art
SKILLS vs. STYLE
When I interviewed Kelly Anne Powers, host of the Learn To Paint podcast, a few things really inspired me. One of them was her take on the difference between skills and style.
We often as artists struggle with finding an identity, in this case a visual one.
According to Kelly, looking at what you don’t like about your work will help you get better, if you’re doing it through CURIOSITY.
If something went wrong in your painting and you can get curious about why it went wrong, great, you can learn a lot. If you’re yelling at yourself about the fact that it went wrong, you’re going to learn very little and you might walk away for a week or two.
Being curious about what is not optimal can help you develop skills.
Following what you love will enable you to find your style.
You can hear more about her approach in our interview here
You can find Kelly’s podcast here
Productivity
The power of ideas’quota
EXPECTATIONS MATTER
In “The creative cliff illusion” study we can see that for the people who had expectations that they would have good ideas later, their idea were better. For the people who had the expectations that good ideas would come early, all of their ideas were worst. This shows our cognitive bias called einsteining effect: once we identify a solution, we will not only stop searching for it but also we will be incapable of seeing a better one.
To overcome this bias take a problem you have been trying to find an answer for, flip your orientation from QUALITY (THE right answer) to QUANTITY (many possible answers).
The COST of a bad idea is exceptionally low, but the BENEFIT of allowing the variation you entertain is enormously high.
Listen to the full interview here:
Personal
Thinking habits can deeply affect our perception of events, distorting them to fit a negative narrative often not based on facts but fear.
In his book ‘Learned optimism’ Martin Seligman explains how we can change self-sabotaging cognitive patterns into more constructive ones. The proposed ‘A-B-C-D’ method (Adversity, Belief, Consequences, Disputation) shows that
reaction makes all the difference.
In Epictetus’ words: “It’s not what happens to us that matters but how we react to it”.
News
On the 12th of August, the Raking Light Gallery in Los Angeles will open the exhibition ‘INFERNO’, displaying the 33 painting that illustrates my new upcoming book by the same title. The presented artworks are based on Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, translating his deep symbolism through the aesthetic canons of American Traditional tattooing.
I will be there on the 12th, so come say hi! 
Also, I will be booking soon the spots for the new WATERCOLOR PAINTING 2.0 webinar and the Mentorship Program. For the latter, the next available spots are for the course starting in January 2024 (2023 is currently fully booked).
For more info please head here