Scott Burdick & Susan Lyon were our latest guests on our BoldBrush Live! program. As a paid subscriber, we are happy to provide not only the video replay but the full transcript of the insightful session with Scott & Susan below. Please keep in mind the transcripts are generated by AI so there may be some typos.
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Transcript:
Olya Konell 00:00
I’ll say you guys obviously know who our special guests are. Today. We have both Susan Lyon and Scott Burdick, and I’m going to officially welcome everybody. I’m really excited for you all to be here. Those of you that have to leave early, if, in case, we go couple minutes over, we will have the recording next week sometime, usually about a week later, sometimes too, but usually a week later, I’m going to do a quick little announcement, and then we’ll just jump right in. So yeah, Susan Lyon and Scott Burdick and Angela, who is our Artist Relations Director, she’s going to be sharing some links. And so if you want to grab links, go ahead and do that. Will include them with the recording as well. And every webinar, I like to do a brief who we are and what we do, because everybody always asks, what’s BoldBrush? What’s Faso? What’s going on here? BoldBrush is a tech company that offers tools and resources and inspiration for artists. So boldbrush.com is where we publish all of our newsletters. You can subscribe for free to get all of the inspo stuff. There’s also a paid tier we have. We have a podcast that you can listen to for free anywhere you get your podcasts. And then we have these webinars, and we post the recordings there as well. For our paid resources, we offer us website builder. So there’s Susan. This actually switches out we didn’t plan. Yeah, beautiful photo, but yeah, so Faso is a website builder. Basically, it’s for the artist that wants to spend less time updating and designing their site and more time painting. It’s a little bit easier plug and play, but we also offer Squarespace services by Faso, and that’s for the artist that wants a little bit more control over their site. Wants to tap into some of those membership services, those types of things. So now, kind of without further ado, I’m going to go ahead and take off my spotlighting here, and we’re gonna bring on everybody else. Susan, Scott and Angela, thank you guys for being here. We’re excited for this conversation, and this webinar is featuring your questions. So if you guys have a question that you would like to ask, drop it into the Q A box. You can also drop it into the chat. I’m going to go ahead and get us, you know, kick us off, but this is your chance to connect with Susan and Scott. So do not be shy. Ask your questions, and then we I’m going to go ahead and, well, ask Susan and Scott to give us a, you know, brief intro. We all know who you are, but in case somebody doesn’t, who are you and what do you do?
Susan Lyon 02:44
All right, well, we are both artists. We’re primarily figurative artists, although I am so into still life right now. And we live in North Carolina, so we live near Winston Salem, and we grew up around Chicago, and both went to the American Academy of Art. I went just right when Scott graduated, so we didn’t overlap at all, but I knew of him and there was an art club in Chicago called the palette and chisel still around, and it’s still an amazing place. The school, unfortunately, is not still around. And we, actually, I met at the PAL and chisel. So anybody who goes to Chicago, you can go visit. It’s a beautiful old Italian like, Nate mansion, really close to downtown. And they’re always having shows and workshops, and they have, they have model stuff, like, every single day, so you guys can go and, you know, go and actually participate, just like, pay a daily fee or something, just to go and paint in the same places, you know that artists from the past. I think it was. I mean, how long did it open? It was in the 1800s like, yeah, 80 or something.
Scott Burdick 03:56
It was, it’s something like that. It was, it’s been about 120 years old now, and it was started by it must have been longer than that.
Susan Lyon 04:03
have been longer than that. Oh yeah, it’s 2025,
Scott Burdick 04:07
yeah. So time is,
Susan Lyon 04:08
like, beyond us. I think it was around yet in the 19, no, because there was like 100 year. Wasn’t there one when we were
Scott Burdick 04:16
there, not when we were okay? There was a few years after that. But it was started by students at the Art Institute, back when the Art Institute was more realism based, and Vanderpool and those people were teaching there. Lots of great illustrators came out of there, and they started it as a place to paint, you know, so they could paint. It was only a men’s club. It was only men back that the art schools were only men back that time, and they first started it in a place. But what’s the famous sculptor, August Saint Gaudens, in a studio that he was letting people use. And then they got this building, and I mean, people like Mooka and stuff would come there and paint at the palette and chisel, they’d host him,
Susan Lyon 04:59
a famous art. Would come to all Chicago would probably visit there. Yeah, it was the type of club where they would have to wear tuxedos, you know, like the men would have to dress up to, you know, they all were, like, it was totally a different era.
Scott Burdick 05:15
Yeah. I mean, there’s so many famous artists that came out of there that were illustrators, and a lot of the fine artists. It went out to the west and east coast, so like Edgar Payne, and there’s a whole bunch of the Western painters that were in the palette, which is the one that moved off to different places, yeah. So that’s sort of art history.
Susan Lyon 05:30
We’ve been living in North Carolina forever. We moved here in 96 and but we still have ties with the palette. And, yeah, we just kind of got under the palette, because it’s sort of a people are always really curious about that club. People hear about it a lot. And so I was just like to explain a little bit. So if anybody’s been to New York, there’s a club called the Selma Gundy club. And I always kind of joke a little bit that the Selma Gundy Club, which is on Fifth Avenue, was like the rich cousin, and the palette, because it’s similar. I mean, it’s a big, beautiful building and it’s an art club, but the palette is sort of rough and ready and and more artsy. And then, you know, Selma Gundy is much more, you know, high class and and stuff. But yeah, that’s kind of our history, and we are both self employed, so, you know, you know. So each month we have to figure out,
Scott Burdick 06:28
what are you looking at? I want to see one of the power chisels.
Susan Lyon 06:32
And I was like, I always say,
Scott Burdick 06:36
people wrong, so that’s a good idea.
Susan Lyon 06:38
So he’s gonna, yeah, it is because I couldn’t. I looked it up. I found one in Texas, like the palette club. So, yeah, be great. Find it.
Susan Lyon 06:45
Yeah, the palette and chisel. And,
Olya Konell 06:47
you know, I love that you’re sharing this. Because one point we like to make for artist list listening and is artist communities, artists relationships, artists have a long history of, you know, and I’ve heard somebody else say this, I don’t remember who, but artists kind of, they rise. They have risen together, even though there’s a name or a person, but there’s always been a community behind that person. And, you know, artists have a long history of learning from those that came before us, you know, right? It’s like,
Susan Lyon 07:16
and there’s other artists who have a different lineage, you know, of stuff, or maybe West Coast stuff, and so that is definitely where our sensibility comes. You know, death, what does it say when it was found? So, yeah.
Scott Burdick 07:35
They said 1895 it was founded by there. Yeah, yeah, from, from, Uriah just brought up because
Susan Lyon 07:42
they were having, like 100 year, like
Scott Burdick 07:45
celebration by night. Students at the artists who wanted to paint from miles, from daylight hours, they started meeting in studio of sculptor Laredo Taft, and before purchasing a mansion in 1921 that’s what I was thinking of. That was the day, and it was at the started in Chicago, at that building. And this building had started before us, but the building itself was 1921 when they started painting there. Yeah, that’s amazing.
Olya Konell 08:11
Lots of really cool history. And we’ll make sure we include some of these links too, so that way you guys can grab them. And I actually want to, while I have you on Susan, and I’m trying to pull up your YouTube, you guys do a lot of stuff. You you contribute to this his to this pattern and this way of living that artists have learning from each other. You guys are teachers as well. So I want to just have you briefly let us know. What are all the different things you do? What are some ways artists can connect with you if they want to learn from you, because I love how accessible you are. Like, I love all of your Yeah.
Susan Lyon 08:51
So thank you. Yeah. I do have a YouTube and I started that just because I wanted to, like, honestly, I thought about and I wish I had started it so much longer, but we were talking about technology before we even started live, and how so much of us it’s it’s stressful and and all the things that can go wrong, and all the things you have to learn, it’s a learning curve. And I so I think, God, I wish I had on my YouTube channel years and years ago when we gone on this trip, or we’d met these artists, and I started it because of all that. I mean, I we all wish we could have seen Sargent talk. We all wish we could have, you know, nobody has a real good explanation of like, even his procedure. There’s a few bits of some students or or models who talk a little bit, but we didn’t get to see anything, because no one did a movie of him. Nobody you know really took that many photos of his process. So I thought, well, yeah, I know a lot of really good artists. I know artists and they were going to travel to other countries, and I want people who can’t travel to be able to see this stuff. Yeah, that’s why I did it as a passion project. Because, I mean, you don’t make money off of YouTube. It’s just, it’s really more just to share. And we also have a Patreon, and so that’s monthly stuff, where we upload tutorials, we have a live stream every month, and it’s just, it’s super affordable. I mean, $5 or $9 a month.
Susan Lyon 10:22
Yeah, you can have tons of videos and meet us on a live stream once a month, and it’s a community. And I also have a mentorship where for $60 a month, where I meet people over zoom like this, and we read, I do critiques and
Scott Burdick 10:38
fun things that where’s that
Susan Lyon 10:41
tears you just had to click the right button.
Olya Konell 10:43
Oh, okay, yeah, this one. Oh, okay, yeah. Oh, okay. You just have to hit over one. I There it is. We that’s
Scott Burdick 10:53
cool. Do. One of the things I like the most about when Sue started this during the shutdown, because she didn’t have her workshops or anything, then is, a lot of people said, You should do this for long term, like sign up for a year or something. But she said, No, I wanted to be just for one month. And as she’s added videos, as we’ve added videos, there’s over, like, 100 videos, 50 or 70. I mean, one month, people can watch everything. But the reason she did that was because people who can’t afford to buy we’ve made in the past. So way back when a company would make them, they’d be like, you know, $150 or something. And so it’s neat because we get messages from people in other countries, especially like in Africa or India or other places where they really could never afford to watch videos, and they’ll say, thank you. They’ll get some people together, and they’ll literally just watch everything month. Yeah, they’ll even apologize, I’m sorry we had to only, you know, do it one month, but $9 but with them, it’s affordable. And they’ll do like, demos from the paintings and things that’s amazing. They’ll come on and off just one month. And those are all of the people who couldn’t afford normal schools the country. So it’s so fun. And then, of course, it’s life changing for them too. It is, and it’s thanks to the people who are regular subscribers and stuff that it. We can spend all the time doing it, but they’re helping guys, a lot of these people who have never been able to really look at art videos, because buying it from another country and shipping it and all that, it was like, it would be, like, a year’s money for it would be really expensive.
Olya Konell 12:25
I mean, I find video lessons so valuable, because that’s how I learned how to paint. I didn’t go to art school. I just I Googled my way into everything. You know, I grew up, you know, in the 80s. But, you know, I grew up, you know, in the jumping into the technology space really quickly, and so for me, you know what stuff like, what you’re doing, is what helped me learn everything. You know, every
Susan Lyon 12:54
I wish I think back to, like when I was in my early 20s, and how, you know, we had to buy art books, or you had to wait each month for an art magazine, and there weren’t videos and, and you just felt so lost, in a way, you know, you really felt like you’re just trudging through, you know, just trying to get better without a lot of information. So I think, I just think it’s a miracle and, and much sometimes, like, the worst things bring out such a silver lining. So yeah, and we were talking a little bit, oh yeah, we were talking about how we just kind of jump in, and you don’t know what you’re doing in the beginning, because, you know when covid happened and everything shut down, like we had a whole year’s worth of of trips and shows and things that we were planning, which you were hoping, as a self employed artist, you it’s fingers crossed, because nothing is ever set, you know, nothing is ever guaranteed. But you’re thinking, Oh, maybe I’ll make some money at that show. Okay, hopefully, well, I’m going to do a little workshop of six months from now. And so you have this planned out. And when everything falls away, and you go, Whoa, okay, art is not a necessity, meaning, like, people don’t need it to live, you have to sort of reinvent yourself. So, you know, I just picked up my phone and and I just started to film myself, you know. And I’m like, I heard a Patreon once. I’m like, I’m just gonna start one. Maybe I can get I love that. And, yeah, my earlier videos are funny, and sometimes, you know, I love that, though, I like to tell people I go, please. I hope you giggle when you watch this, because sometimes my head’s cut off, and sometimes this is happening, and sometimes that. And I am not a perfectionist, so I like to leave things when they’re completely not 100% polished. And I do like to see the progression, you know, you go, Oh my God, my very first video with my phone, and then getting better and better. And then over time, Scott joining me. And then over time, we started live streams. And then over time, it’s like, not just. Because I do think that this online stuff, it really is a great idea. It’s for community. People want to see people talking. So I don’t want to just offer like videos where they only see paintings come alive. I want to do once a month where we talk like this. We literally see each other’s faces and and we talk about good news, and we share tips and we share supplies. And I was just noticing one of the questions in the chat was, and something we get a lot is, do you ever use water based oil paints?
Scott Burdick 15:33
And this from Paul Schiller, by the way, a friend, great artist. And so
Susan Lyon 15:38
Scott has used them before. I had used them a long time ago. Well, let me just say they’ve gotten better. And even though you like them, I feel that Scott can do anything, and he’s definitely traveled with acrylics and all that stuff. I have tested them a little bit, but, um, I do know that Rembrandt, because I hear a lot from people that, you know, these water based oils, they get better and better and better. So if anybody really wants to try water based oils, and they might have, in the past, have heard something, try them again, you know. And I just, I was just on a zoom call, like, a week ago, with Rembrandt paints, and all these artists who use Rembrandt paints, and people were raving about their water base, which is called Cobra and and so a lot of people do travel with those.
Scott Burdick 16:28
I’ve heard they’ve gotten a lot better. I didn’t mix painting with them way back when I use them on a couple trips, because I’m just painting paint into paint. He’s very thick, but when Sue would thin it more. That’s where it broke down more. But I guess nowadays, they have special things to work with that, and it works fine. The problem I had was some of those older ones, really, within a few years, they were getting a little bit of cracks in where the brush strokes were. They kind of look interesting. It wasn’t like cracks across the whole thing. But I guess now that doesn’t happen.
Olya Konell 17:02
So interesting. It makes me want to try them too, because I’ve I did, yeah, experimented years ago, and just never got, never tried again.
Scott Burdick 17:11
So that’s what I’ve done. Now, when I want to, I’ll paint watercolors sometimes on trips, but I will most often now paint acrylics. And I used to just do landscapes with the crooks, because of the issue, that the colors would change once it dries, and it was really difficult to match flesh. So they’re they were fine for landscapes where it doesn’t have to be so precise. But the last couple trips, when we’ve gone and I didn’t want to bring mineral spirits or and so I didn’t do the oil paints, was I use a gel medium with gloss gel medium. And you can also use a little bit of the extender. So if you just put a drop, mix a little bit of gel medium into them, when you when you lay your pants out acrylic gel medium, it keeps them glossy. So when they dry, it looks the same as mix things and match things, and then a little bit of the extender will make them stay wet for 20 minutes. So you can work thick into it, work thick on it, yeah, and then it’s nice, because then you can let it dry, and you can do watches and things and and dry brushing. So I actually have, haven’t used the water based oils, just because, if I’m not going to take the regular oils, I’ll use the acrylics,
Susan Lyon 18:21
yeah, yeah. We might pick up some Cobra because people have really been loving them. And they do have all
Olya Konell 18:27
kinds of make a video about it, yeah, I know,
Angela Agosto 18:31
Yeah. Lori Woodward was just asking about that.
Scott Burdick 18:33
only a little bit painting outside, like in Scotland and stuff.
Susan Lyon 18:37
And I show people exactly, you know what you your setups, because he has a favorite setup. Your favorite setup is by Coulter. The Coulter, easily, it’s called Art and box.com
Scott Burdick 18:52
and art and box panel and.com I think something like, but James Coulter, yeah.
Susan Lyon 18:57
So you, I do have those, and I do like them, but you really only use that a lot and and it’s, um, so that’s the setup that you
Scott Burdick 19:03
try, because it has a deeper box, it’s wood, it’s light, and it has the pole that goes on. You’ll see the setup. But for suit, she paints thinner, so she doesn’t mind having the boxes that close, just a little push, yeah. But I have a lots of paint on mine, and I save so I can’t close the box, if I just little bits of paint.
Olya Konell 19:22
So that’s what I was going to read. Some comments. Lori says I use Cobra and also traditional oils. Cobra has always been the best I don’t thin it with water, but with their medium. So I guess that’s something to tries to use their their whatever mediums that they make.
Susan Lyon 19:37
Yeah, who said that? Because I also heard possibly Laura, that can’t you actually mix them with oils? There’s a percentage. Let me know. I think I heard that correctly, that the new what Cobra you can actually add with oils. It’s just maybe not 5050, but maybe.
Scott Burdick 19:56
But other people are the ones to ask. Yeah, I see several. You’re mentioning different brands, and I have not used them for so long, so it’s really I’m probably not the right person to comment. And
Angela Agosto 20:08
We have Mary Fortunati, she said that, I guess she did one of your workshops, Scott. And she said that you used a water based oils.
Scott Burdick 20:15
That was probably back in Italy, yeah, and I’ve used those way back then that when we did in Cinque Terre, when we did water
Susan Lyon 20:23
Bay, yeah, that’s exactly where she said, Yes, it was, yeah,
Scott Burdick 20:27
I know, beautiful. We’d rent a place for like three weeks in those places, so we were there already painting. You get to know all the fishermen and all the people. And then people would meet us there for a week. We would just say, Wow, in the square, and then we would so fun.
Olya Konell 20:44
Oh, that does sound fun. Just like a Yeah, it’s
Susan Lyon 20:47
cheaper to like their own. That’s the hard thing. I’m sure everybody who watches this knows that. Like, it’s a huge business for overseas workshops.
Scott Burdick 20:58
Somebody says, brand of acrylics, I use all different types. Well, golden is I like golden, but I’ve used the different ones, and they seem to be all pretty good, but Dave is golden the most.
Susan Lyon 21:07
Yeah. Well, I just talk about overseas workshops, because it’s such a huge business, and I know people are really excited about it and but yeah, like I wanted to talk about this trip that Scott and I did to Italy. And I can’t even remember the year ago. I mean, it was so freaking long ago, but it was before the boom of all these big online, all these big web, you know, based workshops overseas, 2007 gosh, I love people who have memories. And so what we did was we literally just, I think, we charge $400 and for the whole class, and we just said, I gave people links to like, Hey, this is, you know, some Airbnbs. You know, this is where we’re going to be staying. It’s totally up to the student to buy their flights, to do their lodging, because some people want more expensive, some people want less, but this is where we’re staying. So if you can find something that’s in walking distance, and then just meet us at like, nine o’clock in this, you know, corner or this plaza, and we had our apartment in case it rained, which it did one day, and, yeah, two floors. But then every day we would just go and paint in a different location. Oh, wow. People were then able to group off and go out to dinners for but I love and I think that’s kind of where we’re going to I think in the future, I personally have an incredibly hard time asking people, because I know that for some people, money is no you know, it’s just it doesn’t even matter. They have so much money, you know, to me, they just want high end. They want five star. But the average artist, really, you know, that’s not something that is like probable or practical. I mean, that’s my dream is in the future, just to be a little bit more like that.
Scott Burdick 22:56
I love locations like that, in that town, Vanessa and stuff. We’re there a week, so we knew what the light and everything, and you could take a little train back and forth, but you don’t need a car at all. Yeah. And so fact that people can come there and they don’t have to go through all the other stuff about cars and parking and everything, yeah, building locations. And me, personally, when I go somewhere, my favorite thing is just to be in one place for a while and get to know people, and get to see things and just not be constantly moving from place to place. Yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s when I can do more serious work,
Susan Lyon 23:29
because you might want to paint the same scene in the morning and in the evening. Yeah, sometimes don’t allow you to do that. You can. Faso, you like, paint for two or three hours, get back on the bus, and then you’re like, Wait, I didn’t even get to see this. I didn’t get to see that.
Olya Konell 23:47
And so it’s, yeah, and part of and part of seeing is us, you know, noticing looking at it long enough to notice the things you didn’t notice the day before. Like, look at that little crack, you know, this little, this little detail, the way the light hits it, all that kind of stuff. That’s, I have a so a question, because I something that I struggle with. Pearl submitted this in advance. So she asked, What are your practices to stay focused when painting? I think those artists are all a little add.
Susan Lyon 24:15
So, any tips that you all have well, so breaks are really important, but I do think that too long and start losing my focus and start making mistakes and start doing things.
Scott Burdick 24:23
For me, that’s probably the biggest thing is to remind myself to take breaks. When you have a model, you’re forced to take breaks every 25 minutes, and it’s so good because you can, you can just relax a little bit, have a little snack. But for me, that’s the biggest thing is, is, is
Susan Lyon 24:42
I completely agree with that. Because I sometimes, I can be, I try not to be super judgmental, but sometimes, like, I’ll get a student that will be very, very proud that they’ll tell me, Oh, I paint all day, and I’ll say, well, oh my gosh. Well, how many hours? And they’ll go nine. 12 hours a day, and I’ll literally look at them and think, that’s not good, you know, you know, it’s almost like a competition like, Oh, I’m painting so long. It’s something I mean, the amount of hours that I’m putting in, I’m going to have good result. And I kind of think the complete opposite. I truly do believe that we as humans can only concentrate at 100% for short bits of time, so you have to build up to that you can’t. And even I just taught a workshop last week, and even, you know, students get to the class at nine o’clock, they hear me talk demoing. They go out to lunch, and then they’re painting in the afternoons, and it’s exhausting, you know, to, like, concentrate at three, 330 in the afternoon. And sometimes I’m saying, you guys, it’s not actually worth it for you to keep painting if it’s a struggle, if you don’t, if you can’t put 100% into a stroke. So sometimes, in a workshop, I’ll reverse and I’ll say, Okay, you guys paint in the morning, because you have to be fresh and you have to build up that muscle, not only mentally, but sometimes physically, so purely the mere act of painting, the mere act of standing or whatever posture you have. So I sometimes I tell people start off with literally a half hour only, paint for a half hour. And the best, the best thing you could do for yourself is to take a good break.
Olya Konell 26:30
Take a go for a walk. Right? Go for a walk.
Susan Lyon 26:33
Have some tea. Do something. Go pet your cat. I’m just want to finish. And then you have to build up. So then you say, Okay tomorrow, the night, you know, you build up, and then you go, okay tomorrow, the next week, I’ll only paint for an hour, and then the ultimate and I’m going to say for me, and I’ve been painting forever, I will probably paint. I will never paint for more than, like, 90 minutes and a full stint, like in my own studio, right? Because if I’m painting for more than an hour and a half, my brain cannot keep focused at 100% you start to start mixing things. You become a zombie, yeah, you start mentally falling asleep. So I have to leave my studio. I have to do something else. And probably, you know, because it’s all about quality over quantity. You I actually want to show you this paint, that little painting, that portrait. It’s Richard Schmidt, did that of me in 45 minutes. And he obviously did, you know, he kind of like, you can see how it’s sort of like a gesture of just the jaw and but in his mind, he got exactly what he wanted. And so he was like, this is this? I love this little poetic, little thing, you know, not fully painted, and I don’t want to ruin it. I want to keep it the way it is. And so I ruined so many paintings because we feel that, oh well, the model is still there. So we just keep painting. Or it’s only one o’clock in the afternoon. Oh, you know, so I’m just going to keep painting. Or, like, instead of really thinking about, what are your painting needs, we just put more paint on the canvas and we paint it out to the edges. And I just did one, like, a few weeks ago that I really regret. I went, I should have left it a little bit more of a vignette, and yet I just without thinking, thought, Oh well, I just need to put paint all over the background, and now I’m totally upset at it. I go, why did I do that? I wasn’t thinking it through. So I know this is a very long answer, but it’s an important one, because how to stay focused. You have to give yourself breaks. You have to not think about hours. You have to think about quality. And then I’ll let you talk.
Scott Burdick 28:53
And there’s differences too, in what your goal is.
Susan Lyon 29:06
So when I was in art school, I did paint essentially nine hours a day for several years, 19 years old, well.
Scott Burdick 29:08
But also, the thing is, is that we’re taking breaks, so we have a model, so I’d have lifetime in the morning is three hour session, and we would, you know, have a break every 25 minutes. You have five hour break, then we’d have lunch, and you have a good break. And then in the in the afternoon was oil painting class, the same sort of thing. And then Nancy Guz and I and Rose France, and a lot of the people, Tim Lawson and stuff. A lot of times we would then that well for me, every day I didn’t have word of pain whole we would go to the palette, chisel at night and paint a three hour portrait session there. But we have a good break before then and everything. And again, we’re young, but also there were older people who were coming there too. But that is a different kind of painting than I’d say, like, if somebody is a composer or pianist and they’re just practicing a piece, and then someone is a composer and they’re happening, it’s a more exhausting sort of a thing for. Yeah, right. So there, all we’re doing is we’re doing quick sketch, and you have to be focused, you have to be fresh, you have to have those breaks, but you’re really practicing basic things. And it’s about studying, what am I doing wrong? So you’re thinking a lot, but it’s just trying to get the nose to look like the nose and the proportions right, learning how to learning all these basic skills, how to mix. And that is a lot about it is just doing a lot of it, and you find that you just start to get better and better from the doing of it. And but then once we it was interesting, once you get to the point of after maybe four or five years of that kind of a schedule, then you want to start doing your own thing. And I was like, that was like, when I got to get a camera, I got to get some subjects I want to do. I have to hire models on my own, and I just have a teacher set it up to set up. You just sit down and you go, and you’re not trying to do anything creative. And that’s when, you know, when Richard Schmidt moved back to Chicago, was at the palette chisel. I remember Nancy and I, we were so into that just kind of paint as much as you can possibly paint, get those hours and improve. And then when we saw, Wow, he only works for a couple hours a day sometimes, or then I’ll take days off. We’re like, Wow, is he just lazy. It wasn’t until we started actually trying to do our own things that you realize it takes a lot more mental energy when you’re actually really trying to do something of your own. Yeah, you’re so you actually, I, there are times when I’m really into a painting, and I will work night and day. Sue’s a little bit more, and then I’ll crash, and I have to take, like, weeks off sometimes and or even longer, because you’ve mentally drained your excitement. So it is different when you’re working on your own things than when you’re just trying to get those basic skills. But I’ve seen people put those hours at the pallet chisel, putting in all those hours, but like, Sue said, they’re just kind of just going on. They’re not actually, like challenging themselves, thinking about what’s wrong this or that. It’s a good word, challenging.
Susan Lyon 31:51
So, you know, it’s more difficult than just being like kind of a factory or robot, kind of doing stuff, but your work never progresses. To actually progress takes more energy, more calories, more intention, more passion, and that is something that you have to do in short spurts. So I hope that helps a lot. And some people are talking about yes,
Susan Lyon 32:12
because it’s meant to be draining,
Angela Agosto 32:12
Oh and stay hydrated.
Susan Lyon 32:14
Yes!
Olya Konell 32:16
Some really good comments in here from folks. They’re like, this is refreshing. Sometimes have to remind myself that practice should be mindful, not just spending time at something. You know, same thing like taking breaks, getting hydrated and and I want to say, Scott, you made a really good point. I never thought about this. The type of art you’re doing, like in what, Susan, you said, this too depends on what you’re doing. If you’re just practicing technique and you’re following along, and you’re not creating, you’re, you’re not birthing something new. You’re just doing that is way different than you know, creating, designing, you know, you’re, you’re putting different parts of your brain to work. I think that’s what it is.
Susan Lyon 33:00
So use more mental energy when you have you’re using more mental
Scott Burdick 33:04
Oh I’m sorry. And someone’s asking about photography and things, and that goes right along with that sort of thing is, is it’s so easy to just set the model up or do something that’s already, you know, that you’re used to. And I think of photography and setting up models and setting up still lifes, or going out to a location that you’re excited about, spending the time to go all the way out to Italy or to Africa or to bed or wherever it is. If that’s what you’re passionate about, painting, you’ve got to do that. And you see that with the landscape painters, who are great, they really spend a lot of time getting to the places that inspire them. And photography is the same way you get the subjects that you’re interested in. And we’ll spend hours doing a photo session, not just setting one thing up and taking a quick picture. It’s really thinking out playing around. We’re exhausted at the end of a photo session. And you know, and going out to these locations, I I take it very seriously when we go out to those places, I get up before the sun goes up, wherever we are. It’s in Tibet or Nepal or wherever, and I get up early, and we’re in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. We’re camping. I get up early and I go out, and that’s photographing time. I’m really thinking about that, or for like, when indie will hire a model in the mornings for like, three to five hours, and we’ll paint the model, and then have a break, and then I’ll go off and take photographs of people find them, and putting that time and effort into it is, to me, the same as painting. It’s living as an artist, and it’s thinking creative. And I’m thinking, I’m taking photographs in a different way than I would take them if I was just a photographer. I’m thinking, I want to do a painting of this. So I’m not going to just snap one picture here or there. I’ll find one spot, and I’ll take pictures like, where to take the Himba or the the or a powwow or something. I’ll find one spot, and I’ll shoot for for maybe 10 or 15 minutes, and it’s one spot, because I know that when I get home, I can have one person. Maybe it’s the right pose when they’re dancing. Hmm, persons, and I can match them. So I’m thinking as a painter, and what is the what am I taking these for? Whereas many times I see people take one picture and then move around one picture, and then they get in the studio and they’re like, Oh, I can’t match the lighting or the perspective and things. So there’s a lot of thought that goes into those things that are as serious as painting. I think 50% of the creative work happens before you get in the studio. And in the studio, a lot of times that is when we’re working from our photographs and using the experience from life for the painting.
Susan Lyon 35:30
Yeah, yeah. Good. I wanted, I wanted to mention is that, you know, I was just talking to another artist like last week, and kind of we were both talking back and forth about setting up models. And I said early on, you know, we would take art books and we would, you know, people like Sargent and Richard and Nikolai fashion and Mooka, and we would find a painting that inspired us. And then we would say, Okay, now let’s try and set this up. Now, of course, you never can set it up exactly, but we would go, Okay, well, let’s find a model, and then let’s try and, you know, and kind of make believe a setting like this. And let’s try and get the lighting and and so even though we took this spark from a painting, the outcome, what we, you know, what is actually in front of our eyes is different, but it’s was sparked by this. So we would constantly do that. Every time we would set up a model, there was always so some kind of vision, you know, that came out somebody that had already done something beautiful, and then we took that and then elaborated. And also, I mean, I grew up not realizing how hard it was, you know, the work ethic that it took, and it wasn’t until I met Scott, and because, you know, I, I It’s sad, but I mean, even all the artists I went to art school with, I don’t know. We know one other artist who’s actually still an artist, and she lives in California. Other than that, I can’t, I don’t know one other person that was in the school with me at my time, when Scott was there, we had a whole group. It was a group, and I think it is hard to to, like, do it in a bubble. Like you do need fellowship. You do need a community to bounce things off of, course, each other, so you kind of have to seek that out. And that’s what’s so great about online, because so if you live, you know, somewhere that you don’t have that art community, you can find it online. And, you know, we’re you’ve where you reach out to people who are as good or better, right? And so you have that spark. And so everybody is sort of kind of like, you know, pushing each other a little bit.
Olya Konell 37:44
And I want to say with it’s like pacing you’re running a you or like you are in a race
Susan Lyon 37:50
car, you a little bit, yeah,
Scott Burdick 37:52
we had that at the palette and chisel where it would be, like, I probably never would have gone every single day, and on Sundays, when we did after school and without knowing, oh, I don’t miss something. These people are here and Sue kind of does that a bit with the Patreon, where she’ll have these paint alongs, where, literally, everybody’s on their computer. She’ll share a photo. Some people work from that photo, but some people work from other things. And I’ll be painting, and she’ll be painting from we’ll share the photo we’re doing, but they can also work on their own things. But people are just, we’re all live with each other, yeah, and so we all paint together, and it’s kind of community.
Susan Lyon 38:25
People can talk and you probably feel that connection with each other. And somebody was just asking about how that works, and I just wanted to point out earlier you were saying, Susan, that like when you get back then you used to have books, but you couldn’t get that much from it. You couldn’t get the interaction. There was no critiquing or bouncing off ideas, or anybody keeping you accountable, like you were saying, Scott, to go to pushing yourself to go every day, even on a Sunday, and I feel like that’s what you guys are doing now with the
Scott Burdick 38:51
absolutely and Sue also, somebody’s asking if we have a community here. When we first moved here, we didn’t really know anybody at all but Sue. We rented a studio, just a separate place in in Winston, Salem on Trade Street, and she’ll have, she would have twice a week at least, she’d have a portrait session and a figure session. And we just people would come in and pitch them for if the model was absent.
Susan Lyon 39:13
That’s the thing that people seek out an art community. And they always think that there’s a good art community somewhere else. Yeah, you know, I actually know this one girl, and she’s so lovely and she’s so talented, and we kind of joke a little bit, because she keeps thinking, Oh well, I want to move here. Oh my gosh, no, I want to move there. And I tell her, I say that is not what you how you should be thinking. Because, first of all, art groups. You know, they’re organisms. So they might be really strong for a few years, and they might then dispel, because people move energies, all this stuff, people leave. And so you have to figure that you have to make your own organism. And that’s kind of what we’ve done here. Because. Was literally nobody in this area, and you just have to say, well, I’m going to be professional. This is so important to me that I’m going to do it anyways. And then hopefully people will come, just like, you know, you build it, they will come, but you can’t count on it. You have to be your own leader, your own inspiration. And then people will be attracted to that. And so try not to think like, where is the best art school? Where is the best art community? Because I just want to move there, because it really seems like they’re having a good time. It’s never, what’s it called utopia.
Olya Konell 40:38
grass is greener on the other side. Kind of mentality is and It’s never
Susan Lyon 40:42
because we’ve gone to some of these places, right, we think, wow, on Instagram, they sure look like they’re all very good artists. And you get there and just as much infighting, or there’s just as much pettiness, there’s just as much this and that and so, right, nothing is what it seems. So you have to build your own and online. Now it’s easier, because you can pick and choose so much better. You can be more discerning. You can like only hang out with the people that really lift you up. You can dispel all the people who want to complain too much. And so that’s what people ask me. Sometimes they go, Well, how do you how do you handle if somebody complains in your group? And I’m like, kidding me. Imagine actually tiny I’m like, seriously,
Olya Konell 41:36
while we’re talking about the online. So a part of that question that somebody submitted, how does it the question was, how does the Patreon work? Is there an exchange of emails to schedule the Zoom sessions, or does it work inside the message tab in Patreon? So somebody was asking about the mentorship tier. So how does that work?
Susan Lyon 41:55
So Patreon is a monthly thing. You can come and go as much as you want. We start off with $5 a month. Now, $5 will get you most of the videos and a live stream once a month. Then there’s $9 which gets you every single thing. Then there’s a $30 tier, which gets you a fatigue each month of some work. But it’s only through like emails and they send me work. I work on them in Photoshop, and then I email them back with suggestions, and then the top tier is 60, where we meet on Zoom once a month. And so I give them homework, or they’re working on their own projects, and I put their images into Photoshop and live during live but each month we do a live stream, and it changes a little bit, and they want it to be exactly just. So what happens is, right, if you sign up, you get an email, email, okay, each month you also get a notification, like, oh, a new video, oh, a new video. And, and then I’ll post saying, hey, live stream next Friday. And here’s join us, you know, on and and then this happens, and then we have all these little boxes where we talk.
Scott Burdick 43:06
You can share a screen, yeah, paintings that we’re doing in progress without it photographed in progress. And I’ll, we’ll talk about that, but just about everything, well, it does what I’m saying. Each month is different. We’ll do a demo. Sometimes, last month I did a demo.
Susan Lyon 43:22
Sometimes we do other things and and
Scott Burdick 43:25
that gets recorded for people who aren’t live, live. People can ask questions and paint along, if we do a paint along, but then they’re also
Susan Lyon 43:33
posted, right? So all the live streams are recorded, and then I post those so that anyone can watch them afterwards. Because, yeah, that’s how it works. And but yeah, you can, there’s also free, seven day free trial. So, because so you join see, like, hey, is this kind of what’s I like? And then if you don’t like it, then you can just cancel it before the second. But, yeah,
Olya Konell 43:57
that’s that’s very useful, because I know there’s some people that have never heard, like you said in when you started, you hadn’t heard much about it. So Patreon is just a cool platform, and they I should add there’s an app you can download on your phone. So we’ll send you notifications. I think, right, yes, you’ll get notifications. I have a couple rapid fires from artists that have submitted. So how do you know how busy a background should be in a portrait.
Scott Burdick 44:24
How do you know? Well, you don’t know. And that’s why it’s great about art. You know, is that you can have the same subject. We can be painting with several people, and people will interpret it in all different ways. And so that’s what’s fun about it, is it? You know, if you watch a few of the demos that I’ve posted of paintings of mine, some of the larger paintings that I’ll work on for months sometimes, I mean, it’s kind of funny, because I’ll start out with simple or crazy, and then I like, that doesn’t work, and I’ll repaint it, repaint it. So you have a vision you start with, and then it can change depending. I mean, I’ve literally. Painted things completely over, and I’ll let it dry six months later and look at again. Okay. Now I think maybe this will work. Sometimes it works and you just comes out
Olya Konell 45:09
great, the way, yeah,
Scott Burdick 45:10
but you don’t really know. And it has to do. There’s no like formula to okay, if you’re doing a light skin person, or if they have a colorful thing, background should be simple or complicated. There’s a million ways to do things.
Olya Konell 45:27
And I’ve seen that in your work, you have some portraits where it’s and I’m going to see if I can share you have some with like, a simpler background then you have, but it works like this one has a more detail, like,
Scott Burdick 45:41
Oh, wow. Sessions, and one was an acrylic on the bottom. Yeah. So, yeah, you
Olya Konell 45:46
you figure it out. Like, this one, like it, but it works. Like, if you did anything different, it wouldn’t be the same. Like, that’s what makes it so cool.
Susan Lyon 45:56
One good thing to think about is you don’t want your background to be so have so much contrast, so there can be busyness. So when you can see Scott’s work, you can see lots of different colors and lots of different brush strokes, but you see the face first. That is something to think about, that you know you think about well from across the room, you want the face to read, and you have everything is in relationship to it. So if you have, like, something incredibly contrasted behind the model, like white and totally black, and then the viewers, I will go directly to that. And in general, the type of artwork that we do is we want to lead people to a bull’s eye, a focal point. And in general, when it’s portraiture, it tends to be somewhere around this triangle, the eyes, the face. So that’s just one thing. Is like, you can have busyness, but does it make you look there first? Because you can have backgrounds like Sargent, which can be very simple. You can have backgrounds like Klimt. You can have lots or lots of little colors. Or you can have, anyone who knows Nikolai fashion has lots of dry brush and interest, but it’s it’s in service to the face. And so that’s the interesting thing about portraiture, is that a lot of times it is a balance. And just like we have a video where Scott did a portrait from life, and he really liked it, but it wasn’t, you know, maybe it wasn’t as exciting, or Yeah, it was just a simple portrait. And then sometimes, over time, you look at it again with new eyes. And then Scott made video how he completely repainted, not not the face, but just the background. And he was like, using colors and this and shapes and just changing those all of a sudden, make the face sing. And so it isn’t always linear. Sometimes you have to have space from your paintings to understand how to fix them sometimes, yeah, like you thought you did it all right, okay, in the first time, and then you realize, Wow, I did that is too strong, and I have to tap it down. Sometimes it’s too boring, and you have to bring it up. And that’s, you know, and so we’re and when
Scott Burdick 48:18
I’m not sure, sometimes on how I want to handle it with the backgrounds and stuff too. Some that you showed on there were ones from life. And so I’ll start out with an abstract background that’s really busy, and I’ll slightly then tone it down or get rid of it. But it’s it’s really nice sometimes, if you’ve really got the face good, and you’ve got a good start on it till I will let it dry for a couple of weeks before I then go crazy trying different things in the face or the background, if I kind of like it that way. Once it’s dry, I can play around with things. I can even repaint the face and the background different ways. And then I can still use Gamsol, and I can wash it off and still
Olya Konell 49:04
have, yeah, there, yeah, it’s I like that,
Scott Burdick 49:08
yeah. Because, because it can be stressful. What should I do with the background? And sometimes I will purposely use a face that is very I did that, like with portrait society last year, the face was extremely finished, very refined, and I painted it over, like, four or five times. If you go on the Patreon, you’ll see how crazy I thought I had it done and I’d redo it. I did it over, like, probably, like, maybe six or seven months. I’d let it dry, but then the background is very textured with a lot of colors and a lot of different sorts of things, but the face is like the calm and the storm. So sometimes, when it’s very busy all around it, your face is drawn to the the calm place, the soft and then other times it’s the other way around. The face has all the excitement and action and hair and colors, and then the background becomes simpler. So.
Olya Konell 49:59
So I like what you guys said the test. I guess the test would be when you, you know, walk into a room where do your eyes go first, and so not looking at it for a while, or leaving it alone, and then looking at it. And if you go to your subject, if you look directly, you know, if you’re you’re drawn towards a subject, you’ve succeeded. And if it’s the opposite, then, then, you know, and like Scott, you said, sometimes it needs to be busier, sometimes it needs to be, you know, simpler. And it’s
Susan Lyon 50:28
totally fine to ask a friend, because there is such a thing as, you know, how people get nose blind from perfume. You can get blinded by your own work because you’ve seen it too much. So true, it’s sometimes, a lot of times, people will say, I just don’t know how to fix it, or I don’t really know what it needs. And and that’s natural. We all kind of have that. So, you know, we try to become our own teacher. We try to become our own critics so that we can learn. But many times you can show it to a friend or somebody and just say, hey, this something. I mean, is there anything that’s like bugging you, you know, somebody seeing it with a fresh eye, just an actual viewer? You know, you think of them as like a collector or layman, even though they’re afraid to go, just look at this. It’s something. Does anything stand out to you? Because I just can’t see it anymore. I also love to look at my work upside down. Scott likes to look at his work in mirrors. Another great way to look at your own work is it’s amazing the way the mind is to just literally take a photograph with your phone and then look at it small on your phone, because if you look at it as a thumbnail, like a tiny little picture. You can’t see any details. You only see these large graphic design shapes. And I can’t tell you how many times I thought a painting was finished. And then you take a photo right to, like, send it to someone, or put it on this you’re like, and you look at it, and you go, Whoa, it’s not finished yet. Like you all of a sudden, my brain has, like, flipped a switch, and I see it different. So all these interesting trips that we can do,
Scott Burdick 52:14
so many great painters,
Olya Konell 52:15
I know, yeah, and I have somebody says it always takes two people to paint a painting. Just need a second eye. And then Aaron is touching up paintings for the LPA pa Invitational, and just listen to you both as helping lower his stress levels. So because I’m continuing, inspired by your paintings and your outlook, there it is. Yeah, we, we actually had him on here as well.
Susan Lyon 52:35
Yeah, I remember, I think he came on like the last time we Yes, fun to see people’s names again because,
Scott Burdick 52:44
but, you know, you screw a lot of things up, and you learn things and but, yeah, I screw lots of paintings up, but it does. It does help to let them dry and set them aside and turn them around and look at them again. Well,
Susan Lyon 52:57
let’s also talk about what you did for me one time. So as I’m starting to kind of get into still life, and a few months ago, I was doing just a whole bunch of like flower, like bouquet block ins, you know, just trying to, how do I abstract them? How do I paint thicker? You know, I’m really excited about being more direct, whereas I feel like I’m a little bit timid when I do portraits, because I want to make it perfect. But I’m like, oh, okay, I want to be more direct. So I had started this flower painting, and I was like, Oh, my God, it’s, I don’t think it’s kind of boring. Oh, you know, it was one of those deals. I haven’t been doing it enough to know how to punch it up, what to do here, blah, blah, you know. And so I said, Scott, do you, what’s the first thing that I mean, do you? What do you think is the background you want? And he goes, Why don’t we get one of those thin sheets of acetate so you can buy, actually, those things already, like, but if anyone buys those super cheap frames, you know? And instead of glass, it’s okay. And so you could take things like that, and he, what we did was we put it on top of my dry painting, and we just taped it or clamped it, and he goes, let me put a few strokes, and I filmed it, and I put this on YouTube. Oh, wow. I was like, so he, he’s much more bolder, and I am much bolder when I teach. Like I was saying last week, it was so much easier for me to go to someone’s work and say, We need to clean this up. We need to brighten this let’s take all this angle, and they get all excited. And I’m like, exciting now, can I do that 100% in my own work? I can’t. I’m one. I’m very honest about that. It is always a little bit easier when you’re not emotionally invested and when you also haven’t done the 1000s of choices and decisions that have gotten you to this point. So when Scott comes in and he sees my boring little flower painting and we put this acetate, yeah, he was taking coffee. Color, and he was putting strokes and doing all this stuff. And of course, my eye was going back, but then a tiny bit of what he did, so literally, we lifted the acetate so he didn’t paint on my painting,
Scott Burdick 55:11
Because I would have been too stressed to even try, as creating a things to show her. And again, I’m just showing her things, like what I would do, or what might give her some ideas, but it’s easier to do it on that, and easier for the person themselves, because you could try it one way, put another, put another sheet of that, just wipe it down, try another way, and then you can still put them on there, and you can experiment without even having to wash it off
Susan Lyon 55:35
well. And we reason why we even thought about this was because when I was 19, and we had Scott had already known Richard and had painted with him for a long time. One day, Scott brought me over to Richard’s house in Evanston. And I don’t, you know, I was so young and green, I really, I hadn’t, hadn’t even really started painting yet, but an artist from China came to visit Richard and brought a big, big landscape with them to have Richard critique it. And so I have this visceral memory of being in Richard’s living room when Richard put the painting on something. And then what Richard did was, I think he put cellophane, he put like, you know, cling wrap, and wrapped in front of this guy’s painting. And what he did was he took this big stroke, and so in the horizon line, I mean, I It’s seared in my brain. Scott probably doesn’t even remember it, and he took this big, broad stroke, and it might have even been a palette knife stroke. And so it was sort of a darkish painting. Obviously, nothing was really that exciting about it. But there was a foreground, like a horizon, and then big sky. And Richard took this palette knife stroke, and right through the horizon line went. And so it was this huge stroke that created this horizontal light, and looked like the light was coming through the clouds, right at the tip of that, you know, where something in the pedestrian and and I just remembered it so much that you know that, but that way the artist from China could see what Richard was talking about. I mean, this is way before computers and everything so and then they took off the cellophane, and then he could then try and replicate that, duplicate that on his own in his studio.
Scott Burdick 57:20
That’s a great thing to do with your own work too, because a lot of times we start to paint too middle. That’s kind of like what Sue’s still like the one that I worked on a little bit, getting a few little darker blues and things that were popping with all the pastel colors. That was really the main thing that shows you
Susan Lyon 57:38
go as far as you don’t know, it was just that little baby step of permission, right? And that was the first time we had ever done that, yeah, you know? So that’s I, because there’s a, yeah,
Olya Konell 57:51
there’s like a they, if it’s not already invented, they should invent, like, packs of these clear things,
Susan Lyon 57:58
just like tape, well, and that way we can all paint on everybody’s painting. That’s when
Scott Burdick 58:03
she does the Photoshop demos, because she’ll, she’ll take the person’s picture and she’ll duplicate it into a layer work on it, adding lights or darks or simplifying a background or stuff like that to show people. Then you can turn that layer off and on, and you can see, yeah,
Olya Konell 58:20
I do love that about Photoshop, and while we’re talking about painting and learning and, and maybe this is going to be the answer to Vic’s question, is there one thing that really helped you advance in your ability to paint and draw? It’s good
Scott Burdick 58:34
life drawing for me. Life Drawing before, three years before I started painting and, and I think that’s the most important thing, because even then, even with all that drawing that I’d taken, I started oil painting, my drawing went out the window. In fact, in my Instagram, towards the top are some pictures from just
Susan Lyon 58:52
found in his garage. Yeah, those are
Susan Lyon 58:55
amazing.
Scott Burdick 58:56
A couple there that I was doing in brown because I couldn’t paint and draw at the same time, so I did better brown washes, and I could go and worked all the way up to it. But if you skip over the drawing too quickly, and you don’t really get that, it’s very difficult to paint and draw figurative work. So for me, yeah, for figurative work. So for me, that was, that was the most important thing. For me, it was easier to learn painting at the beginning, I couldn’t do both same time, so I’d sketch it out first to the brush really carefully and measure it, then do a brown wash, and then start oil painting on top. But since I had that drawing, once I got used to using the paint, it more quickly. Was able to transition it, because I learned values and edges and drawing. So then when you started adding in color and technique and texture the paint. It’s almost impossible to try to learn that all at the same time.
Susan Lyon 59:45
Yeah, no, that’s a good question. It’s sort of a huge question. But I was trying to think, if I had to think, you know, how would I put that into words? So my first part of my answer is, I got better when I stopped trying. Trying to do it the way other people did it. Meaning I was always taught to draw with line. I was, Oh, I remember school. It was literally we had to do the contour, which was literally just that outside color, like a coloring book. They wanted you to draw this outside line, you know, just down the outside of the arm, then take a sharpened charcoal pencil, and then from that line, shade in, and it was mind numbing, like I, you know, honestly it, I wasn’t good at it. I didn’t want to do it. It seemed very stifling, but that’s how it was, maybe some sort of classical thought, and you had nothing to do with the background. So once I got out of that brainwashing, and I was like, No, art is all about light, so it’s about value next to value. I I feel like my work changed in my drawings, especially when I thought, No, it’s all about this shape of value next to this shape of value next to this shape of value. And you don’t even have to think about mine. And so that was, it’s much more of a painterly way of thinking. So that helped me now, that helped me a lot for drawing now for painting. I remember the revelation was, and a lot of times you don’t even know until you have to actually explain something to somebody else. So you have, you become a teacher. And when I did my very first sort of drawing class, I took a deep dive, and I started to, like, really read books and think about stuff, because I felt like to have integrity. I had to, like, do some study, you know. And so I was really going back to the book that our school was based on, which was Andrew Loomis creative illustration. And so it’s like the Bible, really. He talks about perspective, and he talks about this, and he talks about color harmonies. He talks about blah, blah, blah, blah. And there’s this one chapter where he take excerpts from Howard Pyle, which was a famous, famous illustrator, and the whole pages were this lecture about people cannot become good artists unless they understand about light and about half tones. And so it was this aha moment going, oh my gosh, half tones are in the light. And he says that you can’t become like a better artist until you understand that a half tone is in the light. So it means all that turning, all those subtle turnings, you have to mentally push those towards the light. And most of the time our art goes wrong because we start to model too much modeling, and
Scott Burdick 1:02:35
too much in the shadow, too much in the light well and everything middle
Susan Lyon 1:02:39
and so everyone’s like, Oh, I have no you know. So everything else becomes the same value, and they’re not separating. So we need separation between what’s in the light and what’s in the shadow. It doesn’t mean that you have to have 100% full contrast, like a one and a 10. It can be a six and a three, but it’s separate and it’s separate. So pushing half tones into the light was revelatory for me. Using mass instead of line was revelatory for me. But it is, it is about self reflection. And one of the greatest things that you can do for yourself is to try to explain something to someone else. And do that you won’t realize how you don’t know anything, and you have to kind of break it down. You know, you have to go, Well, how do you even explain this to someone else? You get the words, you get the procedures, you get the ideas and how you’ve learned. And that’s when things start to, like, open up like,
Olya Konell 1:03:41
Yeah, that’s really good point, because you’re actually going back and reassessing how you learned it, and what do you even know? And then that becomes for
Susan Lyon 1:03:52
that, yeah, yeah.
Olya Konell 1:03:55
I was gonna, I was gonna ask, I know we talked a lot about art and whatnot, and I know we’re kind of, I hope you guys are okay on time, but I wanted to ask you, and I think you’ve kind of already answered this question. But so how, what is your piece of advice for artists that are, you know, you know, maybe they’ve gotten their art to place that they’re satisfied with. They’re still, we’re always learning and growing, but they’re in a good place. They want to start sharing their work, getting their work out there, building this professional reputation, you know, to start selling, to get in the gallery. Just what’s your best piece of advice for artists that are needing help with that marketing piece?
Susan Lyon 1:04:34
I’ll go first. Well, I do meet a lot of artists online and stuff. And one thing that I’m kind of surprised about is that a lot of artists I know have a fear of sharing their journey because they’re perfectionist or they’re afraid of being judged. So I do know that for me, I am very attracted to people. People who are authentic, and you see their growth. So really examine, if you’re a perfectionist, it is so debilitating to progress, to getting any feedback, to get you know, because and when I see people who there’s always going to be a time in the future, they’re always like this dream, like, Oh, I’m saving up work, or someday, you know, when it’s good enough, I’m going to share, or I go, that day is never going to happen, because you’re always going to find a reason that it won’t happen. So just understand that people are very understanding, and I’m just never had a perfectionist bone in my body, and maybe I should, I don’t get embarrassed, don’t change. No, my point is, is that, you know, I’ve made so many mistakes on YouTube, on Patreon, on so many things, but I feel that it’s okay, yes, if you admit it, and you kind of laugh at yourself every single other person kind of then is like, Yeah, I do that too. Oh my gosh, yeah. Thanks for showing us that you completely ruined this. Or how many times in our videos we show that we, you know, went too far. Okay. How do you fix that? You know, like, even my class last week, you know, sometimes I’ll do things and I’ll go, gosh, okay, good lesson, guys. Hey, you know this is, you know, I wasn’t thinking it through. Now you get to go in my brain. Let’s talk this over or see how I’m going to fix this. It’s just a quality that I truly do believe that any collector is a collaborator, and they want to see growth, right? They like to see somebody who puts the hard work in, and they can see an evolution. So that’s all I have to say.
Scott Burdick 1:06:46
I’d say it’s kind of like what Sue is talking about, as far as looking for a group, and then, you know, trying to chase that. And I know that I always wanted to do my own things. I had ideas of what I wanted to paint, but I was painting in school to learn my skills. But I think that most people you know, when you talk about collectors, people are attracted to people who are pursuing something that they have a passion for, that they’re excited about. And so even if you know I was excited about painting people and different types of people. I mean, I would go to paint the at the at the Renaissance renaissance fair, just because that was I love the costume and all that. Now, once I could travel, I really hadn’t been much out of Chicago. Once I could travel, I was excited to go to countries and Sue. We had that same passion about painting people in these beautiful faces and all these different things. And when we would come back and have shows, and you would talk about, I would read about their history and read their sacred books, and all this stuff, and that excitement comes through to your work, okay, whether it was back before the internet or now even more so. And it doesn’t matter, you know, you get your skills. It’s like learning writing. And I love writing. I’d always written as and I’d love film. So even after art school, I took I went to Columbia College, when I started making living in Chicago, and I took writing, creative writing, and I took film, and I took photography. I wanted to learn how to use a camera for art and all these things. So all these things that you learn, a lot of the things, like I said, we went Photoshop with things too. Is like, what purpose will we ever have for this or doing film? Back then, it was 16 millimeter, it wasn’t even video. And didn’t seem like there was a reason to learn all these things. And of course, later it became essential things for what we’re doing videos.
Susan Lyon 1:08:35
Videos.
Scott Burdick 1:08:36
Yeah, have different passions, if it’s cars, if it’s one of you know, one, whatever it is that you like to paint flowers or whatever or, I mean, it was an artist we met, I can’t remember his name, Daniel Spriggs, and he had a show, and all he loved to do was little quick sketches of people on trains or wherever he was. And he didn’t even sell his work. He says there’s not much of a market for doing five or 10 minute little drawings, but he would put him on YouTube and Instagram and all those things, and he makes a good living, because so many people who love sketching watch him do that. It’s the same with whatever kind of art you like to do, quilting or whatever. So find the thing that you’re passionate about Learn, learn your basic technical skills. It’s like, right? You got to learn how to write, you know, and do all that stuff, but then the story you tell has to be when I was in writing classes, you know, one of my stories my first year was put in the anthology. It was kind of a prestigious sort of thing that the school did every year, and it was published, it was a short story, and people like, Oh, my goodness, that’s crazy. And when I looked at other people, everybody asking advice, I wrote a personal story from my own experience in Chicago and boxing and stuff like that, and just the people that you know and stuff through that. So that’s why it was different. Most people were doing stories. You could tell they’re doing stories based on things that they’ve read or. It’s like a got to be a spy, or it’s got to be this or that. And then they would tell me stories of their own life. And I was like, that’s a more interesting story. What you just told me? Like, anybody be interested in that? And I see that painting, you know, it’s like, do the thing you like and then find a place to sell it. It might be selling it for T shirts. It might be doing comic books. It might be animation, whatever it is, you’ll find the outlet if you’re true to yourself, and people will be attracted to the passion that you have to it just chasing and thinking it’s fine when you’re starting school. Even Richard Schmidt showed paintings that he did like Mancini and and like Monet and all the different people that he was studying their technique. And then you could see, pull things out of fashion, pulls things out of this, and then he did the subject matters that were most close to his heart. My most important advice, because we all think about technical stuff, and it’s usually what you know you’re talking about in a class, but that’s truly you have to be honest with yourself, when you go out, and I go out with young artists, and I’ll, like, point to something, and I’ll say, you should paint that. And like, I don’t think that anybody be interested in buying that. It’s like, there will be people, I mean, just selling one painting. People used to tell us, why would anybody want to buy a painting of someone they don’t know, you know? And then they would sell them, and they’re like, Okay, we’ll send more of these, you know. And that’s the true test. If somebody buys it for portrait artists or people like us, if you paint a painting of a person that nobody knows and they still buy it, you know you have actually done something that is hard. So that’s my advice. I’ve talked too long.
Olya Konell 1:11:34
Yeah, no, no. I mean, what you guys said, I think to everybody listening is probably the most when we ask about marketing. You know, artists. This is what artists want to hear, what to do here, what to do on this social platform, how to do this, how to do that. What’s the new hot thing? Blah, blah. But what you’ve shared is, you know, advice that is evergreen. It doesn’t matter if it’s 10 years from now, 20 years from now, focusing on what you’re passionate about and communicating that in whatever platform, tool, app, whatever is around at that time, that I think is the best advice, because I think so many artists like you said they’re afraid to paint the things they want to paint. They’re they’re afraid to show them. They’re afraid to show the world that they’re human and and Susan, to what you were saying, I think that’s what makes you lovable. Like I adore you. I think you are funny, and it cracks me up. Because, guess what? Oh my God. Because when you do the silly thing, like and when I reflect, when I do the silly thing, my family and my friends, you know, they’ll laugh with me. I In a world where AI is ever so, you know, expanding and growing. I’ve even read this an amazing writer. I’m having a brain freeze right now, but he was talking about that in the future world of AI, the fingerprints, the smudge, the typo, the the little things that we might think are mistakes are actually what’s going to make something more valuable, made by human made by a person with personality, made by a person who had to redo the background, made by a person that had to whatever You insert, whatever the thing is there, but a passionate person. And I think if you as artists, if we lean into that and just go, just just go all in on that, it doesn’t matter what app we’re using, what social media, as long as we’re putting that energy out there, it’s almost impossible to not stick it’s it’s just because that’s what becomes, you know, the magnet that pulls people to you, the collectors and the, you know, people want to be a part of your journey. So I love that. I think that’s just fantastic, good advice.
Susan Lyon 1:13:53
So many people joined in and, oh, hey from South Africa, message me. Yeah, I don’t you can just message me on like, Instagram or something, or my email. Yeah, Kelly, message me. I don’t know how to get in touch with you.
Olya Konell 1:14:07
Well, I can always Yeah, or if you email me, I’ll forward your email to Susan. You could respond to your webinar emails,
Susan Lyon 1:14:16
what city they were in. I just yeah,
Susan Lyon 1:14:18
she said, she I said where we were going. She said she was, like, an hour, maybe from Cape Town, but it’s all
Olya Konell 1:14:25
pretty close, close. Yeah. Carol says, When I lived in Japan 50 years ago, my Japanese friend said that the mistake is, what makes the object unique? Oh, I think I saw some video about I was
Susan Lyon 1:14:36
going to mention Japanese and especially Japanese pottery. Yes, the Japanese pottery, yes. Way they like to have something imperfect. Imperfection,
Susan Lyon 1:14:45
yeah, they’ll break it. Humans, amp there, yeah.
Scott Burdick 1:14:48
The thing about art is, that’s what it is. Is you’re giving people a view into your own mind. You know you perceive things and you. It’s so AI is, is just taking what’s already been done and it’s, it’s recycling it and stuff, but, but everybody has their own unique viewpoint. And the great thing about art is I, for me, the always the reason to do something is if I do this painting or take this class on writing or film or whatever. If it doesn’t make any money or nobody wants to see it, am I still happy I did it? That’s truly every single time I go to paint. That’s what I’m thinking. That’s why I really don’t do commissions and things like that. Because if I’m doing something as an illustrator or whatever, and and it doesn’t, they say this isn’t good enough renew somebody else’s I feel like, boy, I wasted my time. You just like people who go into dance or whatever, usually that’s their happiest time. It’s like they were pursuing something that they loved. And sure, if people don’t buy them, then I can do other things with these skills and make money. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s so nice to have that little space that you can do the things that you really like for the just for doing them. And it doesn’t have to be your living. You can just say, I’m going to keep this pure and just keep doing it. And then all of a sudden, if people all like to buy it, then great, you can do it even more. But that’s I think we’re great things happen. It’s not that’s true, you know? And think it gives you freedom, right? Because once you fall into that trap of, okay, I’ve got to make money. I’ve got to do everything. And I did, I did commissions and things and everything I had, I had to do when I was in art school and afterwards as well, to make a living. But once I was able to start to do my own things, it was easy to cut that off and and so, yeah, so that’s, I think too many people get focused on the only reason to do something is to make a living at it. It’s funny, all the things that I still now do that don’t make any money, but it’s just for fun, and sometimes that leaks back into your into your art.
Olya Konell 1:16:55
Very true. It gives you the inspiration that you need, or it’s a skill that helps you execute something. You know, your ability to do Photoshop and video helps the channel and your other I mean, it all kind of flows together at some point. Yeah, no, this is such good advice, and we have so many good comments. I’m going to share your guys’s comments with Susan and Scott afterwards. So if you put something in, I’ll pass these on via email. I always like to pull so if you have anything to add and you want to send them a little shout out or Hello, feel free to drop it in the chat. I will pass those on. I am excited about and I am excited about your South Africa trip, so I cannot wait. I hope you guys post little updates on the socials. And, yeah, I
Susan Lyon 1:17:46
I was just talking to Olya how I have to get better at literally, using my phone in vertical, you know. And I think I am. I gotta do things vertical, you know, if you want to put stuff on Instagram, or if you want to do a short and
Scott Burdick 1:18:02
get doing horizontal for YouTube, well, but, you know,
Susan Lyon 1:18:06
on YouTube, and I think, I think when you travel, I have to think differently, because a lot of times when I’m home, I think long form video for YouTube like something that’s true, video up to 45 an hour. So I’m thinking on the trip, it will be fun to video more things about what it looks like, maybe Scott painting, or us doing artsy stuff,
Scott Burdick 1:18:27
like a camera. They should come up with a camera that films both two at the same time.
Susan Lyon 1:18:32
Somebody’s gonna have, yeah.
Olya Konell 1:18:35
I have a little tip. I have a little tip. Okay, so on your if I don’t know if you have an iPhone, but if you turn on your grid lines, you can film this way, but center your subject into the center.
Susan Lyon 1:18:47
You’re not cutting something out, yeah.
Scott Burdick 1:18:51
So you can, you could use it, yep. So
Olya Konell 1:18:53
if you set the highest 4k the 60 FPS per minute, you have your because I’ve, I’ve had to do this be before, because you only have one phone. And like you said, somebody needs to invent that. Hello, Apple. Yeah. They need to have an extra camera. Use your grid and then make sure you’re at 4k. Yeah. And when you’re filming, use your grid like you know, you might have to stand back further more often and just make sure that your subject is in that center, because it separates it into like three. That way you can put it on YouTube or you can use it on Instagram.
Susan Lyon 1:19:30
I mean, because we all kind of want to do this stuff, and I feel that, especially like when you’re traveling, like, short form video could be great for people, I’m always telling, telling people, you know, show a little bit more of yourself in your studio, like everything doesn’t have to be polished. You don’t have to be totally looking at the camera. You don’t have to just showing people, you know, a little bit of your painting or your studio, and you have to get a. That fear of being awkward. So sometimes I just say, feel more than you think, and then just click, yeah, because otherwise you know, you’ll look at it, you’ll go, oh, I look fat all this. Oh, that’s that. And you go, Well, just do more than you think.
Scott Burdick 1:20:15
And yeah, for a little clip, here’s one film tip for you too, because I remember this was Sue when she was starting to do her her things. There’s two ways I think, to do a YouTube channel or any of this just thinks there’s now the high end sort of thing, and I have all of the big cameras and stuff that I use for documentaries and films and stuff like that, from way back when and with with the microphones and wireless microphones and a few of those things that I had done as real films. So you can do the high end thing, where all the sound is great, everything is pristine, and all that. Or you can do that like just with your phone, walking around and showing yourself and showing things and showing mistakes and Oh, as Sue, he’s like, God, I can’t get this to work. And that is very authentic. It is in between is what doesn’t work too well when someone’s trying to make it look like a professional Hollywood thing, but they don’t have quite good enough sound, and things are the thing. So I would say, start out with the more authentic sort of stuff. And for artists, that’s more a thing. And then sometimes, if you’re going to do a demo or something else, we can really set up film. I was just going to do it professionally. There’s sometimes we’ll do things and I’ll put all the microphones well. I thought
Susan Lyon 1:21:25
what you were gonna say was, you know, a lot of times people are intimidated about videoing themselves and doing a painting, and me too, you know, I mean, a lot of times your paintings either don’t come out or they take forever. And you’re like, I don’t have this much footage in the world, right? But the one of the best ways to everyone here listening here, I’m sure, has a desire to film something of their art. So do it in time lapse. First of all, you don’t need you can just use a regular digital camera. You don’t have to have a video camera. It just takes click. You get to choose if it’s 30 seconds, a minute two, minute three, minute four, minute. It just takes a photo every so you can leave it on a tripod. You can literally take a break, come back, and it’s still and on the you’ve taken maybe just a handful of photos that don’t just edit them.
Scott Burdick 1:22:14
You just delete those on my really cameras I’ll set up sometimes when we when she wants me to do that, I’ll set up my camera, so it could be a painting that takes months, and I’ll set it up and just have it take a picture every five minutes or 10 minutes, you know. And over time, you’ve got all the stages.
Susan Lyon 1:22:31
pilot together,
Scott Burdick 1:22:35
go through them, you know. So, yeah, I’m just gonna say
Susan Lyon 1:22:39
because, oh my gosh, changing turning your camera on and off, making sure it’s it’s been focused again, all these things that we forget, time, lamps, you can just keep it on. Have your camera maybe plugged into the wall, and you can get about it for a long time. It’s only just a digital image. It’s not so it’s like,
Olya Konell 1:22:59
and people love those people. Love those Yeah, the other thing, and I remember, I follow, I follow some people on YouTube that are, you know, always delivering on what the new, new YouTube news is, is what the new video camera News is. And for the longest time, this is a confession, I was the person that was, like, always thought that I had to have this new thing, and I had to have so I have some really cool equipment that I never use. I even have a beautiful drone that, I mean, I’ve used a couple times, I mean, and it’s like, there’s all these things and and I remember hearing this, that the best camera, the best camera, is the one in your hand, whatever camera that happened, the one you’re actually going to use. And I love Scott, your advice about the authentic shaky camera versus the professional that is so true. And what’s really interesting, like in the industry, experts are saying that, you know, statistically, the videos that are more authentic, more raw, more uncut, are our our people are leaning in towards that, because they connect with it. It’s more real. It’s like, it’s like, you’re FaceTiming your sister, your brother, you know, your family member.
Susan Lyon 1:24:10
They feel connection. Probably feel more like they know you guys. And they probably want, yeah, part of all these things. So, yeah, genuine comes through.
Olya Konell 1:24:17
Comes through.
Susan Lyon 1:24:19
Yeah, something about drums, because, you know, it’s such a trendy thing. It started a while ago with high end, only the high end people could have the drones for the movies and the commercials. And now it’s almost can be used overly. And I bet you there’s going to be a time when it’s going to be like a movie is going to be publicizing a no drone movie. Like, there’s not one drone image in this movie. It’s all going to be from eye level. You know, nothing is the top of the head or the top of the house. And I, because I start to think like that, I’m like, Oh, look at another drone shot. Okay, you do start sitting. When things get so fun, right? Everyone wants one, and they can, everyone can afford. You don’t need it
Olya Konell 1:25:07
for test. It was a gift. It was my husband bought me a
Susan Lyon 1:25:09
gift. Fun, but take the time.
Olya Konell 1:25:12
Yeah, yeah, and, and I’ve the amount of time it takes, like what you were saying, to set it up to, oh, it needs another software update. Oh, this. I just, and I don’t have the patience for it
Scott Burdick 1:25:24
that I’ve seen drones, and like Ray Roberts is a really great friend of mine. We been plein air painters in America years ago, and he uses drones, and he’s gone through a couple of them now, but since he does landscapes, he uses them mainly just as the camera, and he has like, a camera on it takes really high resolution pictures so he can send it up when
Susan Lyon 1:25:44
he’s painting in California.
Scott Burdick 1:25:45
He loves to paint cliffs and water. He can get views that he couldn’t get to stand on. So he used take photographs with it. So he’s really using it for something, for his art, not just trying to take fancy like shot.
Olya Konell 1:26:00
Yeah, there’s a purpose. It’s to achieve something that you can’t normally reach because of location or angle. Yeah, no, that is such good, good advice you guys. I thank you also for everybody that’s been hanging on. I know that we have gone a little bit over, but I It’s okay. I love these. I love there were so many little nuggets that you guys shared, and somebody asked about how to do the grid lines. I’ll include the link to the I’ll find a YouTube video. I’ll include it in the somebody asked in the chat. I’ll include it with the links, yeah, with the recording. So, yeah, I keep us posted on Africa. Let us know when you start your other destination, things where people can just show up, and so much better, yeah, yeah. If you do Italy again, yeah, yeah. Or even across the country, yeah, I would
Susan Lyon 1:26:50
be in Maine, where we just said, give us a couple $100 show up. And I just, I just like it. It’s so much stressful, because I hate asking my friends to spend a lot of money. It’s really difficult to go, Hey, you want to go stay at the chateau, or you want to go on this and, you know, maybe mortgage your house. And for artists,
Olya Konell 1:27:14
so fun for artists, for artists listening, if you are, if you’re expensing some of your materials. Like, if you’re an artist, that’s, you know, writing certain off, you know, it’s not just a hobby. You have this set up as a business. Then these are business so you can make your vacations your business. So if you work it right, plan your vacation around your art to make it a business expense. So you can, kind of, like, work it all out. Because, you know, hey, why not? If we can do it. Yeah. So I love that. I was gonna say, is there any last kind of words of advice that you would like to leave us with as we land the plane?
Susan Lyon 1:27:54
Well, just, just, yeah, I guess, just find your online community, and I think it will, you know, in you might have to test out a few different ones, but the one that fits for you, I just think they’re out there. And I think now it’s such a great opportunity. You don’t have to move there’s you can meet just like this, and it’s like you live right next door to each other. Some of my best friends live across the country, which is so great, right? But yeah, and we would obviously love to see you guys. So if any of you want to come join us for free for our next then see if what we offer is good for you and but no, I think Scott and I are passionate about you know, I guess we really do like to offer, you know, as much information as,
Scott Burdick 1:28:45
yeah, no, it’s why you share things too. And we learn as much from all my gosh, learning things from people on here talking about the water base and stuff. My My advice is just to try to put aside your fear. You know, every pain doesn’t have to come out. So you’ve got to go into it thinking, Okay, this is going to be experiment. Literally. Do ones that you think this is going to be a disaster, but I’m going to really have fun experimenting with it. And you’ve got to do that sometimes. And if I come across something and I think, God, that’s cool, I really don’t know how I’m going to do that. I’m nervous about it. It’s like, oh, the light glow goes up. I have to paint that
Olya Konell 1:29:22
now because lean into the discomfort. Yeah, I love that. Thank you guys so so much. It’s been truly you are both a joy. I love following you guys on YouTube. So great. Yeah, it’s fun. And our whole hope of this is to connect artists that are at different parts of their journey, with artists that are further ahead in their journey, like you guys. And it just gives us an opportunity to create that sense of community. And we love it.
Susan Lyon 1:29:50
Who do you have Next month,
Angela Agosto 1:29:52
Next live we have Steve Atkinson, yeah, actually, we have Steven and Ann, his wife, and then at the end of the year we have is a. We have Kevin Mcpherson, yeah, we have, we, we have Kevin coming on, and he’ll be fun because he helped. He was one of the first FASO customers. I always say he’s our little Mickey Mouse he kind of started it all so, because next year’s is FASO, 25th anniversary, yeah, yeah, when Clint was a gallerist and built a site for Kevin.
Olya Konell 1:30:19
So, yeah, I would love to have you guys back again sometime, and we have the podcast episodes with you guys as well.
Susan Lyon 1:30:27
I’m such a bossy person, you should have it one, maybe with like two or three artists, different artists.
Olya Konell 1:30:33
different artists.
Susan Lyon 1:30:34
We would love to be on with Kevin sometime, because we have so much history with him, yeah, like 2025, years ago, Scout painting with him and and meeting him for the first time, or going to his house and, and so I think sometimes just even people can listen to those sort of like.
Angela Agosto 1:30:50
No, that’s a great idea Susan! We actually thought of doing that next year, bringing us like, all is kind of like the originals, and then those who you know have been along with us in different time periods. So yeah, that’s actually kind of what we’re doing, yeah,
Susan Lyon 1:31:02
I know it’s so easy, right? We have, we just wrote another little box. Yeah, yeah.
Scott Burdick 1:31:08
So when you have Kevin on tell him to tell the story of what we were all painting together, plein air painters of America. And he was Tony Bennett down by the lake in Lake Tahoe. Oh, okay, that story.
Susan Lyon 1:31:20
That’s sure any story about it, yeah, it is house and tells, right?
Olya Konell 1:31:28
Yeah, I wrote it down. I’m gonna add that. Okay, yeah, I’m gonna add that to my list. And I’ll be in touch with you guys for next year when we’re organizing that. Because that, that is we want to make it all about, you know, we want to make the whole year big, all the webinars bigger, lots more
Angela Agosto 1:31:43
artists on have other artists, like you said, Susan, that’s an idea. And just and just like, hey, you’re on your phone and you’re somewhere, you know, maybe you guys are in Africa, right?
Susan Lyon 1:31:53
And then all of a sudden they’re like, in a grocery store, and they’re like, hi,
Angela Agosto 1:31:57
Yeah, well, maybe when you guys are in Africa, that would be so cool.
Susan Lyon 1:32:02
Yeah, I think it’s fun. You know, that’s always makes me laugh. When people are out of, like, it seems so out of, like, left field, like someone is talking. You’re like, where are you? Um, gosh, well, I’m actually, you know, like, in church right now. But sure,
Angela Agosto 1:32:17
I’ve seen people like you said, at the grocery store, and they’re talking like, and they’re filming, and they’re actually doing, like, a little blog. I’m like, Oh, my daughter, be like, don’t talk. They’re filming.
Olya Konell 1:32:26
I’m like, the days of going out in your pajamas are over. Well, thank you. Thank you again. Thank you. Audience, thanks artists, thanks for joining us. Yes, we thank you all for hanging on for so long, and anybody that is watching this on the replay, if you have any questions, reach out. We’ll connect you with Susan and Scott.
Susan Lyon and Scott Burdick 1:32:50
So thank you, bye,
Angela Agosto 1:32:53
bye,
Olya Konell 1:32:54
bye.
