Your Creative Push

Suzanne Santo is an American singer/songwriter and actress. Before branching out on a solo musical career, she spent a decade as the fiddle-playing frontwoman of HoneyHoney.

Full shownotes: http://yourcreativepush.com/349

-The power of podcasts, especially Joe Rogan and Duncan Trussell.

-Feeling like an imposter at the Grammys.

-How it's just as important to not write as it is to write.

-Honoring the process when you are getting constant inspiration because it's not always there.

-Branching off from Honeyhoney to create her first solo album, "Ruby Red."

-Working with Butch Walker and having complete freedom.

-How she knows what songs are ready to be brought to the table.

-Working with John Spiker on her new album, "Yard Sale."

-Shedding catholic guilt.

-Where she finds inspiration when it is lacking.

"You truly get back what you put out there and when you put all this love, hard work and sweat into your passion, you have to sit back and let it come back to you."

"You have to be out in the world to find your inspiration."

"The departure from Honeyhoney was like leaving the womb."

"Get it out there. The world needs you. We need to be inspired. We need to inspire each other."

"If you are called to be creative but you're too scared to do something about it, you're doing other people a disservice."

Ruby Red by Suzanne Santo

Duncan Trussell Family Hour

David Bowie & Mick Jagger - Dancing in the Street

Harry Potter Series

Website / iTunes / Spotify / Facebook / Instagram / Twitter

James Gurney : Website / Instagram / Blog

Alatar is a nonbinary artist and mystic weirdo from Nashville, Tennessee. They enjoy drawing figurative erotic art, and see their artistic practice as one facet of a spiritual practice which draws them ever closer to their authentic self. Their mission is to enchant and inspire the world with every breath.

Full shownotes: http://yourcreativepush.com/348

-How they are dealing with the initial Coronavirus quarantine.

-The problems that Youngman has recently gone through.

-The Rat Park Experiment and how it relates to addiction.

-How easy it is to be negative and pessimistic in difficult times.

-Working with Shamanic practitioner Chiron Armand in "soul retrieval."

-How their "shadow part" took the form of Anakin Skywalker.

-The light side versus the dark side in everything.

-The positive and negative aspects of the drive that we find in ourselves.

-How we sometimes have to play out the narrative and hit our rock bottom.

-Making compromises with your art.

-How we as creative people need to decide what world we want to live in after the Coronavirus pandemic.

-What made minimalism "bioavailable" to them.

-Discovering what kinds of strophic cascade.

-How this is the perfect time for experimentation in your art and to also hone your skills and touch up your "problem areas."

"You don't have to try to be a negative piss baby."

"Healing and growing past the things that damaged us is incredibly hard."

"I felt like something was behind me, whipping me."

"The conditions of the world as they were before this outbreak – is that really what we want to get back to? Or can we dare to start dreaming of a better world?"

"If anything needs to die, it's that veneer that we all put on, that perfectly curated self that we put on for the world."

Alatar on YCP Episode 232

Alatar on YCP Episode 296

Alatar on YCP Episode 336

Real Magic: Ancient Wisdom, Modern Science, and a Guide to the Secret Power of the Universe by Dean Radin

Science Set Free: 10 Paths to New Discovery by Rupert Sheldrake

Talking Weitko and Mediumship with Chiron Armand - Rune Soup

Talking The Dreamtime and Understanding Country with Munya Andrews - Rune Soup

Jung, Toldein & the Imaginal - Becca Tarnas / Aeon Byte Gnostic Radio

Talking Real Magic with Dean Radin - Rune Soup

Dr. Rupert Sheldrake Sets Science Free from Dogma | Consciousness Science

What Does "Rat Park Teach Us About Addiction? | Psychiatric Times

Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor

The Red Book: A Reader's Edition by C. G. Jung

The Minimalists Podcast

Everything That Remains: A Memoir by The Minimalists

Newgrounds / Patreon / Twitter

Suzanne Santo : Website / Spotify / iTunes

Djamila Knopf is an independent artist and Schoolism instructor based in Leipzig, Germany.

She creates illustrations that evoke a sense of wonder and nostalgia, and primarily focuses on personal projects. She believes that art is a unique accumulation of experiences, beliefs and aesthetics. That's why, when you look at her work, you might catch a glimpse of the summers she spent strolling through the woods and fields around her grandparents' garden, and you might also see her love for Japanese animation.

Full shownotes: http://yourcreativepush.com/347

-How she was given the feeling that her art was not "proper" and how that made her stop drawing for a long period of time.

-Finding a balance when she first became a professional artist.

-The moment she discovered the way in which she could sell her own work.

-Her advice for people who are considering selling their own work online.

-The mentality of using a "pay what you what" policy on Patreon.

-Sharing the learning process on your Instagram feed, especially when you are just starting out.

-How she curates her Instagram feed.

-The case for visual artists to share their work on Twitter.

-Where she finds inspiration.

-How she curates her collection of inspiration.

-The way in which she starts her drawings through writing.

-What a typical day and week looks like for her (and the current week's breakdown).

-The accountability of timers.

-Knowing when to stop working for the day.

-What people can expect from her Schoolism course, "Catching Lightning."

"I always had the idea that what I was doing was not proper art and wrong, so I stopped drawing for a long time."

"Since I started getting into environments and landscapes a bit more, it feels like the whole world opened up to me."

"I think it is easier to form an idea before you start to draw it."

"My attention span is four hours long for painting and then I start to feel weird, my head gets mushy and I have to stop."

One Fantastic Week

Instagram for Artists: How to Get More Followers (Djamila's YouTube)

Toggl

Story-Driven Illustrations w/ Djamila Knopf (Schoolism course)

Studying at Hogwarts Ambient Background Noise

Bobby Chiu on YCP Ep. 138

Website / Store / Patreon / Instagram / Twitter

Alatar : Website / Newgrounds

Adam Paquette is a painter from Australia, currently living in Berlin. He has been creating artwork for Magic: the Gathering since 2009 and in that time has illustrated over 250 cards.

He also works with Sterling Hundley for Legendeer, which aims to be the connection between a life well-lived and the creative process.

Full shownotes: http://yourcreativepush.com/346

-The literary and verbal emphasis from his childhood.

-How he first got involved with Wizards of the Coast.

-Why he is living in Berlin and how it brings out his artistic side.

-His shifting frame of reference from the mind to the body.

-The cyclic way in which our location informs our art and mindset and vice versa.

-Breathing in and breathing out in terms of input and output.

-The various disconnects that artists encounter and the concept of the "embedded artist."

-Legendeer and working with Sterling Hundley.

-The idea of transparent studios.

-What Antonio Lopez taught him about the pointlessness of art.

-Dealing with perfectionism and overplanning.

-Balancing personal and professional work and learning to say "no."

"What this city brings out in me creatively makes me trust that it's where I'm meant to be."

"People ask, where do you get your ideas? and I say, where can I hide from my ideas? Where can I get a break?"

"Art is that thing that you do when you are wholeheartedly, innocently and earnestly investigating life."

Fully Alive -- Being a Creative in uncertain times -- Your Creative Push [YouTube]

Adam on One Fantastic Week -- Talking about his dissociated experience

Legendeer

Website / Magic Website / Instagram / Twitter

Djamila Knopf : Website / Instagram

Piper Thibodeau a former full-time character designer for DreamWorks TV and a freelance designer. Her clients include DreamWorks TV, Nickelodeon, Intel, Sesame Street and GameLoft.

In a self-imposed challenge, she has created a new painting every day before midnight since 2012.

Full shownotes: http://yourcreativepush.com/345

-How she started her daily painting challenge (which she has kept up with for seven years and counting).

-Getting professional illustration work from Nickelodeon Jr and Dreamworks Television while still in school.

-Some of the initial setbacks she encountered during her daily painting challenge.

-Her attempt to not go "stale" by switching it up between illustrations, character designs and pun drawings.

-Her advice for anyone wanting to start a daily challenge.

-The value of having an "offline" reference library for yourself.

-Her resistance of schedule conflict and how she gets past it.

-Her advice for aspiring freelance illustrators.

-The experience of creating Dragon Draw.

"I find that when I start to Google, it is very easy to get distracted."

"I think that ideally you just want to have a peaceful slot in the day for you to work so that it doesn't become a burden in any way."

"I'm like a light switch. I'm either all in on something or I'm a complete and utter mess."

"Learning skills is easier when you apply it to an actual project."

Dragon Draw: Learn to Paint, Draw and Design Dragons by Piper Thibodeau

Will Terry's Channel

Will Terry on Your Creative Push Episode 176

Toggl - Free TIme Tracking Software

Website / Patreon / Tumblr / Instagram / Twitter / DeviantArt

Adam Paquette : Website / Instagram

Daniel José Older is the New York Times bestselling author of the Middle Grade historical fantasy series Dactyl Hill Squad, the Bone Street Rumba urban fantasy series, Star Wars: Last Shot, and the award winning Young Adult series the Shadowshaper Cypher, which won the International Latino Book Award and was shortlisted for the Kirkus Prize in Young Readers' Literature, the Andre Norton Award, the Locus, the Mythopoeic Award, and named one of Esquire's 80 Books Every Person Should Read.

Full shownotes: http://yourcreativepush.com/344

-What it was like to be a New York City paramedic.

-What the Jedi can teach writers when it comes to finding their voice.

-How the essence of being a writer is not what you've read in books but what you've experienced in your life.

-The importance of listening in writing and other creative pursuits.

-Making the transition from paramedic to full-time writer.

-Persevering despite Shadowshaper getting rejected 40 times.

-The support he received from Sheree Renée Thomas, Tananarive Due and Nathan Bransford.

-Writing the Other.

-Why we shouldn't italicize other languages.

-Using humor.

-The advice that changed the entire trajectory of Shadowshaper.

-Why everyone should write a book (but not everyone should publish one).

-Why he spent the last year not writing.

-Finding comfort in writing his Ambulance Stories.

"The idea of sitting down and writing a book seemed so free. Because it was just me and the laptop."

"That's why I write. The world is destroyed and very much on fire."

"The bones and blood of being a writer is what you've lived, not what you've read."

"I feel like I'm writing to get the world to be what I know it to be."

"I just didn't know if it was in me to write a good enough book to be worth writing a book."

12 Fundamentals of Writing The Other (And the Self) [Buzzfeed]

Writing Begins With Forgiveness: Why One of the Most Common Pieces of Writing Advice is Wrong | Seven Scribes

Ambulance stories

Sierra Santiago and the Invisible City - Daniel José Older - Wattpad

Website / Twitter / Instagram / Tumblr

Piper Thibodeau: Website / Instagram

Emilija Angelovska (born in Macedonia, living in the Netherlands) is an artist, educator, and change agent. She is fascinated with the popularity of community art projects and does a deep dive into creative communities in her Back to the Drawing Board podcast.

Emilija has shown her work in galleries in Amsterdam, Calgary and Edmonton, Alongside her artistic and research practice she holds professional experience from the Smithsonian Institution and Canada's Sports Hall of Fame. In 2016 she was the recipient of the Kathleen & Russell Lane Canadian Art Award.

Full shownotes: http://yourcreativepush.com/343

-How she started her podcast as a result of having lost her creative community and wanting to make a new one.

-The ways that community informs the individual and the individual informs the community.

-Her advice for anyone looking to build a creative community.

-How art and life are so closely intertwined.

-The importance of surrounding yourself with individuals who might challenge your worldviews and experiences.

-The elitism of art galleries.

-How to create for the sake of creating.

-What she has learned from the people that she has interviewed on her podcast.

-Seeing teachers and professors as peers with individual opinions and tastes.

-Why it is crucial to have diverse individuals in your creative community.

-The symptom of quantity over quality caused by social media.

-Learning to not take what other people say about her work too seriously.

-Why adults should always be learning and exploring.

-The importance of sometimes doing absolutely nothing.

-Her love of books and why it's fun to wreck them.

"Living a creative life is often times a lonely activity."

"It's very difficult to learn anything or to go anywhere if you are only communicating with people that have the same types of beliefs as yourself."

"Whether you get bored and a new idea comes up or you are completely exhausted and your body simply needs time to settle, those moments of just doing nothing are really important."

Back to the Drawing Board Podcast

things that art school did not teach me

Emilja's Bookshelf

Website / Podcast

Daniel José Older : Website / Twitter

Dan Berry is a cartoonist, illustrator, podcaster and educator based in the town of Shrewsbury, UK. He is a frequent collaborator with the author David Gaffney and is currently working on the follow-up to The Three Rooms in Valerie's Head; a book called Rivers.

Since 2012 he has produced the podcast Make It Then Tell Everybody in which he has spoken to over a hundred and sixty other artists about what they do and how they do it.

Between 2008 and 2019 he was the Programme Leader for the illustration, comics and children's books degree courses at the School of Creative Arts, Wrexham Glyndwr University.

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

-His fascination with being able to create something that puts ideas and images in other people's minds.

-Being hospitalized from the extreme stress he experienced working as a designer for a marketing agency.

-His decision to quit teaching.

-How everyone has different responses to stress, and the value in being able to determine your own.

-The large amount of work that you can get done in one hour.

-The stress level of effort and "half-assing it" to aim for a B-grade instead of an A.

-Why he called his podcast "Make it then Tell Everybody."

-Illuminating the "grubby underbelly" of the creative process.

-The BMX story and the false belief that growth in your career has to come from the outside.

-Telling people about your work, both old and new.

-Some of the resistances that his guests have experienced.

-How he gets past "page fright" – the fear of the blank page.

-How he interacts with his ideas and why he is wary of the ones that come into his head fully formed.

-Why he draws people as birds.

-The experience of drawing an entire comic in 24 hours and other forms of "stunt drawing."

"It was a good and fun job. Up until the point it wasn't."

"Creativity is not a muscle that you can just flex. It's also a gland and you've got to relax it."

"I managed to convince myself that everything else was stressful aside from the thing that actually was."

"You could be the best artist on the planet, but if you're only drawing in your bedroom and never showing anybody, you basically don't exist."

"I had this belief that any growth in my career had to come from outside."

"Trying to remain enthusiastic about something that isn't representative of your current level of ability is difficult."

"If it exists, then you've done it right."

"Once you have something that exists, you have something that's editable."

Make It Then Tell Everybody | How artists do what they do

Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud

The Three Rooms in Valerie's Head by David Gaffney and Dan Berry

Dick Rivets & Other Stories by Dan Berry

Website / Podcast / Store / Twitter

Emilija Angelovska : Podcast / Website

Danielle Clough is a multi-disciplinary artist from Cape Town, South Africa who specializes in the mediums of embroidery, photography, graphic design and video art.

She has been profiled by Instagram, Colossal, CNN, Vogue and The New York Times and had her work and in various exhibitions in South Africa, The USA and Russia.

Her new Skillshare class shows the basics of how she creates so that you can give embroidery a try for the first time.

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

-Her mindset when she made the decision to quit school and also to change career paths.

-Learning to trust our heart and our instincts when they tell us that things aren't right.

-How we sometimes think too far into the future and put too much pressure on ourselves before, during and after the creation process.

-Her biggest takeaways from Red & Yellow School of Logic & Magic.

-Seeing herself as a brand instead of an artist and her work as a product as opposed to statements.

-Keeping her personal life out of her social media presence.

-Her perfect formula for defeating imposter syndrome (and also cultivating it).

-Her mental state while creating pieces that take longer than a month.

-How she often feels like she is the sum of the last thing that she created, for better or worse.

-Why she doesn't like the word, "inspiration."

-Her advice for anyone who wants to get started with embroidery.

"I stumbled into embroidery through a sequence of opportunities and mistakes."

"As soon as you say you're going to 'stick something out,' that's probably an indication that it's not right for you."

"I always feel like I am the sum of the last thing I put together."

"That motivation to actually turn something into something tangible is so much more important to focus on than those neurons firing for three seconds."

"Trust yourself and trust what you love."

Danielle Clough's Skillshare class

Red & Yellow School of Logic & Magic

"Big Magic" by Elizabeth Gilbert

Skillshare / Website / Facebook / Instagram

Dan Berry : Website / Make it Then Tell Everybody

Donald M. Rattner is an award-winning residential architect and educator. As a consultant he draws on scientific research to help individuals and organizations maximize occupant creativity in workplace, residential, wellness, hospitality and retail environments.

In his new book, My Creative Space: How to Design Your Home to Stimulate Ideas and Spark Innovation, Donald draws on the latest psychology and productivity research to offer a practical guide to designing your home to optimize your creative potential.

Full shownotes: http://yourcreativepush.com/340

-Why you should have a designated creative space.

-The importance of nature in our creativity and in our mental and physical wellbeing.

-Facing your space and setting up your surroundings to make yourself more open-minded.

-How we feel more creative when we feel safe and comfortable.

-How music and sound affects our creativity.

-The best decibel level for boosting your creative process.

-The surprising benefits of napping to our creativity (and why it works).

-Idea seeding.

-How working walls can help you externalize your ideas, work through your ideas, collaborate and think bigger than you normally could.

-The debate on messiness and creativity.

-Some free, cheap and simple tactics that people can use RIGHT NOW to optimize their creative spaces.

"Creativity, health and happiness all tend to operate on the same spectrum with regard to environment."

"Walls are for more than just separating spaces. They can be active agents in the creative process."

"Ideas flow from the hand to the brain just as much they do from the brain to the hand."

My Creative Space: How to Design Your Home to Stimulate Ideas and Spark Innovation by Donald M. Rattner

Raining.fm

Coffitivity

Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School by John Medina

Website / Facebook / Medium / LinkedIn