Lesson Info

Failure vs. Sell Out

We're going to talk about the business of fine art, and there is a lot to talk about when it comes to that, because fine art again is just personal work. So how do you set up an entire business around something that's completely personal? What are you supposed to do with that? Well, we have to talk about branding, because personal work means that we're putting ourselves into the work that we're doing. So we have to create a very special narrative all around us. And if you're uncomfortable with branding yourself into your business, think of it as more of your essence rather than you yourself. You have the choice of how you move forward with branding. We're also going to talk about galleries creating original prints, creating Siri's prints, limited edition and open edition prints. So all of that is going to get covered right now, and I'm really excited to dig in because it's one of my favorite topics ever. The first thing that I wanted to bring up is this idea of being a failure and bein...

g a sellout, because very, very often artists get branded as one or the other, and it is a massive problem, in my opinion, because both of them have negative connotations for things that most people will have to do in the industry to survive. So let's start with failure. What does it mean to be a failure? Well, first of all, it essentially means that you didn't reach your goal, but as we talked about with the timeline goals and timelines and setting dates for your success is pretty arbitrary. So I don't necessarily like to talk about failure in terms of not meeting a goal by a certain time. We often think that were a failure if ah goal isn't met or if an image doesn't work out or if success doesn't come in the way that we think that it's going thio. But those are all things that will necessarily happen on the way to success or to quitting. So failure is a stepping stone, of course, and it's often the thing that forces people to stop their business or to never start one. So if you want to make money from fine art, you have to recognize that failure is part of that process, and the more you can incorporate your failures into your brand the more likely you're going to be to move forward through those failures rather than letting them stop you the next term that I absolutely hate. ISS sell out and sell out really just refers to somebody who changes their style or their values in some way to accommodate outside influence and to make money. There should be nothing wrong with changing something about the way that you work to put more wealth into your life unless you're going against your moral code. So this is where there's a lot of confusion in terms of how do you make money from fine art? Because artists more than any other profession, I would argue, are expected to be humble and to stick to their own values and never compromise, even though almost every other profession is allowed to acquiesce to other people's demands or, um, anything that they want really, for getting the product out to them. So this is, in my opinion, one of the biggest roadblocks when it comes to artists having a career in fine art, which is not wanting to be labeled as sell out as not a really artist, but also feeling like a failure when you don't get to that point where you're making money from your art. It's a little bit of a Catch 22 because either you're compromising in some way usually to sell your art or you're not selling anything, so you haven't reached that milestone. I think that some compromise in art is probably a necessity for a lot of people to be able to sell their art. Now that does not necessarily mean changing your style, changing your concepts, anything like that. So I'm not trying to say change what you do to please a crowd. That is not what I am saying. But I think that if you're willing to make some slight changes for connectivity gain, so to connect better with an audience or for monetary gain, I don't necessarily think that we should be able to sell out for doing that. So then think about this. How often do you think does somebody cell substantially without making any compromise or taking the audience into account? How often do you think people are selling Ah lot without thinking about the market that they're selling? Thio? I think it's quite little and I think that the artists who have been able to create anything that they want and still sell that still have a brain for branding. And they're thinking about how that work is being presented to an audience. You might call that sellout. I call that smart, and it's okay if we disagree about that. But I want to make something clear, which is that if you want to make money from your art, it's very beneficial to think about how you're going to get that art into the hands of who's going to buy it. That's part of marketing that's part of branding, and some might say that's part of selling out, but I don't think so. It's all about this willingness to consider the customer.

Class Description

Lessons

1. Class Introduction
2. Overview of Brooke’s Journey

   How Brooke went from creating only for herself to building a multi-faceted career in fine art photography.

3. Your Timeline is Nonlinear

   How to incorporate the idea of wealth into your journey as an artist.

4. Using Curiosity and Intention to Build Your Career

   Too many people rely heavily on either intuition or goal setting as a means of propelling their career forward. Brooke believes that there is a blend between the two that sets most professionals apart.

5. What Factors Dictate Growth

   A look at how improvement in the categories of technique, conceptualization, clarity of voice and vision, and impact all work together to create growth.

6. Organic Growth vs. Forced Growth

   The most successful artists are able to use inspiration strategically to create innovative works that regularly impress their audience.

7. Niche Branding

   If you brand yourself into a story, you will be less likely to fall victim to boredom within your branded niche.

8. Brooke’s Artistic Evolution and Timeline

   Watch as Brooke shares every important event in the past eleven years as an artist to see which were the most helpful in propelling her career forward.

9. How Can You Get Ahead if You Feel Behind?

   When you learn to celebrate small successes like they are big successes, you will rewire your brain to find optimism in the journey rather than pessimism.

10. Ideation and Conceptualization to Identify Meaning in Your Art

    Walk through several categories of meaning to figure out how you create and how others perceive your creations. You will learn how to layer the concepts of your art, create controversy in your ideas, how to make viewers feel something, and figure out where you land on the scale of fixation.

11. Idea Fluency

    Learn abou how your ability to generate many good ideas in a short time is directly influenced by brain science, and then learn how to control your own idea fluency through exercises.

12. How to Represent an Idea

    Ideas are represented by four elements: visual, symbolic, experiences, and emotions. Learn how to control those elements in your work by figuring them out in your work.

13. How to Innovate an Idea

    By examining your sense of style, sense of idea, and sense of innovation, we will walk through exercises to not only create what is in your mind, but to take it further to stir yourself and your audience.

14. Creating a Dialogue With Your Art

    Dialogue comes from provocation and response. Take a look at how to provoke an audience through visual and thematic clues, and then how to issue a definitive call to action.

15. Conceptualization For a Series vs. a Single Image

    Find out the differences between coming up with ideas for a single image vs. a series and see examples of series Brooke has created to deconstruct how they work.

16. Transforming a Single Image Into a Series

    A look at how to take a single idea and transform it into a cohesive series by focusing on visuals, theme, and through-line.

17. How to Tell a Story in a Series

    Storytelling can unfold thematically, abstractly, linearly, and/or concretely. Here you will look at how story structure can help create a more impactful series.

18. How to Create Costumes From Fabric

    Look at which fabrics work best for costuming, how color plays a role in costume selection, and how to tea dye or coffee stain costumes.

19. Brooke’s Most Useful Costumes

    See which costumes Brooke uses again and again and how to build a costume wardrobe with a few essentials that won’t break your budget.

20. Using Paint and Clay as Texture in an Image

    Brooke will demonstrate how creating texture on both skin and costumes can create a more dynamic look in the final image.

21. Create Physical Elements in an Image

    Brooke will share ideas of how to create sculptural elements in your images, like using wire, paper mache, and more.

22. Shooting for a Fine Art Series

    How you can create cohesion and conceptual flow across images in a series.

23. Conceptualization: Flowery Fish Bowl in the Desert

    A description of the image being created and why it is conceptually and visually relevant to the rest of the series.

24. Wardrobe and Texture

    How to choose wardrobe based on the concept of the image, and how to add texture to make the image more visually appealing.

25. Posing for the Story

    Brooke will photograph three different poses, each one changing the story of the image, to demonstrate how pose can alter the viewer’s perception of the series.

26. Choosing an Image

    Brooke will explain why she chose one image over another to demonstrate the need for angles and dynamic movement within an image.

27. Conceptualization: Rainy Plexiglass

    A description of the image being created and why it is conceptually and visually relevant to the rest of the series.

28. Posing for the Story

    Brooke walks through poses that become more and more complex, from posing the model behind a Plexiglas sheet, then adding water, then adding syrup.

29. Creating Backlight

    Using a portable LED light, Brooke moves the light from the side to the back to create a more abstract image.

30. Photo Shoot #1 - Creating a Simple Composite
31. Photo Shoot #2 - Creating a Dynamic Composite
32. Photo Shoot #3 - Creating a Storytelling Composite
33. Shooting the Background Images
34. Editing Samsara Shoot #1 - Working With Backgrounds
35. Editing Samsara Shoot #1 - Retouching the Subject
36. Editing Samsara Shoot #1 - Color Grading
37. Editing Samsara Shoot #1 - Floor Replacement Texture
38. Editing Samsara Shoot #1 - Final Adjustments
39. Editing Samsara Shoot #2 - Cropping and Editing Backgrounds
40. Editing Samsara Shoot #2 - Selective Adjustments
41. Editing Samsara Shoot #2 - Adding Texture + Fine Tuning
42. Editing Composite Shoot #1 - Compositing Models
43. Editing Composite Shoot #1 - Expanding Rooms
44. Editing Composite Shoot #1 - Selective Color
45. Editing Composite Shoot #1 - Selective Exposure
46. Editing Composite Shoot #2- Masking Into Backgrounds
47. Editing Composite Shoot #2- Creating Rooms in Photoshop
48. Editing Composite Shoot #2- Compositing Hair
49. Editing Composite Shoot #2- Global Adjustments
50. Editing Composite Shoot #3- Blending Composite Elements
51. Editing Composite Shoot #3- Advanced Compositing
52. Editing Composite Shoot #3- Cleanup
53. Materials for Alternative Processes

    Brooke shows some materials she uses for alternative processes, or applying texture to an image after it is printed. She shows oil paints, wax, and more.

54. Oil Painting on Prints

    A look at applying oil paints to canvas prints and how that adds value to original prints.

55. Encaustic Wax on Prints

    A look at applying encaustic wax to canvas prints and how that adds value to original prints.

56. Failure vs. Sell Out

    Brooke shares how the most successful artists straddle a line between personal work and consideration of audience.

57. Create Art You Love and Bring an Audience To You

    When you identify areas of your process and craft that are non-negotiable vs. negotiable, you begin to identify how you can work best with clients and what you need to keep sacred.

58. Branding Yourself Into a Story

    When you consider that branding is a mixture of personality, art, storytelling, and business, you can feel more at ease with your brand not just being one single thing.

59. The Artistic Narrative

    Defining what stories you want to tell about yourself directly influences how you tell the story of your brand through your business.

60. Get People to Care About Your Story

    Your brand must inherently bring interest and value to the people who are viewing it. Take a look at how you can begin down that journey.

61. Get People to Buy Your Story

    From identifying your clientele to figuring out how you can meet their needs, shifting someone from an admirer of your art to a patron of your business is important in becoming a full time artist.

62. Getting Galleries and Publishers to Take Notice

    Steps we can take to get representatives to pay attention, like the importance of regular interaction and becoming a resource.

63. Pricing For Commissions
64. Original Prints vs. Limited Edition Prints vs. Open Edition Prints

    Brooke goes through the benefits of selling original prints and how they can be done simply to add to your arsenal as an artist.

65. Class Outro
66. Live Premiere
67. Live Premiere: Layers of Depth 1
68. Live Premiere: Layers of Depth 2
69. Live Premiere: Q&A
70. Live Premiere: Photo Critique