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For today’s episode, some of our past guests share the creative “aha” moments that transformed both their work and careers. You’ll hear how structured projects and daily discipline can unlock unexpected growth, and why understanding value matters more than obsessing over color. Our guests reveal how real artistic voice emerges naturally over time, rather than from trying to “find a style.” They also discuss the power of painting from memory and imagination instead of copying reality. Finally, they explore mindset shifts—reframing commissions, embracing the process over the product, and using creativity in marketing—as key breakthroughs on their artistic journeys.
Episodes mentioned on this episode:
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Transcript:
Kim Lordier: 0:00
I think the biggest aha moment i I’ve had was when I gave up.
Aaron Schuerr: 0:07
So that was like a big aha moment of, you know, creating a fun project.
Chris Krupinski: 0:13
But later, when I found this, was like, this is the hugest aha moment.
Christine Code: 0:19
That was sort of an aha moment. That’s how I deal with the pressure of commissions.
Laura Arango Baier: 0:25
Now, before I announce our episode for today, there are some updates about the podcast that I need to inform our listeners about. The podcast. Name will change from the BoldBrush show to the FASO podcast. Although we had reasons to use the name BoldBrush Over the years, we have discovered that separating our offerings into two brands causes confusion for most people, so to solve that issue, we are retiring the BoldBrush name and moving all of our offerings under our main brand, FASO. Now on to the show. Welcome to the FASO podcast, where we believe that fortune favors a boldbrush. My name is Laura Baier, and I’m your host. For those of you who are new to the podcast. We are a podcast that covers art marketing techniques and all sorts of business tips, specifically to help artists learn to better sell their work. We interview artists at all stages of their careers, as well as others who are in careers tied to the art world, in order to hear their advice and insights. For today’s episode, some of our past guests share their creative aha moments that transformed both their work and careers. You’ll hear how structured projects and daily discipline can unlock unexpected growth, and why understanding value matters more than obsessing over color. Our guests reveal how real artistic voice emerges naturally over time, rather than from trying to find a style. They also discuss the power of painting from memory and imagination instead of copying reality. Finally, they explore mindset shifts, reframing commissions, embracing the process over the product, and using creativity in marketing as key breakthroughs on their artistic journeys.
Aaron Schuerr: 1:52
Well, like I said before, the newsletter is one of the key, key areas. And then I can add to that a couple of occasionally I’ll do just fun projects. And these really started during the pandemic, you know, because everything was all the galleries were closing, and I thought it was going to be like 2008 all over again, you know, where, you know, galleries are closed, shows are closed, all my workshops are canceled. What am I going to do? And so I started off, I just did a video sale and market it first to the news newsletter subscribers. And that did well, because I was just thinking about, like, let’s put together some projects that just get me through, if I can just get through a month, you know, keep us from getting kicked out of our house or whatever. And then I did. I called it a plein air marathon. And so that one, I did a painting a day, or every week day. I took the weekends off, eight by 10, and until I got to 26 paintings. And so I would go out in the morning and do the painting come back, and then I’d write something up, the newsletter and and that was something where it was just the newsletter subscribers had the first chance of buying it. So I saw them all unframed at that point. I mean, I sold them all for $400 each, which is way under retail, but they’re just unframed, you know, on the spot paintings. But each one, you know, I have a little story with it about what happened that day. And then what I could do is, then I put on Instagram and Facebook. Hey, this is the painting I did. It sold. But if you want to have a crack at the next one, you got to sign up for my newsletter. And so that kind of brought people to the newsletter. And again, I like when I started this project that well, one, it’ll get me out painting will be a good discipline. It’ll get me out painting every day, and then two that, if I just sell a handful of them, you know, get through another month, and I ended up selling all of them. And I ended up having to I did some extras, because there were people that were like, Hey, I tried three times or four times to get one of your paintings, and someone was always there first. So I was like, All right, I’ll do, you know, I’ll do another one for you. So that was, like, a big aha moment of, you know, creating a fun project, one that I’m just about to do, that I’ve done the last three years. I call it the 12 paintings of Christmas. And it’s six by eight, six by eight or eight by eight paintings. I’ll start December 1, go through December 12. And they’re so they’re little ones, and I frame them because I figure it’s Christmas, so then it’d be nice for people out frame there. I. Nicely framed, but they’re, they’re, you know, they’re, they’re at a price that’s lower than than my normal retail so I’m really careful, though, about like with projects like that, where something is less than, you know, it’s less than a gallery price, that it is a specific project, you know, like the this is, I did the plein air marathon. I ended up only doing it once, and keep meaning to do it again. But this is for this specific project, so it’s different than my other work. I think that’s important, because, one, you don’t want to start undervaluing your work by, you know, seeming like you’re desperate and and then also to have the good relationships with the galleries, because if a gallery finds out like, Wait, you’re selling stuff out of your studio for half the price. No, I’m doing, you know, I’m doing a project that’s very different. I don’t I’m not putting six by eight paintings in galleries, and it’s the set project. So for me, I the nice surprise with those projects is that they were good from a marketing standpoint, but they’re also really good from an artistic standpoint, like the 12 paintings the Christmas helps me plan what studio paintings I want to do in the next year, because I get, you know, I try them out in this small format, and there’s a few of them that I’m like, ooh, that’s an idea I want to go back to. So it’s a nice transition sometimes, between plein air and planning studio paintings. So it helps me out that way. But yeah, finding fun projects like that and making them, I think making them exclusive for like, Hey, this is going out to the you’re you’re a newsletter subscriber. That means you, you’ve chosen to follow what I’m doing, so I want to reward that with, you know, a project like this,
Aaron Westerberg: 7:09
Yeah, no, it was slow. It was over a few years, for sure, because I didn’t know what I was doing, you know, I didn’t know what I was doing. I was just, I just wanted to be a fine artist. I wanted to be a gallery artist, you know. And so I was like, What do I have to do to, you know, to do this? And I just wanted everything to culminate to where it would help facilitate that, you know. So working at borders didn’t really facilitate that, you know, too much, you know. So as soon as I cut that out, I did, but, but, yeah, you know, you know, I think some of when you teach, like, you know, a lot of times I would get, you know, because my drawings were, they were, they’re pretty decent drawings when I was teaching, because I would teach life drawing, and a lot of times I would get people to take my class, and they would see me, and, you know, I was like, you know, 20 something years old, and like, Oh, you’re just a kid, you know, like, I thought you’d be like, an old man or something. And, and I’m like, I think, but some of the best teachers are the ones that are, you know, just kind of learning. And, you know, can do the things, but everything is kind of new and fresh to them. They’re not like, crusted over and, you know, they can actually express the ideas that maybe someone will just be like you just got to go through a million drawings to figure it out. So, you know, draw teaching. I think almost anyone can do that, you know, early on, you know, I think that’s a really good way to start and, you know, it, it doubles down on what you know. You’re teaching somebody you know what you know, and so you have to vocalize it and basically explain it to somebody who has no clue. And it’s also good, I have some good teaching stories, because I’ve taught for a long time, and I’ve taught some, I mean, I taught a guy, I’m positive he was in the witness look relocation program. I mean, I’m positive, you know, this guy was, like, total sopranos guy, and he had a pinky ring that was, like as big as my thumb on his pinky, and you could just smash me in any time, if you want to. He was humongous. But, yeah, I just so teaching is it’s interesting, it’s fun. But you learn more. You get better at your craft by teaching. So I think that is, is a great way to supplement your income. And then, like, the thing I want to say with social media is, you know, it’s, it’s easy to get bogged down in it and just kind of be negative towards it, but it’s like a great opportunity for artists right now. I know tons of artists, and I’m sure most of the viewers do also that just sell, you know, directly or through their Instagram or whatever. They don’t have a gallery, you know, and I. And it’s, it’s also, you know, I think we all have a degree of creativity, and you just have to kind of put it into the into your posts, you know, you, you know, like a lot of people, do the same things over and over, like varnishing the paintings or whatever. I mean, I do that, but, you know, but you just be creative with it, you know, when I when I first got that, like, Aha moment when I and I didn’t get it, the aha moment until after it happened. But what I did is, for that studio sale, I laid out a whole bunch of paintings on my studio floor, and I took a picture of it, and I’m like, I’m gonna have a studio sale, and this, all these are going to be here, and frames and all kinds of stuff. And then people started emailing me that picture back and circling the paintings, like, how much is this one? How much? Like a lot of people, and I’m like, Oh, wow, this is really. This really works, you know, just just kind of organic. I’m not trying to sell individual painting. I’m just kind of showing them what I’m doing, and it worked great. Like I said, I sold almost everything before the actual opening of the studio, sale the physical opening. So I think it’s just a matter of putting your creativity into the marketing side of your paintings, and it can be anything, you know, it can be anything. There’s tons of ways to do it, you know, stuff that’s not been done yet, stuff that’s been done with your own little twist on it. It can be anything, but it’s, you know, when you sell your stuff yourself, you don’t have to give a percentage to the gallery. You know, it’s, it’s very nice. It’s very nice. And you know that, like a lot of galleries, don’t share information, like, who bought your painting, so, so, you know, you get, you develop a relationship with that person. And a lot of times those relationships last years, right? They continue to purchase from you. So you know, it’s, it’s good. And you I mean, I, like no one who has my paintings, you know, I enjoy that a lot. And they send you a picture of it on their wall or whatever. It’s so gratifying, you know, so, so, yeah, that is, that’s a really good side of kind of social media and being able to market yourself and be, you know, be a living artist today.
William Schneider: 12:27
Don’t try to find your own voice. And I’d say that because that is one of the pieces of advice that was passed on to me by Bill parks, and he was 100% right. I think that if you just study, become curious about the world, curious about everything. You will gravitate towards certain themes, certain ideas, certain ways of expressing things, style or voice. I think is nothing more than people’s habitual mistakes. In other words, if somebody Okay, Modigliani making these elongate or El Greco making these elongated figures, maybe he had an issue with proportion, but it became a style, you know, and because in art we you cannot paint what we see. What we see is light, light rays hitting the object, bouncing off the object, going into our retina, being projected upside down on nerve endings and our eyeballs in the back of them and going into the brain and being interpreted as as whatever. But in that process, every step of it, you’re losing information, and so the information is filtered through our own verbal constructs and prejudices. I mean, human beings, including artists, talk to themselves incessantly without we never shut up, you know. And so the internal dialog, we can either try to harness it and use it, or we can fall victim to it. And what I mean by that is, you know, a lot of my students, you know, will express their internal dialog. They’ll make it external. And it’s kind of, oh, I started too late. I’ll never be any good. I just don’t get this temperature business. I don’t understand this. Maybe I should take up, go off. I was better at golf, but not really that good. I was like, a 19 handicap, but, and they’re doing saying all of these things, a useful dialog would be, okay, I don’t like this. What don’t I like? Is it too light? Is it too dark? Is it too warm? Is. It too cool, is it too sharp? Is it too soft? Is it too green, or is it too gray? You know, if you ask yourself sort of these paired questions, then you can come up with useful answers. And to circle back to style, Bill parks told me, do not try to find your own style. And then in my own research, I ran across a little, I don’t remember, the excerpt from a letter or somebody recording advice you received from Sargent. John Singer, Sargent about, you know, I want to become a great portrait artist. And Sargent told him, No, don’t try to become a great portrait artist, try to become a great artist, and then you can do portraits. And that’s what Sargent Did you know obvious by his body of work throughout time. And you know, so if you just try to be a great artist, you try to be the best that you can be at the things that interest you, eventually your style will will find you. Yeah, I don’t think I have a style particularly, but then I’ve had people say, oh, you know, I could I recognized your painting right off the bat, really, you know? But it’s, I’m just trying to be honest to the scene that’s in front of me as filtered through my own internal movie, you know, generally, like the anecdote I told you about the persecuted woman. If my best paintings are paintings where it’s not model Sitting in Chair. It’s Romeo sitting at at her mirror, pining from her lost look. It’s, it’s like a movie. And so then I started, start illustrating that movie. It’s that internal dialog, and that’s what I circle back to, that people you’re going to talk to yourself anyway might as well say something that’s useful.
Chris Krupinski: 17:01
Yeah, I actually think I didn’t know what or how powerful the value, the value pattern, or the value scale, should be in the painting for quite a long time. So I always wondered why my painting doesn’t really look right or look good. I also blame you know my color wasn’t right or the detail. I didn’t really know this how to paint this little thing, etc. But later, when I found this like this is the hugest aha moment, you would say, oh, that’s because my value is wrong. Sometimes the process the word saying the value does all the work, but the color gets all the credit. We all know that right? How, how I actually find out and helped myself to improve on the awareness of values is you could simply turn your painting into black white, then instantly you will know, and you compare to the pros or the paintings you admire, you do the same thing, you know, take a photo of that painting. Compare these two, black and white, instantly you will know, oh, that’s why the other painting is so good or so powerful. You know, it’s because the value is correct. Even like the piece as Impressionism. Piece colors everywhere. You couldn’t really realize it. But when you turn it into the black, white. You will see it
Laura Arango Baier: 18:43
at FASO. We inspire artists to inspire the world, because creating art creates magic, and the world is currently in desperate need of magic. FASO provides artists with free art marketing, creativity and business ideas and information. This show is an example. We also offer written resources, articles and a free monthly art contest open to all visual artists. We believe that fortune favors the bold brush, and if you believe that too, sign up completely free at BoldBrush show.com that’s boldbrushshow.com. The FASO podcast is sponsored by FASO. Now more than ever, it’s crucial to have a website when you’re an artist, especially if you want to be a professional in your career, thankfully, with our special link, FASO.com/podcast, you can make that come true and also get over 50% off your first year on your artist’s website. Yes, that’s basically the price of 12 lattes in one year, which I think is a really great deal, considering that you get sleek and beautiful website templates that are also mobile friendly, e commerce, print on demand in certain countries, as well as access to our marketing center that has our brand new art marketing calendar. And the art marketing calendar is something that you won’t get with our competitor. The art marketing calendar gives you day by day, step by step, guides on what you should be doing today, right now, in order to get your artwork out there and seeing. The right eyes so that you can make more sales this year. So if you want to change your life and actually meet your sales goal this year, then start now by going to our special link, FASO.com/podcast, that’s FASO.com/podcast,
Brian Bateman: 20:14
I will go back and review perspective. I will go back and review my basic drawing skills. Teaching helps me to go back to those basic drawing skills. So I would recommend, you know, I’d recommend teaching too, because for those of you who have taught, that really, really helps you get back to core basics. Because you’re you’re trying to teach that again to your students, and in teaching that to your students, you’re re teaching that to yourself. And then you’re also learning to communicate, which sometimes my wife says, I have a problem doing. So if you learn to communicate better and get it across to do the student, and you have that aha moment, or they have that aha moment. It makes you feel good you’ve gotten, you’ve got across to them, and that that’s very cool. But back to the core. That helps with the core, at least for me to revisit that
Chris Krupinski: 21:21
I paint every single day. Back when I decided it was going to be important to me to to be a professional artist, I made a commitment to myself, and this is when I still had kids at home, I made a commitment to myself that I would paint at the minimum of two hours a day, no matter what. So Christmas Eve would find me wrapping gifts and then pulling my paints out for two hours. Because I I am 100% sure that the only way you are going to get better is to put the time in. And I so no, aha. Moment happens. It’s like watching your kids grow. Never once did I ever say aha, they grew two inches, because you don’t see that unless you look back, and it just grows slowly and it progresses to where you’re going. And I so no, but when I do look back, I do see tremendous changes, you know, and growth and and whatever. And I just attribute that to time being put in. And so the more time you put in, you it will slowly, it will slowly change and hopefully go to the better.
Jeff Legg: 22:57
Well, let’s see. I wrote down some things that I think might help. Yeah, I guess probably the biggest thing was that, realizing that you can’t really copy color. I mean, color is very relative. It looks, you know, one color looks different next to another color next to another color, and the color is so relative, you could paint anything in any color, and it would as long as the value relationships were were good and correct, that the color doesn’t matter. So I don’t get real hung up on trying to reproduce an exact color. In fact, I will push colors where I want them to be. I mean, after all, we’re dealing with paint, and you can only do so much with paint. Sometimes you have to exaggerate things just to get across the emphasis of a certain color that you want to focus on. So, you know, I put a lot more, a lot more practice into value, you know, relationships, because that’s really the most important thing. So that was a, that was a pretty big thing to realize I didn’t have to be, you know, I’m not a I’m not a camera, you know, I’m not even trying to be a camera. I’m trying to, you know, paint something that looks I want to paint whatever I’m painting to be more than what it is, you know, it’s be more. Even what a camera would capture. So that means taking some liberties, which is a good was a really good segue to one thing that’s I’ve done for about the past 15 years or so is I paint quite often. A lot of it’s from imagination, or a combination of, you know what I’m looking at and my imagination. So I find a lot of freedom in doing work from memory, imagination. And I really, really recommend highly that people work from memory. Is you know more than they do you know. Working from your memory or your imagination, that’s sort of the same thing you are forced to you’re you’re going to force yourself to find out what you really know. Because what you really know is you know should be able to come out as a memory or as your imagination. And the more you practice and exercise your imagination, I think the better artists will be we’re, you know, as a child, our imaginations are much more pliable, and I think we use it more often. And as we get older, we sort of, you know, lose our childlike ability in that way. So I try to practice that. I’ve done a lot of paintings. Still I totally from made up, and you would never know. It shouldn’t matter. I mean, really, in some ways, those paintings are maybe more truthful than trying to, you know, exactly copy what I’m looking at, because they’re, they’re from me, you know, they’re not locked into just, you know, what I’m looking at. You’re kind of an expression. Then the another thing, as far as technique, that was a discovery that has helped me a lot is I’m in love with surface texture. I a painting isn’t a painting unless it has beautiful surface texture, you know. So in my that’s just my opinion, but I like to build up textures and patina and glazes and using regular oil paint, oil paint, even if you add mediums that you know to help speed the drying, they still it takes a day or several days to really be thoroughly dry, if not months, and you certainly can’t really glaze a painting that’s not thoroughly dry. So I discovered alkaline oils, which was a fast drawing oil paint. And depending on the humidity level and and the thickness of the paint, everything, it’ll dry, you know, anywhere from it’ll be pretty darn dry in two or three hours or or overnight for sure, three or four days it’s it’s completely cured out. So that has helped me speed up my process a lot. Then the cool thing about alkids too, is they they all dry at the same speed. They can be mixed into regular oils. You can start a painting with alkyd and end it with regular oils. Or you can do the whole thing with alkid. It’s just a beautiful for me. It’s a beautiful balance, because I can, I would say I would speed up my process by weeks by using alkids, at least in the beginning stages. If not, you know, the entire painting. These paintings are all out, good. Uh, and it is, it’s, don’t misunderstand, it is an oil paint. It’s just a fast drying oil paint. It’s not acrylic. Acrylic dries too fast for me, and it doesn’t have the same feel as oil paint. So anyway, yeah, the using alkaline oils is, I know it’s unconventional. There’s not a lot of artists that really do that, but that’s been a big thing for me. I can, you know, I can do a painting, you know, average size, still life, you. Do all the glazing, everything I want to do to make it that surface quality, the texture and everything. Let that dry, say, a week, and then it’s dry enough to varnish, you know, get it framed and send it, send it off to a gallery. Whereas, if I were using regular oils, I might have, you know, that might be more like a three month process, if not longer, I would say, like I said, I’ve always take a commission work, and commissions kind of drag you down, especially if the client is really prescriptive about what they want. And of course, now that I’m showing in all of these galleries and selling, you know, the work that does come from my heart, I can be a little bit more picky and choosy on the Commission’s I accept. But recently I just commissions just are pressure, no matter what. By recently devised a system that helps alleviate some of that pressure. So let’s say a client asked me for you know, they say, Oh, I love your sunsets with the peachy tones, but I need a 40 by 40. I will say, Okay, I’m going to paint you two or 340 by 40s with the peachy tones for you to choose from. And that has been really great for all of us. It takes the pressure off me to get it right in that one shot. It takes the pressure off the client to be stuck with one, the one and only painting you do for them. It takes, you know, they have choices now. I mean, what’s better than that? And also, whatever gallery this commission is through, I’m getting them all three paintings, and the client picks one, and the gallery has more stock it can hang the other two on the wall and sell them. So it’s a win, win for everybody. And you know what, once in a while, the client will say, Well, you know what, I have room for two. So they actually take two. So the you know, that’s just a bonus. So that’s how I’ve been, how I’ve been dealing with commissions lately. And it’s it’s been working out really well. It really takes the pressure off, off everybody. Um, because the more parameters a client puts around a painting, the less free I am able to make those choices. And sometimes it just ends up in a jumbled mess because their vision doesn’t match my vision, and I can’t take the painting to where, you know, I want to put out my best work. So if I offer three options that way, I can make my three best paintings with the peachy sunset colors and, and they have the choice. And, oh, and yes. So if you are showing in a gallery, just a piece of advice, and you get a random email and somebody asked for a commission. Always ask that collector if they found your work in in a gallery, or did they just find you through a random internet search? How they found you? Because if they saw your work in the gallery, first, you should run that commission through the gallery, it’s just good business. It establishes trust with your gallery, and it just builds that good business relationship with your gallery, so you should always honor that. But yeah, anyways, that’s that was sort of an aha moment. That’s how I deal with the pressure of commissions. Now, you know, it takes a little bit longer, but the galleries are always wanting work, so it kind of kills two birds with one stone, and it’s that it’s been great that way.
Kim Lordier: 33:29
So I think the biggest aha moment i I’ve had was when I gave up. I gave up worrying about the end result or the finished product, when I took the preciousness out of what I do and realized that it’s really truly about the process that gives me the greatest joy. It’s the doing of it, the being there, that that zen like state that you end up in when the whole world goes away and you’re one with your pigments. I mean, that’s really cool. You know, when I when I gave that up, when I gave up the feeling that I had to create a painting, I realized that there’s always another canvas to fill. There’s always another piece of paper to have. And you know, I think I mentioned this to you before, like knock on wood. You know, if I were to have a studio fire or something catastrophic happened to my beautiful space that I love to be in. I think I’d be, I mean, it would be horrible, you know, and I know this has happened to people, but I just know that I have the capacity of creating more, and that is a beautiful thing to be. Able to sit with, but I don’t wish that upon anybody. Or, you know, that’s not what I’m trying to get at after here. But it’s just that I love the doing. I love being out on location with my feet, my toes sunk in the sand, and while I’m painting at the beach, or, you know, having climbed in, you know, miles up into the Eastern Sierras to to go paint with my friends, and there was just nothing greater than that for me.
Laura Arango Baier: 35:34
Thank you to everyone out there for listening to the podcast. Your continued support means a lot to us. If you’ve enjoyed the episode, please leave a review for the podcast on Apple podcast Spotify, or leave us a comment on YouTube. This helps us reach others who might also benefit from the excellent advice that our guests provide. Thank you.
