— The artists of our advanced “AWAKE” group turn out what seems an endless stream of amazing art. Month after month, year after year. Continually improving and turning out ever more imaginative work.
But it’s really not surprising.
Because we’ve engineered it that way, you see.
Artists naturally become more talented and prolific through the very kind of environment the “AWAKE” program encourages, which is one that combines intense periods of hyper-focused creative work and regular breaks to learn from professional artists and to hobnob with the other artists in the group, coming together for inspiration and camaraderie and the exhilarating flow of new ideas …
It’s that combination that makes all the difference.
In a way, it’s an arrangement that I see reflected in many of the most active and thriving artist studios, where each artist has a private room (with a door they can shut when they need to immerse themselves in their work for hours at a time — that door is important) . . . but where they also all share big roomy hallways and common areas and can come together at intervals to recharge and spark ideas off one another.
Only in our case, our artists are all over the world, so the individual studios are their own and the “common areas” are our private Facebook groups and occasional meet-ups in person.
And truly, the magic really is in the combination — periods of intense distraction-free solitude for going deep with one’s work … combined with periods of artistic camaraderie.
So for any artist, whether in “AWAKE” or not, the trick in radically accelerating one’s development often comes down to just this:
FIRST — Decide on a time and place you can shut yourself away from all distractions (people, gadgets, social media), where you can fully immerse yourself in your creative work for biggish chunks of time.
(The same time every day if possible; several days a week at the least.) Your job is simple: it’s to maintain those blocks, free from distraction, totally focused on your art.
To make these blocks even more effective, I recommend also scheduling a brief break every hour or so to get up, move around a bit, clear your head … Do not check your email, but maybe take a short walk, leisurely make yourself some coffee, enjoy a light book or some music, or (like me more often than not) just wander around the house looking for the cats.
Then come back to your desk and dive back in. Shut the door, turn off your WiFi connection, and throw yourself into your work again.
Stacking two sessions like this each day is how you make serious strides and become a highly prolific artist.
Which is how you are going to ultimately make the breakthroughs you need to make.
SECOND — Build in some time every day to get together with other artists or creatives and socialize a bit, looking for inspiration and the spark of fresh ideas.
Not the typical gossip-and-complaint kind of socializing you run into elsewhere, obviously, but rather the active and rich socializing of creative artists excitedly sharing their work, bouncing around ideas, inspiring one another and cheering one another on, throwing out suggestions and celebrating everyone’s victories.
And for this you really need a group of artists who are themselves creating every day. Hobnobbing with other working artists will help encourage YOU to actively create every day as well. Rubbing shoulders (even if only in a private Facebook group) with other artists who are living rigorous and invigorating artistic lives will in turn inspire you to elevate your own efforts, while also seeding those efforts with countless influences and ideas you might not otherwise have ever considered.
Also worth noting here is that it’s not just the “actual” people you hang out with who are influencing or inspiring you, but also those you spend time with in books, videos, lectures, etc. Certainly among the most important influences within our group of artists are those professionals whose work we explore in the advanced “AWAKE” tutorials every month.
When you spend an hour diving into a masterpiece of digital art, seeing it laid out layer by layer, technique by technique, it’s an invigorating experience and sparks all manner of ideas you can then rush off to explore, adapt, and expand upon.
In a way, it’s like having a conversation over coffee with an incredibly interesting and inspiring friend — one who shows you not only how something wonderful was done, but also how you can accomplish much the same yourself.
So pausing for breaks now and then for creative cameraderie can take many forms. Maybe it’s a private Facebook group with your artistic peers, or maybe it’s an hour with an intense video tutorial that excites you, or maybe it really is an hour or so laughing and conversing with other artist friends at a coffee shop. Maybe it’s an active collaboration with another artist on a particular project, or a small critique group you form. But whatever form it takes, some kind of cameraderie with other active artists is vitally important.
Take a few minutes now to reflect on your own artistic life.
What might you do to better establish a routine of distraction-free, high-intensity, totally focused blocks of creative work? How might you stack things in your favor to ensure you can completely immerse yourself for an hour or two at a time?
And in what ways might you more fully involve yourself in a group of other active artists for even an hour a day just to recharge and draw inspiration from the friendships you form there? How might you throw yourself into the group with gusto and spark fresh ideas all around?
Make these two aspects of your creative life the cornerstones of your days and your weeks, and you can’t imagine how fast you will progress as an artist or how far your journey will take you.
– Sebastian
PS: I explore strategies for further amplifying these approaches (along with many other practices that can radically accelerate your artistic development) in my “21 Days to Creative Abundance.” Not a course to be taken on lightly, but if you’re up for the challenge and ready to kick things into a higher gear, it’s worth checking out.
PPS: If you’re a Photoshop artist and have the fundamentals down, you may instead want to dive right in with “AWAKE: Photoshop Mastery.” After being closed for over a year, enrollment is now open, and you can sign up here …