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How Can You Get Ahead if You Feel Behind?

Lesson 9 from: Creating a Fine Art Series

Brooke Shaden

How Can You Get Ahead if You Feel Behind?

Lesson 9 from: Creating a Fine Art Series

Brooke Shaden

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Lesson Info

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.

Lessons

Class Trailer
1

Class Introduction

07:25
2

Overview of Brooke’s Journey

20:13
3

Your Timeline is Nonlinear

05:37
4

Using Curiosity and Intention to Build Your Career

03:26
5

What Factors Dictate Growth

08:24
6

Organic Growth vs. Forced Growth

05:18
7

Niche Branding

04:57
8

Brooke’s Artistic Evolution and Timeline

24:27
9

How Can You Get Ahead if You Feel Behind?

10:02
10

Ideation and Conceptualization to Identify Meaning in Your Art

05:54
11

Idea Fluency

10:33
12

How to Represent an Idea

07:01
13

How to Innovate an Idea

07:07
14

Creating a Dialogue With Your Art

05:48
15

Conceptualization For a Series vs. a Single Image

03:43
16

Transforming a Single Image Into a Series

03:12
17

How to Tell a Story in a Series

03:28
18

How to Create Costumes From Fabric

07:20
19

Brooke’s Most Useful Costumes

02:19
20

Using Paint and Clay as Texture in an Image

02:56
21

Create Physical Elements in an Image

10:22
22

Shooting for a Fine Art Series

05:45
23

Conceptualization: Flowery Fish Bowl in the Desert

04:08
24

Wardrobe and Texture

04:54
25

Posing for the Story

05:32
26

Choosing an Image

01:23
27

Conceptualization: Rainy Plexiglass

11:34
28

Posing for the Story

04:17
29

Creating Backlight

02:37
30

Photo Shoot #1 - Creating a Simple Composite

17:51
31

Photo Shoot #2 - Creating a Dynamic Composite

06:31
32

Photo Shoot #3 - Creating a Storytelling Composite

07:40
33

Shooting the Background Images

06:14
34

Editing Samsara Shoot #1 - Working With Backgrounds

24:35
35

Editing Samsara Shoot #1 - Retouching the Subject

04:20
36

Editing Samsara Shoot #1 - Color Grading

02:45
37

Editing Samsara Shoot #1 - Floor Replacement Texture

15:24
38

Editing Samsara Shoot #1 - Final Adjustments

03:21
39

Editing Samsara Shoot #2 - Cropping and Editing Backgrounds

05:25
40

Editing Samsara Shoot #2 - Selective Adjustments

03:55
41

Editing Samsara Shoot #2 - Adding Texture + Fine Tuning

03:21
42

Editing Composite Shoot #1 - Compositing Models

06:58
43

Editing Composite Shoot #1 - Expanding Rooms

02:17
44

Editing Composite Shoot #1 - Selective Color

02:47
45

Editing Composite Shoot #1 - Selective Exposure

04:04
46

Editing Composite Shoot #2- Masking Into Backgrounds

10:45
47

Editing Composite Shoot #2- Creating Rooms in Photoshop

06:11
48

Editing Composite Shoot #2- Compositing Hair

05:07
49

Editing Composite Shoot #2- Global Adjustments

04:49
50

Editing Composite Shoot #3- Blending Composite Elements

05:00
51

Editing Composite Shoot #3- Advanced Compositing

08:46
52

Editing Composite Shoot #3- Cleanup

03:34
53

Materials for Alternative Processes

06:20
54

Oil Painting on Prints

05:41
55

Encaustic Wax on Prints

03:09
56

Failure vs. Sell Out

05:14
57

Create Art You Love and Bring an Audience To You

03:35
58

Branding Yourself Into a Story

05:40
59

The Artistic Narrative

05:26
60

Get People to Care About Your Story

03:36
61

Get People to Buy Your Story

11:36
62

Getting Galleries and Publishers to Take Notice

03:41
63

Pricing For Commissions

06:43
64

Original Prints vs. Limited Edition Prints vs. Open Edition Prints

02:11
65

Class Outro

01:00
66

Live Premiere

16:14
67

Live Premiere: Layers of Depth 1

04:41
68

Live Premiere: Layers of Depth 2

07:12
69

Live Premiere: Q&A

16:10
70

Live Premiere: Photo Critique

47:33

Lesson Info

How Can You Get Ahead if You Feel Behind?

But you may be asking How can you get ahead if you feel left behind? How can you get ahead if you feel like nothing you do is pushing you forward right now. First of all, we have to recognize that confidence is a practice. It is not something that you are born with for most people. And I feel like I've tipped the scales on both ends of this because I used to have no confidence in myself. I wouldn't talk to anybody. I was super anxious all the time. I thought I was stupid. I had no confidence, and that transformed. When I learned to see myself from the other side of my career of my creativity of what I could be, I started to learn that intelligence wasn't on Lee. Could you take a test? It was, Can you make something beautiful when there's nothing in front of you? And it was learning that that I started to realize that my confidence comes from simply believing that I am something that I always thought that I wasn't, and I know that it's easier said than done that I could just say Just th...

ink of yourself differently. But That's why it's a practice, because every day you wake up and you tell yourself a slightly more kind narrative about who you are and eventually you believe it. Most people make it up anyway. Like I said, the most powerful people that I've met, they're just making it up. Nobody knows what they're doing. I don't know what I'm doing, and what I wanna express with that is not that you can't trust me about certain things that I'm saying in this class, but that if I want to prove anything, it's that if you simply start and you just let yourself believe that it's possible that's going to take you way further than any technique or anything that I show you in this whole class. So if you take nothing else away, know that you just have to make it up because if you act like a leader, then people will follow you. That's what I started doing. I just said I know what I'm doing. I'm a resource, I know how to do art and I didn't know I don't have a degree in that E. I mean, I'm teaching you about fine art, which sounds really like highfalutin, doesn't it? But I don't have a degree in art. So should you believe me? Yes, because I'm telling you to because I'm confident that I know what I'm talking about. Confidence is all about understanding that leadership comes from just saying that you know what you're doing and then moving forward with that confidence. Famed confidence creates real confidence. That's true. I have watched it blossom and other people and in myself, if you could just act confident for 30 seconds, that's 30 seconds that you have practiced being confident and it's important. People often fail it, defining success in their lives because we have a skewed perception of what success looks like. And I have a really good secret to how to get around that. And my secret is that you have to celebrate every 100 not every million. So here's what I mean. When I first started on social media, I, like most people, wanted people to follow me. I have since become disgusted with that way of thinking, as probably many of us have. But I went on social media. I started a Facebook account and I was like, Oh my gosh, I really hope that, like by the end of a year, I could get 100 people to follow me. And when I reached that milestone, I went out to dinner and I celebrated and I was so excited. And then the next 100 I celebrated, and then it turned into I was eating way too many cookies and I had to stop celebrating every 100 eventually that turned into a million. But I celebrated every 100. Instead of feeling discouraged that I wasn't at a million, I celebrated every 100. This is where most people fail is not celebrating every single little success because they are worthy of celebration. And when you draw attention to the good things, it makes you focus on the good things. When you draw attention to the bad things, you focus on the bad things, so we have to create positive reinforcement from within. We have to be the ones to do that. Don't rely on your friend or your partner or an audience to give you that validation that we are all searching for. Let it come from within. If you grow easily frustrated by not gaining a lot, then you're probably never going to gain a lot because that frustration festers in you. It grows. It becomes something insurmountable because you're so upset with yourself for not achieving more. This is why people fail at defining success because we focus on the wrong things that don't make us successful. I want to share with you a few of my Siri's that I've made to round out this segment. And I also want to point out that there are lots of downloads that you can get with this class. So, um, I have worksheets galore and you can download them and follow along. So if you hear me saying something and you can fill out a worksheet to correspond, to, go ahead and do that after every segment, see if you can work this out on your own for what we're talking about here, Um, I want to show you some of the Siri's that I've made and to make a very important point about that. One of the things that I want to make a point about is that sometimes a Siri's doesn't have to be an actual Siri's. I have had works in galleries where they have said what should we call this Siri's. I'm like it's not a Siri's and they're like, I don't care. Make it up. It looks like it could be a Siri's. So your work, if it's coherent enough, could be a Siri's after you've already made it. So a Siri's doesn't necessarily have to be meditated and planned, but I want to encourage you to do that for the sake of this class and moving forward. So this is the very first Siri's that I ever made. I did not know that I was making a Siri's when I did it. I just started making stuff So you can see here lying on the train tracks, which I do not recommend anybody do. Please listen to me. No train tracks. This was before I was trained and how to not die. So don't do train tracks anyway. These air some of the images from my very first Siri's that I later titled Small Deaths and these air all images that I took around my like where I grew up in in Pennsylvania, around my apartment, um, against my blank walls, and I began what I like to call the stuffing myself in tiny places. Phase where I realized that I was not a model and I would never be a model. As's faras traditional models go. I'm just little tiny me and I am quite tiny. So I thought, What can I do that models can't dio I can fit in tiny places, So I did and I fit in lots of tiny places and it was really fun. And I made all these images because I just liked it. I didn't have a plan. I just I just really enjoyed this process. And what you see here are examples of, perhaps not the most cohesive Siri's, but images that go together because they're all me laying dead in different places. Yeah, we're going to talk about shock value, so don't worry. That's coming. The next Siri's that I put together after the fact not realizing that I was making a Siri's is called in the kitchen, featuring some of the same images that you already saw. And these are all images. You guessed it shot in a kitchen. See, I was really good at titling things, huh? And then, after my in the kitchen, Siri's I created my sack, Siri's, which was all fabric draped across women in different ways. Um, and that was perhaps my most fun, Siri's and the Siri's that I have enjoyed doing the most. Perhaps which brings me to my very first Siri's that I ever made, intentionally with the intent of it being a Siri's. And I actually made this Siri's. After I got that review telling me that I wasn't a real artist, I was like, Let me show you. So I made a Siri's and I built four walls, and I created all this stuff inside the room, and I made this Siri's called Fourth wall and, um, that lead. Then a few years later, to my most recent Siri's called Begin Again, which is all about identity, and we'll talk about this later. And this Siri's was one of my more cohesive Syriza's. Well, you can see the difference between the Siri's that weren't Siri's and the Siri's that were Siri's, you know what I mean. They were intentional, and they look intentional, and we're gonna talk a lot about how that is why that is and why that's important now. This is my most recent Siri's, and I want to give a slight trigger warning here because some of this content is graphic on do you might feel uncomfortable looking at it. The Siri's is about death and grief. It's called Samsara because that word means the cycle of life that all living, living things endure from birth to death. And I think it's really beautiful, but also kind of graphic. And this is the series that I'm working on now, trying to de stigmatize death and grief and how we internalize that and how we talk about it. So that's what we're looking at here. I think that it's really important that we focus on not only creating a cohesive body of work, but on the internal work that it takes to recognize what needs to come out of us right now. What needs to come out of us right now because something in our lives is culminated to this point and something is going to be expelled because of it. I started creating about death, and that's what I loved. For whatever reason, whatever triggered that in me, I loved it. It brought me joy. And then, at some point in my timeline, I lost that. But now I'm back to it. So my newest series is called Samsara. We're going to create images for that Siri's during this class, so hopefully you can see a little glimpse into that thought process of how to continuous Siri's. And up next we're going to talk about conceptualization, so join me for that.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Worksheets.pdf
Student Practice Images (large 1.9gb zip file)

Ratings and Reviews

a Creativelive Student
 

Brooke never fails to deliver. I found this course superb from start to finish. From exercising your creative 'muscle', demystifying taking self portraits, and showing that they don't have to be perfect before you begin editing, to walking you through her editing process and how to price your work. Brooke's enthusiastic personality and excitement about the work shines through it all. Definitely recommended!

Søren Nielsen
 

Thank for fantastic motivating an very inspiring. The story telling and selling module was very helpful - thanks from Denmark

Rebecca Potter
 

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Brooke for this amazing class. Inspired and so full of practical knowledge, this is the best class I've ever watched. You have given me the confidence to pursue what I've always been afraid to do. Watch this space!

Student Work

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