a printmaker and collage artist who is considering opening an Etsy shop or online store and is wondering whether to invest in printing her own reproductions or work with a professional printer instead. We discuss the advantages and disadvantages of both approaches, the questions worth asking when choosing a printer, and why you don't necessarily need to build tomorrow's business before you've made today's sales.

Sheena joined one of my drypoint workshops last year and has since been happily printing editions from traditional lino. Her dilemma is one that many printmakers quietly wonder about: how do you know when it's time to stop, clean the block and start again? We talk about trusting what the print itself is telling you, the myth of the secret printmaking rulebook, and why experience often matters more than formulas.

Nikky spent several years building a successful creative practice alongside a demanding full-time career, taking commissions, selling work and exhibiting regularly. But somewhere along the way, the joy disappeared and the thing that had once been a refuge became another source of pressure and expectation. After stepping away from selling her work, she found herself rediscovering the pleasure of making art simply for herself. We explore the pressure to monetise our creativity, the assumption that every artist should aspire to work full time, and whether success might sometimes mean protecting our relationship with creativity rather than growing it.

Also in this episode, I share a recent Loving Lately recommendation: the Paul Noble language courses. As I prepare for a week of intensive Japanese study in London, I reflect on the role his gentle and encouraging approach has played in my own language learning journey and why they might be worth exploring if you've ever wanted to learn a language yourself.

In this episode, I explore:

• Why so many people feel intimidated by art and unsure how to respond to it
• How artists can encourage richer conversations around their work
• The difference between judging art and experiencing it
• The advantages and disadvantages of printing your own reproductions
• The questions worth asking before choosing a professional printer
• Why you don't need to build tomorrow's business before you've made today's sales
• The myth of the secret printmaking rulebook
• How to know when your lino block is telling you it needs attention
• The pressure to monetise creativity and turn passions into businesses
• Whether becoming a full-time artist should always be the end goal
• Why protecting your relationship with creativity may sometimes matter more than growing it
• What it really means to call yourself an artist

Each dilemma is explored with both emotional insight and practical steps you can try in your own creative life.

If you have a creative dilemma you'd like me to explore, please email me at:

thecreativecouchpod@gmail.com

If you're feeling stuck in your own creative practice and would like support, you can find out more about my creative coaching, workshops and artwork at:

www.sammarshallart.com

You can also find me on Instagram at @sammarshallart.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome to the Creative Couch. I'm Sam Martial Artist and Creative Coach. This is a podcast for anyone navigating the ups and downs of a creative life. Each week I respond to three real creative dilemmas sent in by listeners, exploring both the emotional side of what you're experiencing and some practical ways to move forward. And from time to time I'll also be joined by other artists to talk about their creative life, their practice, their challenges, and what keeps them going. Hello and welcome to the Creative Couch. Welcome back. How are we all this week? How are we all? Have we been um managing uh the aftermath of the heat wave? I've heard it's gonna get hot again next week, though, so we've got to buckle up. We've got to buckle up again. Um but next week I'm gonna be in London actually. I am going back to do a Japanese language course that I did at King's College last year. I did a one-week intensive Japanese course. Many of you will have come with me that week, and I knew nothing, and I found it really, really overwhelming. Uh, a lot of fun, but oh my goodness, was that a sleep learning curve? So I've decided to go back this year after a year of studying Japanese, and I looked through all of my notes and all of the handouts that the tutor gave us last year, and it's quite easy now for me because I've been doing it all year. So I'm hoping I'm gonna enjoy it this year and feel much more comfortable with the whole thing. Um but uh yeah, so I'm gonna be in London uh next week, and my my classes are from 10 until 1, and then in the afternoon, I'm going to hopefully be going to see lots of exhibitions. Well, I say hopefully I will be, going to see lots of exhibitions. I'm going to try and do one Japanese-themed thing a day. So be it either going to a Japanese cafe, going for some Japanese food in the evening, going to a Japanese shop. And I'm going to be filming it all and making some YouTube vlogs. I hesitate to words the use, I hesitate to use the word vlog. Um, as a 51-year-old woman, it sounds a bit cheesy. Um, but I'm not really sure what else to call them, really. I'm just going to be trying to film every day and edit and post a video every day because to me that's easier than like filming a whole week and then trying to edit a whole week of content. So that's the aim. Let's see if let's see how I get on. Um, I might just be so overwhelmed with the Japanese course that I don't get anything done. But but come with me. I'm going to be staying in a lovely hotel. I've booked a wonderful hotel. Um, I normally stay in London with my wonderful friends, but that is one of my that's one of the friends who's very, very poorly in hospital. So yeah. Anyway, let's let's keep the positive, let's keep the positive feeling going. And I don't want to end up in tears, but anyway, so London next week for me, which is going to be exciting. Um, Marple's going with her dad, so she's in the background there. She'll be uh Rob will be meeting me at this at King's Cross and he'll be having her for the week. Though, so those of you who don't know, you've probably just found me on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Um, Marple is my wonderful dog, my data, my mini datchand, and I share Marple with my ex-boyfriend Rob. So when I lived in London, um goodness, 12 years ago, 11 years ago, 11 years ago, I got Marple. So we got Marple when I was still living in London and we shared her then because we never lived together. And then when I moved here, uh we were together for about six months and then we split up. So we've been sharing Marple ever since. Um so she will be in London with her dad. Um her dad is an artist as well, so he's called Robert Jukes. He's a he's a painter. Anyway, you don't need to know all of this. I'm going on. I need a I've got a podcast to do. Anyway, oh God, what a ramble. Um anyway, thank you to everybody who sent in your dilemmas this week. I have had a flurry, which is wonderful. Um, but as always, the door is open for many more. So if you have a dilemma, please send them in to the creative couchpod at gmail.com and I will endeavour to answer them as fulsomely as I can. And what has happened is that sometimes I get dilemmas in which are more practical dilemmas where people are just asking a bit of a question. So today, what I've done, I'm actually answering four dilemmas today, and two of them are quite short practical dilemmas. So I've kind of chunked those together and I'm hoping that they will take the space of like one quite complex dilemma. So I moving forward, when I get dilemmas which are some something like, you know, how do I ink up a lino cup plate or something, then I'll try and answer those. Uh obviously, I hope somebody doesn't send that, send that in because you know, there's lots of books you can buy. Uh uh, my book you could buy, um, yeah, or come on one of my workshops. I mean, yeah, anyway, listen, I'm rambling, you know what I mean. I'm trying to condense them down. Um, so I'm answering four dilemmas today. And before I answer the dilemma, I am actually going to tell you what my loving lately is because it relates to uh what I was saying a few uh minutes ago, which is about my Japanese course. One of the things that I think has been a real game changer for me learning Japanese was discovering the Paul Noble um audiobook series. Um, I don't know much about Paul Noble. All I know is that he's very similar to the um a very famous man called is it Michelle? I'm gonna say Michelle Brube, he's a cook, isn't he? He's a chef. Uh Michelle Thomas. Okay, so it's similar to the Michelle Thomas way of working, but I found Paul Noble's um Japanese uh one and two books, audio books absolutely brilliant in terms of just gently leading me through speaking Japanese, lots of repetition. I found them absolutely brilliant. I mean, they were a real game changer for me. I've done them both a couple of times now, and I'm I'm I'm saying this because I'm I'm I'm pretty sure there's not many out of many of you out there that want to learn Japanese, but he also has uh French, German, Italian, Chinese, if Chinese is your thing. So it's worth looking into. I can honestly say that those those two audiobooks really gave me a lot of confidence and made me feel much more confident about speaking. I'm also used using an app called Pinsler, so I do that every morning, half an hour of a Pinsler audio. Um, it's like a half an hour lesson every every morning on my run. But I think there's lots of problems with that app. I mean it's rated, it's it's you know, it's it's the PIMS. If anybody's learning a language, I'm sure you would have heard of Pimsler. And a lot of people really, really rave about it and think it's wonderful. I don't know, I'm I don't find it that helpful. Anyway, I still do it. I'm on I think I'm on the second level now. I do it every morning on my run, I do a lesson every morning. Uh I'm running through the woods speaking Japanese. Quite it's quite amusing. Anyway, let's get on with it. Right, um, let's get into it, as I as I like to say, with the cool kids. So uh today I am answering Jen's dilemma, I am answering Laura's dilemma, I'm answering Sheena's dilemma, and I am answering Nikki's dilemma. Okay, so Jen. Jen is uh a wonderful creative of mine, lives in Canada, and Jen is uh gently preparing for her first exhibition in her studio at the end of uh I think it's end of October, beginning of November, Jen's working towards. And Jen sent in a really interesting question around how to encourage people to talk about art. And she wrote in saying that um she studied art alongside alongside a full-time job for many years. And one of the things that she really valued about that experience was learning how to critique artwork constructively. Um, in those environments, people were taught how to look, how to notice, how to respond thoughtfully, and to talk about art beyond simply saying, I like it or I don't like it, or my six-year-old child could have done that. That's what I hear a lot. Um, but outside of art school, Jen feels that many people don't really know how to respond to art. Um people seem uncertain, she says that they don't want to get it wrong, they don't know what's expected of them, and so the conversation often stops at that's lovely, or that's not really my thing. And perhaps most difficult for all for the artist is silence. As like I said, Jen is preparing for an exhibition in her own studio later this year, and she's wondering whether there are ways to encourage visitors to look more deeply and to respond more thoughtfully to the work, or whether art appreciation is simply one of those private experiences that should be left alone. And I think this is a really interesting question because obviously it's not just about the visitors, it's about us as artists. Because if we're honest, exhibitions, open studios, that kind of thing are really exposing, they make us feel really vulnerable. Um, you know, because what you're doing is you're saying this matters to me, and this is my work, and there is a hope that people meet us halfway. You know, they'll spend time with the work, they'll respond to the work. We hope that they'll perhaps try and understand what we're trying to say. And I think if we're honest, we'll you know, we hope that they will in some shape or form reassure us that that it's been worth making. Um, but I think visitors arrive with their own worries. They're often, you know, I think they're often thinking, oh my goodness, you know, maybe I'll say the wrong thing, I don't know anything about art, um, you know, maybe the artist is here, and uh what if I say what if I say something that might offend them? You know, I think um as visitors, um we also feel that weight of expectation almost. I know for myself, you know, I even though I have open studios every every year, you know, I remember going when I was younger, I go to open studios and I felt really nervous about going into an open studio, especially if the artist was there, because again, I thought, oh goodness, you know, what what what should I say? What would be appropriate to say, and sort of second guessing myself before I actually stepped into the studio. Um, and there's and that and I think part of that problem is that we we have never really been taught how to look at art, many of us. You know, we it is very uh sort of binary thing, yeah. We like it or we don't like it. And I think that you know, we're taught how to judge art in a way, but to respond to art I think is is a very, very different thing. And I think more the more interesting questions will be around, you know, when you when you look at art, I think the more interesting questions are things like, you know, what did you notice first, what held your attention, what do you keep coming back to, what did it remind you of, what feelings does it evoke, you know, what questions arise. And I I you know, I think that the most important thing when when we're trying to encourage people to look at art is to is to make them understand that there's not one right or wrong answer. You know, most often the artists are making it and and there's a lot of kind of uncertainty while they're making the work. I mean, I know for me, you know, I I have these, uh, you know, my work often goes down these weird sort of goes into weird spaces and places and animals emerge, and I don't really know where they've come from. And so I don't really know half the time what I'm doing when I'm making my work. And so I don't have a I, you know, it's not like I I say it means this, it means that. It's not as certain as that. So I'm really hoping that that that the the visitor or the viewer will come along with their suggestions, with their interpretations, and it becomes this lovely dialogue rather than being a right or a wrong way. And I think one of the greatest gifts that we can give uh people is permission to trust their own response. Because I've I've been in scenarios before when I've been, you know, taking groups of people around galleries or talking to people within galleries, you know, I've done various things like this over the years, and I I I really try and eke out exactly what it is that they're trying to say because I can see people uh there is something in there, but it just needs a little bit of teasing for it to come out, you know. What what does this make you feel? Or you know, what's your immediate response when you look at that? Um you know, what cut what colours interest you in the painting? What do you think they're trying to say to one another? You know, if there's people in the in the um in the in the painting, you know, what what what's the relationship between those two people? Any kind of question I think is valid, and I think again it's just allowing the um you know the viewers or the uh the uh the visitors to trust their own instincts and and create a safe space. I think that's the really important thing, especially when you're hosting an open studio. I think it's really important to create a really safe, welcoming space. So often when I'm having an open studio, you know, the the people will come in, and you know, these studios are quite small, and that you know, there's me and Marple, and they open the door and then there's me. So often what my my procedure or how procedure sounds very uh formal, what I do is welcome them in. Hi, lovely to meet you. What's your name? How did you find me, you know, etc. etc. Uh would you like a cup of tea or a coffee? And then that gives me the opportunity to go into my cottage, make them a cup of tea and coffee so they can just get settled in the space. I remove myself and they can have a chat, they can have a wander, and then I just keep it really low-key. I might just wander into this studio, just let them have time to browse so they don't feel pressurised. I think creating a safe space for people to enjoy your work is is really important. Um, anyway, I'm um I am going off track a little bit, but let's, you know, let's let's sort of go back into the main thing here is that art isn't an exam. There are no right or wrong answers. And I think if we can go in in with that approach and if we can make people feel comfortable about whatever response they have is valid, then that's great. And just trying to, if people will say, you know, especially with kids, so I like that, I don't like that. Well, what is it about that that you like? You know, I remember when I taught at the Brit School for a while, you know, I was very insistent that none of my students used the word like because it just felt in a sense it was a little bit lazy because actually they did have the knowledge, they were they had been taught how to appreciate art, and just by using that word like, I just felt it was a little bit lazy, you know. Right, okay, so the practical layer, what can you do, Jen, to encourage people when they're in your space, to perhaps respond to the work in a more uh interested uh and supportive way? That doesn't really make sense, doesn't it? I mean, I think you know what I'm trying to say. How can Jen in her own space encourage viewers or visitors to respond to the work? Um how can how can we encourage them to respond to the work more fulsomely? I think that's great. Okay. You're curious curating their experience here, Jen. That means you have permission to entit to shape how people engage with the work. Um, you know, you could have sort of prompts around the room that encourage people to sort of move beyond simply asking themselves whether they like a piece or two. And when I say prompts, I don't mean sticking labels next to everything. I it could just be something like um, you know, a little card next to uh a card on a table saying something like, you know, if you're not sure where to start, you know, perhaps asking ask yourself this, you know, what piece first caught your eye? Um, which piece would would you take home if money was no object? Which piece stayed with you, which piece surprised you? Um and I think having little prompts like that scattered around could be really helpful. I mean, I often like the way that a lot of exhibitions have um, you know, at the end of the exhibition they'll have a wall where they encourage people to write things and to stick things on the wall. Um, you know, so it could be something like that, with it if you have a visitor's book that people sign, you could have um, you know, little prompts within the the visitors' book as well, just to kind of get them to ask them some questions. And I think that could be a really nice way of gently supporting their experience throughout the exhibition, and also when you're talking to them about the work, you know, I mean, I I'm I'm curious, I'm nosy. I will very often they'll ask me about my stuff, and then I end up asking them about their stuff, and obviously often the conversation just it ends up them telling me about their life, which is very often the case. I have people come and and because I I'm so nosy, people come to my open studio and I just ask them about themselves, and they just sit here telling me their life story. And then but I think that if you if you plan it properly, then you can avoid that. I mean, you know, it I'm I'm being lighthearted here, but if I was being you know much more purposeful with this, I could create a space whereby if people gently started to ask me about my work or uh they were curious about it, I could then gently tease out a little bit more of a response from them just by uh just by kind of intuitively responding to what it is that they're looking at. And I so I think in a way, Jen, I think that you need to trust yourself here as well. I think you need to trust yourself actually as to when you are actually in the space, because I think when you're in the space and you get people who are coming in, everybody's gonna be individual, everybody's gonna be responding to things differently. So I think if you have a have a set few things, a set paragraph or two or some suggestions in your head as to how you can gently tease out these things with people, I think you'll be set. Um, but but I do like the idea of having little prompts around, you know, little suggestion, little little things that make people think as they're going around the exhibition, perhaps that could work. And this is something that we can talk more about in our sessions. But I think it's a really, really interesting question, and I think the more that we um allow people the space to respond in however they feel, then that is when they really start to open up and they really start to get excited about artwork, and I think that's the beauty, isn't it? But it's about creating that safe space where people don't feel like they're being judged or whether they don't feel like you know they don't know enough about art, and it's not about that, really, is it? You know, I think that I what was I listening to the other day? I was listening to um, I think it was Radio 4 um front row, and Dave Eggers was on there and he was talking about galleries and uh museums or galleries especially, you know, these these kind of high-end galleries, these uber cool galleries, um, in in you know, in London or in New York or wherever. And and you know, he was talking about how elitist they are and how intimidating they are, and how sad it is for artists that you know, if they're being shown by these galleries, people get put off by going into I know I do, you know, and I've been making work for God knows how long. But you sometimes walk into these spaces and you just feel intimidated by the people who are sitting at the desk. And I think that's really sad because as artists, I think we all want people to look at our work. We don't care where people come from or you know what what social class they are, it should be of a welcoming space. And uh it was very interesting actually that the anyway, I'm wandering off again, but you know what I mean. As uh we as the artists, and we are if we are having it's our space, we absolutely have um the the the um autonomy to curate their their experience, right? Oh god, I'm really I'm really going on for them, aren't I? Okay, right. Um yeah, so so moving away from do I like it to you know what did I notice? What did this make me think about? Okay, so this is my homework, and this isn't this isn't just for Jen, this is for all of us. This is for you know, the next time you visit an exhibition, ban yourself from saying I like it. You know, instead ask yourself questions like, what did I notice first? What held my attention? What feeling did it create? What memory did it bring back? Which piece am I still thinking about an hour later? You know, which um which piece would I take home? What you know, which piece would I take home and perhaps have on my wall? Or you know, which piece really made me curious? Which piece sort of which piece did I not respond to? And why do you why do I think that was? What was it? Is it the colour? Was it the format? Was it the technique? I think the more that you ask yourself the questions, the more comfortable you're going to feel about how you respond to artwork. Um yeah. I hope that was helpful, Jen. Like I say, we can expand on this in our sessions, but um, I think it's a really interesting area, and I do think people again a bit it's for me, it's a bit like when people say, I can't draw. Uh people will say, I don't know anything about art. You know, I know what I like and what I don't like. And I think that isn't just ignorance, that's just fear. I think that's just fear because people are worried that they're going to seem ignorant if they say anything about the artwork, as if there's some kind of, you know, um uh you know, special, special um, what's the word? Uh, you know, special kind of box behind it which has got all the answers. Do you know what I mean? It's kind of we create work because we want to be seen. We we create work as artists most of the time when we don't really know what we're doing. There is a there's a there's a very intuitive way of going about it, you know. Anyway, right, moving on. I hope that was helpful. Okay, so Laura. So Laura wrote that she is a printmaker and collage artist who is thinking about taking the next step and opening either an Etsy shop or an online store. Before she gets there, though, she's hit one of those practical crosswords that many artists come to eventually. Um, if you're selling prints of your original work, do you print them yourself at home or do you use a professional printer? And she was asking questions like, um, you know, what should I be asking the printers if I do decide to use a printer? What quality should you be looking for if you're printing at home? What sort of setup produces work that is genuinely sellable? Um, yeah, so in other words, you know, if you are thinking about making reproductions from your work, what's the best way to go about it? And, you know, it's a great question for me because obviously I sell my prints, but I also sell high-quality digital scans of my drawings. And that is something that I made the decision to do about four years ago. And that was because, you know, I had a lot of people loving my drawings and a lot of people saying, Can I buy one of your drawings? And I would say, Well, no, because I'm not going to rip it out of my sketchbook. But then I started thinking, well, maybe there could be a way of me doing this in a way that you know would get my work out there and get my drawings out there. And again, it wasn't for enough financial thing, it was just genuinely because people were saying, I really like your drawings, I'd like to buy one. So I started thinking, well, how do I go about doing that? So in a way, I went through what um Laura was was was uh battling with uh many years ago. Now I chose to get a professional setup, but I'll I'll tell you about that um in a minute. So I mean, if we're looking at this in the emotional layer, I mean this is a very practical question, but I do think that in often we have this assumption that there must be a right way of doing something, um, you know, that there's a professional printer that all the artists use, or um, you know, uh there's a as a perfect setup. And the truth is there isn't really, you know, some artists produce beautiful uh reproduction prints from their own studio, others use specially specialist printers for their whole entire career. And I think it's it's really a question of scale, budget, and how much control you want over the process, really. Um, you know, I know to I know that you know some of the artists that I know, you know, they they hand all of their print uh uh sort of um print making uh sorry um reproduction prints over. I mean a lot of them are painters and they sell reproductions of their paintings, you know, in print form, and they hand that all over to a professional printer because that's you just don't want to deal with it. So that's absolutely fine. I mean, I so I I made the decision to set up my own here, and you can see them here in the background. So you can see this one here is the Epsom workforce, and that is the scanner. Okay, that is actually a scanner and a printer. However, I don't really I use the printer just to print out general stuff, but the scanner at the top is a really, really good scanner, um, and actually it was cheaper for me to buy the whole thing rather than just buy a separate scanner. So that's an A3 scanner. So you've got to decide, you know, how big do you want your scanner to be? So for me, I needed something that was bigger than A4, so I chose an A3 one. Um, and then I've got my printer over there, which is a Canon Pro 300. Um, now together I bought these about four or five years ago now, and I think they came to about a thousand pounds both together. Um, the inks are expensive. The Canon one, um, the inks are about £20 a uh a cartridge, and I think there's six cartridges in there, and I get through them pretty quickly. And I use um high-quality Hannah Mule digital paper, wonderful paper. Um, the paper's expensive, so you know I hardly make any money on my uh prints from my drawings, but I love doing them and I love printing them out, and I like being in control of you know how they look, and I alter things on Photoshop to make sure that it looks like my um my drawings. So I personally have gone down that route. So I set up, but I wouldn't have done that had I have not known that this was something that was going to sell, you know. So I think for you, Laura, really, if you're just starting off, then I probably would set, you know, uh go and find a really good printer, but ask people in your area who who's a good printer, you know, who is reputable, who is reliable, and then go and suss them out, go and meet them. And the questions you really want to be asking are things like are the prints archival? Essentially means, you know, can I expect the, you know, can can I expect the prints to last for a long time before they start to fade? You know, which papers do they offer? Can they offer me some samples? How close is the colour match to the original? And often what they'll do is that you'll send, you'll do, you'll do a uh a couple of test ones and then you can look at them and you can go back and say, actually this isn't right, can we adjust that? So you begin a relationship with them. Um, and I think the most important thing to ask you is, you know, would I be happy with this on my own wall? I mean, that's that's always the quality control process I go through. As soon as I print out a print of my drawing, I look at it and think, is that something that I would hang on my own wall? And if it is, great, yeah, it's ready to go. So I think it's it's very much about asking yourself these questions and um, you know, preparing for the future. But perhaps where you are now at the moment, it is a matter of just getting, you know, maybe 10 or so prints printed professionally, um, and then thinking, you know, if this is something that starts to take off, then you can think about investing in your own setup. But bearing in mind it takes a long time to, you know, fully uh reap the benefits. I don't think I've made a thousand pounds worth of selling my drawings really, so um I'm still I'm still in negative uh there. But you know, again, it was a decision that I made because I like to be in control of things. Um so the homework really is to, you know, like I said, don't try and solve the problem that you'll have in five years' time, solve the problem you have now. You know, if you're selling a handful of prints, a print a pressure professional printmaker will do the job. Um, but if you do decide that later on you want to invest in a setup, then I would just do some research. I can't remember what company I use, printers for you, or it was some big company that specialise in print printers, and they were really, really helpful. They guided me through the whole process of which they which printer they thought was the was the best one for me to go for, um, and you know, which scanner, and and they were great. So, you know, there are there is help out there, and I think you just have to be clear about what it is that you're doing, and um, and and so that they will be able to assist you in the best way. Okay, right, Sheena. How are we doing for time? I can't remember, I don't know how long I've been going on for, but we're just gonna go with it. So Sheena wrote in Sheena um uh came to one of my workshops a couple of years ago, and she's got a lino cut question, and she she was asking me, um, when you print an edition of lino cuts, how do you know when it's time to stop, clean, and um clean the block and re-ink it? She was asking, should you be cleaning the lino after a certain amount of prints? Should you wait until the image starts to lose some of its crispness or clarity, or should you simply keep going for as long as the prints keep coming out well? And Sheena writes that she feels at the moment she's probably cleaning her block too often. Her current method is to tamp off the excess ink with newsprint before cleaning the lino with vegetable oil and a cloth before re-inking and carrying on printing. So I think her question is really is there a general rule that printmakers follow, or is this one of the things that simply comes with experience and instinct? Uh yes, the second one. Um, so the first thing I want to mention here is that I mean, I don't know what ink you're using here, Sheena, but um you were saying you're cleaning it off with vegetable oil, which makes me think that you're using an oil-based ink. But if you're using one of the Calico safe wash inks that I use, the Cranfield Calico safe wash ink, then you don't be needing, you don't need to clean it off with vegetable oil. Um, I would just say you just clean it off with you know a damp cloth. And I'd be reluctant to clean, be cleaning in between sessions and additioning, I would absolutely not clean my block off with vegetable oil. That was something that I would do probably at the end of the session when I know that that block is going to be retired for a while. So I would be cautious with using the vegetable oil on your linos. But again, I don't know what lino you're using. It's different, you know, with the traditional lino and the um, you know, the Japanese vinyl, all of these things um are uh you know produce different uh results. So, you know, I think printmakers like rules. We do like rules, you know, how long exactly should I soak the paper, you know, how long do I have to leave the ink to dry, how many turns of the press, how many times do I clean the clean the block? And I think the frustrating thing is it just depends. It depends on so many variables, it depends on what ink you're using, like I've just said, what liner you're using, you know, if you're hand burnishing or if you're printing with a press, um, the temperature of the studio, the depth of your marks, um, you know, and I think most importantly for me, it's always about what is the print telling me? What is the print telling me? So for me, there's apps if I'm doing a big addition, so at the moment I'm doing, I've just finished a Suffolk line I cut and I'm busy editioning it at the moment. And I'm I'm now transitioning to using the Ironbridge printmaking inks because when Jenny from Ironbridge came here a few weeks ago, she brought some of the inks and she said, Look, Sam, just have a go. She said, I know you use the Cranfield ones, but just have a go with ours. And I was just like, I'm total confident, I'm a total convert. I mean, they are traditional oil-based inks, so you do you can't clean them off with um warm soapy water as you can with the um Cranfield ones, the Calico ones. Um, but you know, Jen's produced this amazing formula, it's a bit like zestin with in a spray spray pumpy thing, and you just wash it off and it's brilliant. But the main thing for me is just how beautifully the inks go on, and they literally you you take the paper off and the ink is dry. Now, I don't know what special magic Jen has done to make the fact that the prints are dry when you take them off the block. It's incredible, and they're so beautiful. So I'm transitioning more towards the iron bridge um uh inks now. Uh, where was I going with that? Okay, right, yes. So I was saying I'm I'm additioning this new print which I'm using uh these iron bridge prints for, and I probably got about 30 prints with my roller with the ink before I thought probably a time to rest and give my blocker bit of a rub down. And so that was 30. But there's no magic number. There's no magic number for me. I I'm just literally going with what the print is telling me. But I think probably possibly from what I can hear you're saying, Sheena, is that you're probably doing it too much. You're probably doing it too much. Over time, the the the ink will start to build up in those really fine lines, it'll start to build up and become clappy. You'll see it, you won't be getting those crispness of crispness of lines. So, again, there's no hard or fast rules. I think trust your instinct, see where it's I can just see you know that really difficult neighbor Bible. I can just see him going past dinner. Um on his little lawn mower. Anyway, um, yeah, trust trust yourself, trust that trust the liner, the liner will be telling you, and the print will be telling you. Um yeah, so I said I I wouldn't probably wouldn't use vegetable oil. I just wouldn't want to introduce any residual oil into the surface while I'm printing. I just don't think it would work for me. But again, you know, printmaking is one of those things where you know, people one person will tell you one thing, another person will tell you another. It is is very much about finding your own way with it. And I'm pretty much self-taught as a printmaker, you know, apart from etching, which I I learned when I was at the Royal Drawing School, Lino Cup, I'm entirely self-taught. I didn't know anything when I was in my early 30s and I was learning lino. And I've you know, some of the methods I use, some of other printmakers probably, you know, but look in horror. But this works for me, so I think you know, trust your own instincts. There is no magic number. See what happens when you push it a little bit further. Maybe, you know, get out of the habit of cleaning your block up every five prints. Just see what happens, okay. And if you are thinking that, I mean, one of my other things that I was wondering here was if you are thinking that you need to clean it off so much, I was wondering whether you're actually using too much ink on your prints. And that is something that I wouldn't be able to know until I looked at your prints, Sheena. So it could be that you're cleaning your block off because your inks, your you know, your uh lino is getting really sort of claggy and and and blocked up with ink because you're using too much ink. Anyway, I hope that helps. That's not a dilemma as such, that's more of a practical question, but I hope I have answered that. Right, uh, moving on to Nikki. So Nikki wrote in, and her header on the email was that I'm not really sure this is a dilemma, more a discussion point. And what's wonderful about this is that this dilemma is a beautiful foundation for a question that I'm going to answer in a couple of weeks from a listener called Kate, because Kate is going through something similar at she's she's in the middle of this, whereas Nikki's out the other side. So I think I I I wanted to answer Nikki's first. Anyway, Nikki's dilemma, I'm I'm answering them as they come in. So Nikki's dilemma came in first. But I think if you guys note this down, and then when I talk about Kate's dilemma in a few weeks, you will notice there's lots of similarities here. And I think Nikki's reached a really interesting conclusion. And yeah, I'm not going to say too much because yeah, I don't want to give too much away. Anyway, so Nikki's Nikki's Nikki said it's not really dilemma because, in many ways, she's already found the answer. So a bit of context. Nikki started making art for the same reason many of us do. It was a refuge from the pressures of everyday life and a welcome contrast to a full-time demanding job in conveyancing. And for a while it remained something like exactly that somewhere to retreat to, somewhere to play, somewhere where there was no expectations or no pressure. And then something that happened that many artists dream of the work started selling, commissions started coming in, opportunities arrived, and Nikki had loads of work accepted into, you know, really prestigious competitions and exhibitions. And it and from the outside, it looked like things were moving in the right direction. But alongside all of that success came something else. The pressure started to build, the joy started to disappear. And the thing that once helped Nikki cope with her stress slowly became another source of stress. Eventually, Nikki made the decision to stop selling her work and stop taking commissions. And in doing so, she's found something she hadn't realized that she had lost, the enjoyment of making art simply for the make, for the sake of making it. Her question is whether it's still okay to call yourself an artist if you stepped away from the ambition of doing it professionally. I mean, I don't necessarily think that's the crux of the email. I don't I don't think that's the question, because I think Nikki knows that. Nikki knows the answers to that, and we'll talk about that in a bit. But I think you know, what what what really struck me was how Nikki had obviously really listened to what was going on. You know, she she she'd had this success, she she turned her hobby into a business, and then realized that hang on, hold on, I'm not enjoying this anymore. Something that I used to love has turned into becoming a big source of stress, and I don't want that anymore. And she's made the incredibly brave move to step away from that, you know. So I think this is a really interesting one, and it's something that I hear a lot, and it's something that I myself have thought about a lot, and and I'm I have made decisions along my career to ensure that I never ever rely on my artwork to pay my mortgage. And I will I've talked about this before, and I will talk about it to the blind and blue in the face. The thought of having to rely on my prints and drawings to make sure that I've got a roof over my head would scare the life out of me. So I have always made sure that I have got multiple sources of income in so that I don't have to worry about selling work to be okay. And and and I think that you know, this is it is a bit of the dream. I mean, I I hear a lot of people come, you know, come to me for coaching and say, Well, I would ideally I'd love to be a full-time artist. And I think this is you know, this is the dream, isn't it? We we have this belief that you know everything should be moving in one direction. We start making work for ourselves, and then we start selling work, we start exhibiting, and then you know, we dream of leaving our jobs and becoming full-time artists. But the problem is that some people absolutely thrive on the challenge of running an art business. Some people really enjoy the marketing, the exhibitions, the deadline, and the sense of momentum that that brings and the stress that's involved with that, but some people don't. Some people, you know, the thing they never loved was the business side of things, you know, it was the freedom, the curiosity, the lack of pressure. And then suddenly, you know, that becomes intertwined with the other stuff. And then that's you know, it's it's it's fertile ground for you know uh unhappiness, really, in a way, isn't it? And I think what's what's interesting about Nikki's uh email is that she doesn't sound defeated, she doesn't sound like she thinks she's failed at all. You know, she sounds as if she's really listened carefully to what was going on and made that decision that the version of success she thought she wanted, you know, wasn't the version of success that made her the happiest. And I think that so that takes so much courage when we're surrounded by the messages of, you know, our hobby should become our business, it should become, you know, move it from a side hustle into a main hustle. Um, you know, um, and I think that, you know, opting out like Nikki has done is actually really radical. And and I think I think it's just tremendously admirable, really, to be honest, Nikki. And I and you know, it brings me back to that question: is it still okay to call yourself an artist if you stepped away from the ambition of doing it professionally? And I mean, my answer is very simple, and I think you know the answer to this, Nikki. I mean, of course it is, you know, being being an artist isn't a tax status, you know, it's not it isn't determined on whether you have a an Etsy shop or a uh you know a waiting list of of hundreds of commissions. It isn't determined by whether you make £10 a year or you know, £10,000 a year. Um, and it certainly isn't determined from whether whether you've left left your day job. You know, it's it's being an artist is about making things, it's about curiosity, it's about noticing the world and responding to it. And you know, it's it's about the feeling that it's to create something that didn't exist before. So I think just because you aren't making money from it anymore, it doesn't matter. You're still an artist, you're still the artist you were, you know. In fact, you're probably a stronger artist for the fact that you've you know you've listened and you've made those decisions that are right for you. Um and I think that practically, I think Nikki's obviously done all of the things that she needed to do here. She stepped away from commissions, she stepped away from selling, and she's paid attention to what happened next. You know, the joy obviously come and can has come back. I mean, I think obviously, you know, this is this is all sounds quite, you know, very um very simple on paper, doesn't it? But obviously, I'm sure that there was a a lot of complex things that Nikki had to negotiate behind the scenes. You know, you you've made your art, your business, you're you're you're stepping away from it. What's going to fill that hole financially if that has been what you've you know been been making a living from? So all of those things, obviously, I mean, I'm sure it's really, really complicated. I mean, I guess my advice will always be it's like I said at the beginning of this dilemma is I I would always advise people to have other things, other sources of income. I would all that's my biggest advice to anybody starting off if you want to make money from your artwork, just make sure you've got other income coming in from other sources because the danger is you start to um you know make work for other people, you know, other you and I've seen it before, I've seen it happen time and time again. People have become really successful by making a certain type of work, and that then you know that then everybody wants that work, and it's really hard once you've built up that reputation for making a certain kind of work to then step away from making that work, and you become a bit trapped. And I've seen it again and again and again, and and I I think there's other ways, I really do think there's other ways. Um, but again, it depends on who you are, it depends on what you want from your life, it depends on what you want from your creative life, it depends on where you are financially, all of those different things. I mean, I can talk about from from my experience, but often, you know, it's just me here sitting here. But I but I do think that you know, Nikki has noticed something that I think a lot of people notice, and again, it's going to relate to the thing that's coming in in a few weeks with with Kate. You know, the thing that we love doing, as soon as we start making money from it and people want it, it becomes pressured, it becomes a job, and it has all the stresses and strains that uh the all the other job, the office job used to have. You know, I mean, I made the decision years ago not to do wholesale stuff, not to do markets, not to do any of that kind of stuff. That's just my decision. I I I like making the work that I I make, I love make I love making the stuff that I make, I have joy in it. People buy it as wonderful, but I don't um rely on it. So that gives me the freedom to make the work that I want to make and keep having that wonderful joy. But again, I think it's it's it's personal, it's circumstantial, all of those things go into it. But um answering your question, Nikki, absolutely 100%. You are an artist, just it without a question of a doubt. And I think well done, well done for stepping away from it, well done for noticing it wasn't making you happy, and um yeah, really, really interesting, and and lots of things to consider there, and I'm sure that will resonate with a lot of you out there, and maybe it will maybe it will what's the word? You know, if you have the aspiration to be a full-time artist and you see these people doing these things on in on the internet and you think, oh my goodness, that looks amazing, you know, just just sometimes just stand back a bit and think think maybe it isn't as amazing as it looks. Maybe it isn't as amazing as it looks, because often it isn't, and Nikki's just proved it here, hasn't she? Anyway, my lovelies, I think I've been going on for a long time today, but I've enjoyed it. It's been really nice to chat to you guys. It's been nice to um answer some questions. It's been lovely having Marble snoozing away in the background. Her presence is always greatly appreciated in on the podcasts, and I just want to say a huge thank you to everybody this week. I'm going through a really tough time at the moment, obviously, with lots of things happening in my personal life, and you guys have been amazing. So I think I just want to say thank you, thank you for everything that you do, thank you for all your wonderful messages, thank you for all your support on the podcast. Just thank you for being here. Let's continue to make this podcast, let's make it a space where everybody comes along, we're all here together. I feel you here, I feel all you guys listening. I I can I can see you on your walks, I can see you making your supper and you're watching it on YouTube. I can see you. I'm so appreciative of you, and you're brilliant, you're all brilliant, and I'm sure you've got more dilemmas than you need me to answer. So, as always, thank you. Do like, listen, subscribe, do what you need to do, tell your friends about it, tell your family. Um, yeah. And uh, we will see you when we're back from London and I'll fill you in on how the Japanese course and watch me on YouTube because I'm really hoping to produce quite a lot of videos and I'm away. I'm excited to make some more videos, some more vlogs. The 51 year old who does vlogging. Look at me, how cool am I? All right, listen, I'm off, I'm sending love, and I will see you soon. Let's turn this off. Pause recording, stop recording.