Ep 61 BAP Get Challenged
===
Welcome to the Bold Artist Podcast. Today is a special episode because I'm flying solo today. I am here on our first solo show to give you some exciting community announcements and as well challenge you for the upcoming Spring Break. That's right, Spring Break is just around the corner, and we are going to be taking two weeks holiday at the Bold Artist Podcast.
That's right for the next two weeks there won't be any episodes of the Bold Artist Podcast, but we will be back again on March 31st with a brand new episode that is gonna be really exciting for you. We're gonna be hosting our very first live show on the Bold Artist Podcast, where I was actually in the room in the flesh with our guest, and we're bringing to you a really special guest who is also creating a lot of change within Bold School, exciting change that you've been asking for regarding new, medium, and new subject matter.
That our school is just gonna have a really fun shake up and remix with what's coming up. So just to recap, there won't be any podcasts for the next two weeks, and then we'll be back again with a whole lot of creativity and new fresh content. So here on today's show, I wanted to share with you a couple more changes that are coming up in the community.
You might remember a podcast quite a while back where Charla and I talked about the new social media. We expressed how we were yearning to get off of the typical social media platforms and into our own private community. And since that time, bold School has had a lot of success hosting, having our own community platform, and though we've experienced this kind of a success, In our own community, it's been on a third party platform.
And so it's been recently that Bold School has decided to take the big move and merge all of our resources under one roof. So that means our classes and our community are gonna be all with one login from this time forward. And one of the things that we're most excited about as mentors inside of the Bold School community is that we're gonna be able to create better challenges because getting challenged as artists is one of the greatest ways that we can grow. So if you're looking to be challenged as an artist, to have someone not only critique your work, but to challenge you to get better and better in your skill, then the Bold School community is exactly where you want to be.
You see, our new space is gonna be all about the challenges and all about helping our artists take our classes slower in order to build the competency and skill that it takes to be a good artist. One thing that we've noticed through all of our years of having online classes is that a lot of times students wanna rush through a class.
They wanna digest the content and move on and just like feel like they did it, but they didn't actually gain the experience because we gain experience by putting our hands and minds to the hard work. And so in Bold School inside of our community, we're gonna be challenging you to slow down in your classes and actually do the work.
Coming up soon, I'm even gonna be hosting a challenge of my own where I get you sketching on a daily practice. And daily practice, as we all know, is a really big important component to growing ourselves as artists and getting better in our craft. So with these upcoming changes in our Bold School community, it's not just about the mentorship, it's also about being challenged and growing together and building our skills, building the skills that you're learning inside of the classes.
So speaking of challenges, I wanted to bring this episode to you with a challenge for your spring break. Over the next couple weeks, as the podcast is taking a little bit of a break, I wanna challenge you in the area of your creativity. Sometimes we can get a little stale and complacent as artists. We can be building our, let's say, painting skills and just focusing in on the painting, like learning color, mixing colors, developing our brushstrokes, but then we grow a little stale in the area of new ideas and creativity. And we've gotta keep that creativity alive in order to grow new, fresh bodies of work and really be able to bring ourselves into our work and develop our style, our unique style.
And so I wanna challenge you and your creativity. Because, it is such a key component to personal growth and development as an artist. So what are the ways that I wanna challenge you as a creative during the spring break? I have eight ways I want you to, number one, challenge yourself to explore. To explore and experiment.
So if you're just doing the humdrum and you're just kind of being repetitious in your practice and your work right now, I want you to stretch yourself a little and experiment. Even if as a painter, you just take a canvas and just say, today I'm gonna splash around some new brushstrokes and experiment.
Maybe experiment with layers or no layers. Like if you're prone to one kind of technique, stretch yourself to experiment with pretty much the opposite. And in this way, you're gonna stretch your creative boundaries.
And number two is that I want you to work on a different scale. So if you've been painting really big, challenge yourself to shrink it down. And quite the opposite, if you've been painting really small, get something big. Even if it's just four poster boards that you tape together on your wall and you paint big, where you really get your arms moving and get in some different kind of like body motion into what you're doing. Because when we work on a different scale, we stretch ourselves and our minds into new insights. We begin to see something different that we can take in and apply that creativity to what we normally do. So sometimes we have to be really different to scale back into what we normally do.
And number three is, Do something that's for a client or for something else where they give you their specifications.
And what I mean by that is like be brave and take on a commission if you don't already do that or do some client work. And if you don't already do commissions and client work, which by the way, we have a really good episode called How an Artist Manages Commission Staying in Your Lane. And you can see that in the links.
And skip back it's, I believe that is episode 11 of our summer sessions of last year, and so that gives you some really good tools and insight into taking commissions. But let's say you don't already take commissions and you've been wondering and wanting to, then what I want you to do is reach out to someone that you know and say, I want you to get me to paint something or create something that you gimme some specifications for because I wanna practice painting within someone else's expectations.
And I know that sounds super scary for those who aren't already doing it, but I heard an artist say, uh, one time during an interview, it was here on the Bold Artist podcast that it, one of the artists said to me that one of the greatest ways they got good fast was through commissions. Because clients have an expectation that you need to reach deep inside yourself and get out.
You know, to meet that expectation, you have to get out something new out of you. You're not just painting to please yourself, which is really good. That's important too. But just stretching yourself with this challenge of painting for someone's else's expectations is a really good exercise. These challenges that I'm giving you today for your spring break are exercises and you by no means have to complete them all. You can just take a couple, take on a challenge and do it over spring break and watch yourself grow.
So number four is to, if you don't wanna do commission, maybe collaborate with another artist. We also have a collaboration podcast. That, uh, yeah, I laughed there because it's where Charla shared how she had a collaboration experience that she absolutely hated.
And so the podcast is called, I Collaborated with Another Artist and I Hated it. And that's episode number one of our summer sessions last year. And the thing is that the reason that I, that I want to challenge you to collaborate or take a commission is because when you're working with other people in any kind of way, in any capacity, you are being challenged with a new approach, a new lens, cuz you're needing to see things through their eyes. And so it's really, really good for you, a good way to grow.
And here's another challenge. Take a Bold School class that you didn't already like initially gravitate to. So when you open your Bold School menu, there's going to be classes that are natural, a natural inclination that you think, oh, I wanna take that class.
And then there might be some that you disregard because it maybe it doesn't appeal to you as much, but here's the challenge. Take a class that didn't naturally appeal and see what you can actually learn and challenge yourself within something that didn't feel natural. And it seems like it's going against the grain, but it is actually where we begin to refine ourselves by studying outside of what.
Would be our comfort zone. And so that was number five. And number six is to join one of our online challenges inside the new Bold School community. So hop into the new community. If you're already a member and you've just gotta integrate into that all in one platform where you pretty much don't have to leave the campus anymore, you can take the classes and join the community challenges all under one roof.
Just get logged in, start to navigate around, look around. Don't panic. It is new tech. It is interface that you're not used to, but my challenge is to you to get in there and start getting active in the community over spring break .
And also, I would love for you to, number seven is to set some ambitious goals or let's say raise the bars on the goals that you already have.
Just examine your goals a little over spring break and say, what is it that I've been wanting to achieve as an artist? And then raise the that bar, raise those goals for yourself. If you have never exhibited a, a solo show, maybe challenge yourself to do that by the end of the year. If you are looking for ways, like I said, to collaborate or take commissions, challenge yourself to do that. Just look for ways to raise the bar in your art practice.
And then number eight, I'm throwing in here spontaneously. It's something that came to me after I had made a list of seven. Was that if you just need to get your creative juices flowing over spring break and you're really just needing something out of the box a little bit fun and different, make art with kids.
I have recently had a, a student who, she's a young woman. She's in grade seven and she's just this lovely little artist that we did the most unique project. We built a mini world inside of a suitcase. That's right. We sculpted out of clay and used all different mediums and we built this little mini world trees in a a creek and little characters all inside of a suitcase that closes up.
It was so much fun and what I didn't realize that was happening as I was teaching these art lessons and helping this young person diversify their mediums and understand what an artist is, I didn't realize that it was getting my own creative juices flowing and I realized that making art with kids is so precious because they don't have all of the preconceived ideas that we grownups have.
They just come into it alive with exploration and just having so much fun. She, my student loves her art days. She shows up ready and she's so excited to tackle whatever challenge that I give her, and I wanna have that kind of childlike quality. And I think you would enjoy that too. So if you don't have kids or grandkids, or nephews or nieces of your own, I wanna challenge you to like, Ask a friend if you can come over and do art with their family and have a little family time with some kids, and you will find that you are going to get so much reward out of creating with kids.
So that's just a little challenge to put out there. I think that the young people keep our creative juices flowing and help us to see life through the lens of just fresh and beautiful eyes.
So that's the wrap of my eight different challenges that I had for you today. Just as a quick little recap, experiment and explore, work on a different scale. Take commissions, client work, or collaborate, which is number four, take a new Bold School class one that you didn't naturally gravitate to. Join our online challenges because challenge is really important to keep us growing, set some more ambitious goals, and find a kid and make some art and have some fun, explore creativity in a new way this Spring Break.
I'll see you right here on The Bold Artist Podcast in two weeks. Resuming on March 31st, where we're gonna have some fresh content, new shows for you that are bound, bound, to just get your creative juices flowing again. Really excited for what's coming up. So find us on Instagram @boldschoolinc.
On the YouTube channel, Bold School, and of course, on our website, boldschool.com. You can hop on our newsletter list and always be updated of what's happening in both the school and the community. Until next time, keep creating.
