
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Failure
Let’s start with a good quote, that’s how all good podcasts start, right?
Examples:
7:07
When Lee started art school he came to it really without any experience drawing or painting. The first 3 or 4 terms were kind of rough. Every day Lee would sulk into class and he would have done his best on his paintings and then would look at what everyone else had done and he knew that he wasn’t at their level yet. It was a daily failure, for the first couple of terms. It was tough and he really struggled with it; it was quite disheartening. He came up with a way to get through it:
One problem we have is that we look at failures as failures. We have also been conditioned to not look at trying and failing as a learning and forward moving experience. Everything in school is all about moving up, what grades did you get? Were you right or wrong? We’ve been conditioned to not use trial and error for learning. In school we don’t get a good grade for trying and failing. All the results we see with report cards are all about moving up. That conditions us in a bad way for being artists. That model is good for math, it’s either right or wrong, but with a painting there is not just a right or wrong way, sometimes you have to wipe the paint off and redo the painting but that failure was apart of the successful journey.
Will once had a student and they wouldn’t try anything with paint and were so afraid to make a bad mark, they were paralyzed. Will thinks that this was because they weren’t ever rewarded for trying and failing.
12:30
Participation awards, now in youth sports there are always participation rewards, but kids know it is a game and there are actually winners. They know who won and who lost.
There is another way to categorize failures:
You can’t always control the outcome of the failure however, your reaction to failure is up to you.
No matter what happened you can check it off your box, whether or not you caused the failure. You don’t have to be a victim, you can choose learn, and then move forward.
15:00
Art and life really is a lifelong learning process both on the micro and macro level. You’re always testing your hypotheses. You can always be learning. “I tested those theories and they didn’t work and so I am going to change the process, or change…”
That’s how Lee learned watercolors. Initially in almost every painting he would fail. Watercolors are really difficult to master. Lee would constantly fail in every painting and would get frustrated because he had to buy these big sheets of expensive paper. He decided that he would start painting with the mindset that each painting was a test. And then that shift in thinking really helped him, instead of “I wrecked that painting and wasted that piece of paper”, it was, “okay, next time I need to put more water down.” he moved from frustration to a growth mindset.
Rocket scientists almost celebrate when a rocket explodes. If the launch is successful sometimes they don’t know if they just got lucky. However, when it fails they get all of this data to learn from to solve the problem and then when the next launch is successful, they know that they were able to solve the problem.
Jake feels the same way and if something takes off he is a little uneasy wondering if he just got lucky or if it was really good.
Will was an early adopter of E books on Amazon and they his did really well and so he assumed that if he made interactive ebooks for the iPad they would see similar success and basically they totally failed, because people don’t buy iPad apps.
21:20
If you want to be a boxer you have to take hits.
Your failures can motivate you and give you energy to persevere.
Will would get upset when, in college, he’d show work to his wife and she wouldn’t like it, and he’d get frustrated that he couldn’t even impress his wife let alone others. So he would analyze his work and then used that frustration to keep working and get better.
David Hohn, his wife was a graphic designer for Nike so he had a high bar to hit when he went home and showed her his work.
Jake’s mom would always give him a good ego boost, but not really any helpful critique.
Will would always get critiqued that his drawings of children always looked too old.
People can really do a number on artists feelings pretty easily.
32:00
What do you do when you don’t like it but other people do?
Now Jake makes sure that Will gives him his honest opinion.
It’s hard to have people around that can really give you an honest critique. We know how much of a letdown it is to get help and then have to change a bunch of things. But that critique is so important!
Usually for Will, his best work is the work that he got lots of feedback on.
Receiving other people’s critique and feedback really accelerates our growth and the the quality of our work.
Anna Daviscourt
One of the reasons the Star Wars prequels turned out the way they did is because George Lucas was surrounded by “yes men.”
You don’t want to surround yourself with “yes men.”
Put yourself in a position to receive critique and then listen to those critiques.
39:45
Puff the Magic Dragon
This is so true, there are all of these jobs that get talked about, there are so many books that you hear about or that get talked about. Especially for the first 5 years but even later.
Lee would get all of these proposals and even some animation studios that were maybe interested in using his work to make a short, and then radio silence. It is quite disheartening.
How to Catch a Bogle: Lee did a sample illustration and a couple of sketches for the cover and he thought it was a no brainer that he would get to illustrate it, but then he didn’t get it. So these hopeful opportunities that don’t pan out are plentiful.
Mid Level Failure
48:50
Jake has put his effort, emotion and interest into projects that he gets satisfaction out of and if the audience gets satisfaction from it all the better.
54:50:
Will’s High Level Failure:
How did you get yourself out?
His bishop told him that he saw what Will was capable of doing, had seen his children books, and that the gifts that he had should not be squandered this way, and that he had developed these gifts that would be taking away from people and he wouldn’t know what good he had done. Jake has really seen the positive influence on others through Will’s youtube channel, art, and on him personally.
Will and his wife were in a sticky financial situation and it really took learning to live within their means to help get them out of that. Just because someone else has something you shouldn’t get it just because they have one. Live below your means so you can save every month, you will experience lean times.
Carrie Henry, “I hope you are putting money away because this isn’t going to last.”
Jake had a great job at an animation studio, but wanted to develop an independent career. He had an opportunity to teach at BYU in Utah, where he could have benefits and health insurance along with a couple days a week to work on his publishing work. But that job at BYU disappeared because after a couple of years they told him they wanted him to have a degree. He didn’t have So he found a full time job and gave himself a year to get 6 months of work lined up. The year came and went and he didn’t have 6 months of work lined up, he was really stressed and he was really down on himself, he doubled down on himself and he started to post on social media and posted daily and tried to post daily. He then landed a really good job from Google that would last them a couple of months, and he knew if he did a Kickstarter, and he got another childrens book. He added it all up and realized he had his 6 months of work he was looking for. That was 5 years ago, and he’s been doing it ever since, but it hasn’t been smooth but it’s been a steady trajectory upwards.
You never know what the future holds in store. There are always curves and things you didn’t see coming. No matter how good you are you will still experience failures. This is true for life and especially for a career in art. Once you hit a certain point it doesn’t mean that those things will go away. Typically all failures have a silver lining. Use every failure to look at what went wrong, what you can do differently, and how you can learn from it and be better.
LINKS
3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!
Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.
4.9
720720 ratings
Failure
Let’s start with a good quote, that’s how all good podcasts start, right?
Examples:
7:07
When Lee started art school he came to it really without any experience drawing or painting. The first 3 or 4 terms were kind of rough. Every day Lee would sulk into class and he would have done his best on his paintings and then would look at what everyone else had done and he knew that he wasn’t at their level yet. It was a daily failure, for the first couple of terms. It was tough and he really struggled with it; it was quite disheartening. He came up with a way to get through it:
One problem we have is that we look at failures as failures. We have also been conditioned to not look at trying and failing as a learning and forward moving experience. Everything in school is all about moving up, what grades did you get? Were you right or wrong? We’ve been conditioned to not use trial and error for learning. In school we don’t get a good grade for trying and failing. All the results we see with report cards are all about moving up. That conditions us in a bad way for being artists. That model is good for math, it’s either right or wrong, but with a painting there is not just a right or wrong way, sometimes you have to wipe the paint off and redo the painting but that failure was apart of the successful journey.
Will once had a student and they wouldn’t try anything with paint and were so afraid to make a bad mark, they were paralyzed. Will thinks that this was because they weren’t ever rewarded for trying and failing.
12:30
Participation awards, now in youth sports there are always participation rewards, but kids know it is a game and there are actually winners. They know who won and who lost.
There is another way to categorize failures:
You can’t always control the outcome of the failure however, your reaction to failure is up to you.
No matter what happened you can check it off your box, whether or not you caused the failure. You don’t have to be a victim, you can choose learn, and then move forward.
15:00
Art and life really is a lifelong learning process both on the micro and macro level. You’re always testing your hypotheses. You can always be learning. “I tested those theories and they didn’t work and so I am going to change the process, or change…”
That’s how Lee learned watercolors. Initially in almost every painting he would fail. Watercolors are really difficult to master. Lee would constantly fail in every painting and would get frustrated because he had to buy these big sheets of expensive paper. He decided that he would start painting with the mindset that each painting was a test. And then that shift in thinking really helped him, instead of “I wrecked that painting and wasted that piece of paper”, it was, “okay, next time I need to put more water down.” he moved from frustration to a growth mindset.
Rocket scientists almost celebrate when a rocket explodes. If the launch is successful sometimes they don’t know if they just got lucky. However, when it fails they get all of this data to learn from to solve the problem and then when the next launch is successful, they know that they were able to solve the problem.
Jake feels the same way and if something takes off he is a little uneasy wondering if he just got lucky or if it was really good.
Will was an early adopter of E books on Amazon and they his did really well and so he assumed that if he made interactive ebooks for the iPad they would see similar success and basically they totally failed, because people don’t buy iPad apps.
21:20
If you want to be a boxer you have to take hits.
Your failures can motivate you and give you energy to persevere.
Will would get upset when, in college, he’d show work to his wife and she wouldn’t like it, and he’d get frustrated that he couldn’t even impress his wife let alone others. So he would analyze his work and then used that frustration to keep working and get better.
David Hohn, his wife was a graphic designer for Nike so he had a high bar to hit when he went home and showed her his work.
Jake’s mom would always give him a good ego boost, but not really any helpful critique.
Will would always get critiqued that his drawings of children always looked too old.
People can really do a number on artists feelings pretty easily.
32:00
What do you do when you don’t like it but other people do?
Now Jake makes sure that Will gives him his honest opinion.
It’s hard to have people around that can really give you an honest critique. We know how much of a letdown it is to get help and then have to change a bunch of things. But that critique is so important!
Usually for Will, his best work is the work that he got lots of feedback on.
Receiving other people’s critique and feedback really accelerates our growth and the the quality of our work.
Anna Daviscourt
One of the reasons the Star Wars prequels turned out the way they did is because George Lucas was surrounded by “yes men.”
You don’t want to surround yourself with “yes men.”
Put yourself in a position to receive critique and then listen to those critiques.
39:45
Puff the Magic Dragon
This is so true, there are all of these jobs that get talked about, there are so many books that you hear about or that get talked about. Especially for the first 5 years but even later.
Lee would get all of these proposals and even some animation studios that were maybe interested in using his work to make a short, and then radio silence. It is quite disheartening.
How to Catch a Bogle: Lee did a sample illustration and a couple of sketches for the cover and he thought it was a no brainer that he would get to illustrate it, but then he didn’t get it. So these hopeful opportunities that don’t pan out are plentiful.
Mid Level Failure
48:50
Jake has put his effort, emotion and interest into projects that he gets satisfaction out of and if the audience gets satisfaction from it all the better.
54:50:
Will’s High Level Failure:
How did you get yourself out?
His bishop told him that he saw what Will was capable of doing, had seen his children books, and that the gifts that he had should not be squandered this way, and that he had developed these gifts that would be taking away from people and he wouldn’t know what good he had done. Jake has really seen the positive influence on others through Will’s youtube channel, art, and on him personally.
Will and his wife were in a sticky financial situation and it really took learning to live within their means to help get them out of that. Just because someone else has something you shouldn’t get it just because they have one. Live below your means so you can save every month, you will experience lean times.
Carrie Henry, “I hope you are putting money away because this isn’t going to last.”
Jake had a great job at an animation studio, but wanted to develop an independent career. He had an opportunity to teach at BYU in Utah, where he could have benefits and health insurance along with a couple days a week to work on his publishing work. But that job at BYU disappeared because after a couple of years they told him they wanted him to have a degree. He didn’t have So he found a full time job and gave himself a year to get 6 months of work lined up. The year came and went and he didn’t have 6 months of work lined up, he was really stressed and he was really down on himself, he doubled down on himself and he started to post on social media and posted daily and tried to post daily. He then landed a really good job from Google that would last them a couple of months, and he knew if he did a Kickstarter, and he got another childrens book. He added it all up and realized he had his 6 months of work he was looking for. That was 5 years ago, and he’s been doing it ever since, but it hasn’t been smooth but it’s been a steady trajectory upwards.
You never know what the future holds in store. There are always curves and things you didn’t see coming. No matter how good you are you will still experience failures. This is true for life and especially for a career in art. Once you hit a certain point it doesn’t mean that those things will go away. Typically all failures have a silver lining. Use every failure to look at what went wrong, what you can do differently, and how you can learn from it and be better.
LINKS
3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!
Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.
865 Listeners
1,967 Listeners
308 Listeners
708 Listeners
653 Listeners
310 Listeners
284 Listeners
1,282 Listeners
54 Listeners
328 Listeners
725 Listeners
594 Listeners
431 Listeners
44 Listeners
181 Listeners