Ten Pieces of Creative Advice

Hey all!

Just finished a list of what I think are Ten essentials for creative growth and for working towards making your living in a creative way! I though I would share them all here with you first. :)

I've been around a lot of younger people lately who are hungry for learning creative skills and finding their own mode of self-expression and more than a few adults who are thinking of turning some craft or creative idea into a product for on line sales. The world is becoming more open to anyone being able to make a creative living but often I find the hardest thing to teach is not the techniques but the mindset that enables one to follow through with their plan over time.

This is my default list, as of now, of the thingsI would like to impart to every young creator or one who is new to creating at any age.

Hoping you are all well!

XO
nicolas

1. Create EVERY Day.

I am likely, for the rest of my days, to begin any advice list with this one!  I think it's the best advice. The best plan of action. AND I think most people could do it. The usual argument against is that the person has a job/homework/a family/hobbies/a life, and it’s hard to find time for creativity in the middle of all that.

Well, maybe I'm the oddball,  but it’s mind-boggling how many “busy” people I know these days- including people with full-time jobs, families or studies- who still manage to find time to go out, play computer games, go on road trips, play sports and watch hours and hours of movies and tv shows.

 We find time in their days for all of these things. If we dream of creating, shouldn’t we be able to find time for it as well?


2. Don't Put Too Much Into the Idea of Inspiration.

The old idea that there must be an air of “inspiration” or a visit by the "muse"to make anything worthwhile is just silly.  Some ethereal or, more to the heart of procrastination, elusive entity that everyone is waiting to come along and drop the great idea into their heads.

t's not true.

People can be “uninspired” and still create and make beautiful work when they're doing it for an art class or for a deadline like a birthday or a wedding gift. And in the case of that art class, no art instructor would ever accept “But I didn’t feel inspired!” as an excuse for a late project.

So create with or without the visits from the muse or the guiding hand of inspiration. If you really want to create on a given day and you know you’ll only have an hour to do so because of other commitments, then get ready to make something in that one hour.

3. Realize it takes time to build skills or flesh out an idea.

I’ve known a whole mess of people who sculpted, painted, wrote, cooked, drew, danced or took up an instrument for a few weeks or months and then gave up. They wanted to be good right away.

I don’t know why so many people resent the notion of needing to invest “time” to become good with creative endeavors. They look at the artists they admire the most and then imagine they will be right up there in skill and ability in a fraction of the time those folks put in.

Time invested most certainly = ability.

I like to think I’m a good maker-of-things and that some of the skills that go into my work I have been doing them since childhood. But if we look at sculpting, well, I took that up with the medium of polymer clay just ten years ago in my thirties. In between then and now it's been a lot of time and hard work.

It applies to every medium of creativity and then to the art of making a living from your art as well. Time has to be invested and not rushed into showing results.

4. Collect and Jot Down Ideas.

I have forgotten more ideas than I will ever see through to completion and, though I may not remember all of them, I have no doubt I forgot many of my best ones by not taking a moment and  recording them somewhere.

I get ideas from the art of others, songs, dreams, random things heard on the street, books, nature or just something I am imagining in a daydream. This is a kind of free play for the mind, but it’s where most of my creative ideas spring from for me. And by all means, THINK about that when you go out into the world! Don’t be a passive vessel. Actively go in search of them and when the come WRITE THEM DOWN!

5. Realize You Will NOT Like Everything That You Create

There are many things I made, even sold, but was not happy with the results when they were done. I am, of course, seeing every little flaw, every aspect of the piece that I did not pull off quite the way I wanted to.

 That doesn’t mean that when I make something like it again (and I will) that I should shelve them or toss them out. Often these are the ideas that I build on and work towards making better the next time around, which builds my skills. I often hear that people who hire illustrators or comic artists look at the hands (or lack of them)  in the drawings immediately because they are often the hardest thing to get right and, therefor, someone who does them well has obviously put the time in to do so.

Learn to love the imperfections now but strive to overcome them tomorrow. Taking either the view that everything you create has to be perfect and you should destroy everything that’s not, or that you can’t possibly create something if you’re not passionately interested in every aspect of it, is self-destructive and not worth your time.

6. Realize That a Good Portion of Creativity is Purely Mechanical.

Even if you are someone who manages to drill into an endless well of  “inspiration,” there’s going to come a point in the path to seeing it to completion, where that dries up a bit, and you’re left with what may seem like a mess. Yes, that happens. I don't know a single artist who didn't struggle with that "dry spell" at some point along the way.

Don't give up and don't stop working through it. Remember advice #1? Keep at it! Just the act and the exercise of working on your craft is as important as those days of fevered inspiration.

7. Learn to Only Be Concerned With What YOU Can Accomplish

Yeah, simple, but when you know someone who can turn out painting a day or a drawing in an hour, and it takes you on average ten times as long, don't let that bring you down. You are only accountable to you. How someone else goes about their creativity is not your concern.

 I sculpt across the work table from someone who can complete one of their sculpted pieces in an hour or two. I'll take that long to make the assorted pieces of a fairy landscape or to sculpt a statue and then have to put them all together, paint them, add all the tiny details etc etc etc and I cannot charge as much for them as she can for her work because of the niches our work falls into. (that's a story for another rant!)  That is FINE. It's not a competition and if I held myself to someone else's standards in that way I would have given up long ago and most certainly have failed at trying to make  my living from my work!


8. Be Honest About What Distracts You.

Do you really have to go clean up the mess you’ve left sitting in the kitchen after throwing together dinner so you could keep working? Do you really only have an hour left before you have to leave for your walk or to meet a friend? Inventing excuses to keep from creating, waiting for that perfect time, is perfectly normal, but unless you learn to recognize that these are distractions and excuses and put creating above things you value that are mostly distractions from it, then your creative skills and your goals will most likely not grow as fast as they might otherwise when you make them a priority.

9. Develop Goals.

I have an old-school work ethic that pushes me to create for a certain number of hours each day. It gets upset with me if I don’t do as much work as I can and the one thing that gets in the way of me doing just that is not having goals set each day. Yes, sometimes that's not very much fun, going down the list and getting the things done, photo taking, making listings, shipping etc. These are the things that  I know should be done before I get into my remaining time where I can make whatever my heart desires. But there’s no one standing over me with a whip and telling me to create, which means I have to internalize the whip. I never, or at least very rarely, match what that work ethic expects me to achieve, but I do far more than I would if I only dreamed about goals and didn’t set them in writing.

And finally…

10. Love Creating For Itself.

Another obvious one, but one that many people don’t seem to get.

They dream about the day they will be making a living creatively, or at least selling their work as a side hustle or for extra income. Perhaps they dream about being featured in a magazine or on a web site they love, or about how much people will love a certain painting, Zine, handmade jacket, bracelet or ceramic sculpture.

But they don’t love the actual work of it.

That strikes me as the absolute most pitiful lack that someone who wants to be a creator can have. Yes, a lot of it is mechanics and skill development and discipline, but that doesn’t mean that something doesn’t surprise you in the middle of the sculpture or the illustration and make you laugh out loud or even start crying when you finally get it right!

And all of those dreams, as lovely as they are, are nothing to that moment you see the physical item you have been working on or developing finally emerge from YOUR fingers.

Making of a Maker - Please Give It Time - Third Friday Post - December 15th

Ok so. . . most things I've done in my life, creatively,  felt like they came naturally to me.

Sculpting however, was NOT one of those things.  Not with sculpting clay, not with polymer clay and not with ceramic or porcelain.

I just was not very good at all when I began.

Given the multitude of other things I could have turned to, things I already had a fair capacity to do creatively, it might seem surprising that I stuck with sculpting at all.

I am so glad I did.

When I am asked advice about being a maker-of-things for a living, the first piece of advice I offer is to stick with it. "Please give it time" I'll say.  I know the frustration of the inner critic who's always sitting on your shoulder and telling you you can't do it, you won't ever be good enough. But you CAN. And you WILL.

In time.

I think many people give up way to easily on their creative desires, wishes and dreams. If you're doing something you love, something you've always wanted to do or just something you saw and were inspired to try for yourself, then just keep at it because you'll get better each time you do it, I promise!

You won't even realize it because it's a lot of little steps of progression that get us to the place we want to be. Only looking back in time can I see the growth by comparison. Even now, 7 years later, I still learn something new with each piece I create! A new technique, a new way to get a hippo's ear or a fairy house's rooftop to look just right. I expect that I will continue to learn and develop my skills for as long as I keep working at it and coming up with new ideas to try.

And when I say just keep at it, keep making,  I mean make A LOT! Repetition, honing skills and evolving your ideas, it's all going to pay off in the end. Though it might not be in the way you hoped or, as I did, you may end up going down roads you never dreamed of only to discover that those roads take you to a place where you are happier than you've ever been.

Then, one day, you get to look back at the first things you made/ sold and something recently that you sold and compare them. If you're like me, you'll shake your head and laugh because we all started somewhere. . .

Here, for you to see, was my sculpture starting point. A Bast statue made 7 1/2 long years ago. My first. . .  and that Bast did sell, surprisingly enough.

I had not developed any of the skills, the patina processes, detailing, a way of working out the stylizations or the techniques that allowed me to create the blue patina Bast right below it.  That's where seven years of making, working on it every single day, came in.

This is the first Bast statue I ever made and sold back in 2010. 

And this is the most recent one I've sold. Seven and a half long years later.

Next month I want to dive into talking about the one aspect of online selling that I always felt I had going for me. . . packaging.

Thank you, as always for dropping by!

 Keep making!!
XO
nicolas

A Dose of Fairy Magic

Beyond the crafting and selling of items there are many aspects to being a maker-of-things that I absolutely did not expect but so enjoy.

 At the top of that list is the connection and interaction that develops with many of our customers. The exchanges that go on beyond the transaction are often born out of the desire to share stories or experiences or just random thoughts on the world of faeries and possibilities. And these can create longstanding bonds that may extend for months or years.

I have grown to love and cherish these interactions so much.

Once in awhile we also are given the chance to share thoughts and messages that seem "fairy-sent" 
 and such was the case today when one of our customers, who recently purchased a fairy house from us, was remarking that she did not feel fairy spirits were likely present in her own home due to something she does that she believed would be a detraction to fairy spirits.

Because this "something" falls into the category that I would consider to be purely modern "human ideals" and more specifically a cultural idealism of the last 20 years or so, I felt inspired to send the following along to her. . .  by the way, her message ended with the question "Are you truly believers?"


The reply:


Oh we are true believers!

And let us say that we do not think fairies discriminate against certain "earthly",human ideals There is, in the heart, something greater than human idealism that fairies are drawn to and, we believe, that intangible energy and heartfelt awareness is what creates that fairy presence around us.

Openness and a compassionate, welcoming heart. The desire to revisit or resurrect that magic of childhood or of any period of one's life where possibility and imagination ruled or were in our awareness. Even just the desire or the need to know that we are not alone here. . . . all of these things are, in our experience, the true portals to visitations and fairy magic.

There is an old ctale, Gaelic or Celtic I believe, that speaks of the "little man". A sprite who tends to move objects and personal items to places the owner realizes are out of place and often just moments after they have been set down! Even this type of sprite, which is among the most common of the "visitations" humans receive is usually presented to someone for reasons we cannot always fathom. But "they" know we are in need of some magic in this world and so it may appear in many different ways. Gentle nudges to our consciousness. . .

In YOUR world and your home, just be open to whatever comes and presents itself as a sign. The simplest things really. . . occurrences that you may have not even given a thought to before can be recognized as these visitations and signs. . . just stay open to the possibility as all of them are the doorways to deeper wonder and possibility. All of them come with no strings attached.  . no more of a "price" than our belief and the space made in an open heart.

Perhaps even a message like this, though flown through the cyber-spaces from our fingertips, may in fact originate somewhere else and is "given" to us to pass along? Who can say really. . .

We hope THAT magic and possibility is what you find in everything that you see. ;)



nicolas



Now, I LOVE writing such messages. I love pulling people back to this side of the landscape and horizon. Sometimes I think it really is about just giving people permission to open up and believe.


That's what it took to get me to a place, after so many years, of believing I deserved to do what I do and be a maker-of-things and that I could be a vessel for that magic to enter this world. Now it seems like I cannot imagine a time when I did not know this or believe it as such. . . but it took countless gentle and not so gentle budges and impressions. Moments of being "steered" one direction or another to keep me on the path.


I have known since I was a child that I was indeed "watched over".
 
Once or twice in enormously life altering ways and then again, in dozens of those slight, imperceptible changes of direction along the way too.

And the purpose is, in my way of seeing it, always small. I was, for years, too caught in the grandiose ideals of my own life and purpose and not ready to see that the simplest and most natural of our abilities are often the roots of the greatest purpose we may have.

Thank you faeries for all the love and guidance in all the forms presented thru these years.

I never forget. . . 


nicolas

There's This Little Place I Know

One of my favorite things about selling my work on line, which excited me from the very start of this adventure,  is the ability to connect with people throughout the world.

Having loved traveling when I was younger I could easily imagine my packages arriving in far off places, especially places throughout the world I had visited.

What I did not know is that it would stimulate my imagination so much is learning about all the places my packages go. When I've sold something to Rome, Paris, Dublin, Chicago, Montreal, Sydney, Edinburgh etc etc I can instantly picture these places and it is a thrill to ship something to a person who discovered your work from halfway across the world.  But what I love even more is selling to someone who lives in a small town, a village, a remote location on any continent. Small towns that I have never heard of before. I turn immediately to our old friend, Wikipedia, and I spend a few minutes familiarizing myself with the where and whens of it's history and locale. The inevitable pictures of main streets, historic sights, architecture, sweeping landscapes and vistas and old twisting roads and pathways pull at something in my heart. Of course, I've chosen to live in one of those towns too so what registers is the instant realization that someone who lives as I do, but many miles away, can find my shop, see my work, and decide to bring it into their home or gift it to someone they love.

In the past week I've shipped packages off to places like

Theresa, Wisconsin (pop 1200)
Havre Boucher, Nova Scotia  (pop 1500)
Crickhowell, Wales (pop 2,800)
Gravdal, Norway (pop 1500)

Each allowed me a chance to peek into the remote and unheralded places of our world.

I suppose what interests me most is this. I feel like I know cities. I've lived in my share. It's not that they are all the same but they all have very similar dynamics to them. Population density, a mix of old and new architectures and infrastructure. Constant change and shuffle. Lives pass through them in a heartbeat with no trace left to remember them by. The cities ARE the stories. . . and they are, at this point in my life, rather overwhelming to consider.

People actually use the term "livable city" these days. That should tell you all you need to know.

But for all of their grandness and opportunity and energy, they are desperately lacking in something I find to be a necessity. Continuity.

Especially in this country, old is not nearly appreciated enough be that in people or buildings.  Face-lifts on both offer a promise of newness and vitality but it's all a facade.

Cities, it seems to me,  swallow people whole. . .

Smaller places. Landscapes and places that do not change. . . one leaves a mark there. Stories evolve over time and lives stretch into the very fiber of the places they inhabit. That's lore. That's history. And it is not forgotten. That's what is interesting and eternal about them.

Look up Halstatt, Austria (pop 950) on Wikipedia and you will find a photo of the town from just a few years ago as well as one from 1898. There is so little difference in them it's amazing. Same scene, same buildings. Same beauty. No one moves there to "be something." or to attain anything (except, obviously, peace and soulful living) No one moves there to cash in on real estate opportunities or to bring something new to the town. no one moves there for social outlets or the overt distractions of population densities as we all have done with our city dwelling.

The US has it's share of places like this too. My town is one. Every building here has a story and it's not something you have to look up or dig to discover. Just ask anyone old enough and they can tell you it all. People in cities can;t tell you about the last person to live in their house or apartment let alone the history of the block, neighborhood or community. 

But in my town? A lot of people today and their families have lived here in this little fishing town for generations. Yes, things change here as with any US town. Our culture and economic structure demands it unfortunately. Change and growth are synonymous with success in the US and are often just an ephemeral illusion and an empty promise. But much stays the same too.

This little coastal town I live in is a gem. All the places I listed above are too. . . If I were to travel again in my lifetime, THESE are the places I'd want to see. But i am content here. . .and that is a feeling I never had in the city.

But that's me. . . I'm Larkrise to Candleford over EastEnders . . . Little House over Gotham City

These little discoveries are one of the many reciprocal gifts of what I do. These "out there" places work their way, in the smallest but most meaningful of ways, into my stories.
Into my paracosm.
Into my heart.

I won't forget them