Clara Lieu's Blog, page 2

Training Myself

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It’s funny the little idiosyncrasies you learn about your staff when editing our video tutorials. I’m very detail oriented when it comes to editing out pauses and “filler words” out of our videos because I think it makes a huge difference in terms of the videos being succinct and efficient. I’m so anal retentive about having clean sentences that even if the pause is just half a second, I have to remove it.

I’ve logged so many hours editing video over the past 3 years that I have trained myself to not use filler words. I remember our first tutorial, Drawing a Still Life with Crayons, was a total disaster in terms of filler words.  I was relatively inexperienced at that point, and I didn’t even hear myself saying “kind of” in almost every sentence until one of my interns pointed it out to me. “Kind of” is difficult to edit out since it’s usually buried in the middle of a sentence, so it was an absolute nightmare to try to remove as many as I could.

I was patting myself on the back yesterday because I recorded a 30 minute portfolio critique all in one take and didn’t use a single filler word.  (although, that’s how I do all my portfolio critiques, I don’t split them up into several takes) That had to be a world record for me!

One skill I’ve taught myself is to speak at a slower rate than if I were having a casual conversation with someone. If I were to speak at my normal speed on video, the thoughts I’m formulating would never be able to catch up with my voice, which is when the filler words popup. Now, when I speak more slowly, I give myself just enough of a delay for my thoughts to be ready to turn into words.

I’m become so conscious of filler words that when I listen to live interviews on the radio, every “you know,” “sort of,” “um,” “so,” leaps out at me. Before I started editing video, I don’t ever remember noticing that when listening to the radio.

I’ve edited our staff so much that I know what each person’s most frequent filler word is. Casey says “you know,” Alex says “kind of,” Jordan says “and uh,” Lauryn says “uuuuuuuum,” “Deepti says um,” Cat says “like,” and Eloise simply has long pauses.  (I like those long pauses, they are so easy to edit out!) I’ve edited enough video that I can now look at the visual of the sound file in Premiere and practically pick out each person’s filler word.

There are skills that are obvious, like learning how to use a camera, how to set up a tripod, but it’s these tiny quirky skills you learn along the way that sometimes make all the difference.

Artprof.org is a free website for learning visual arts which features video tutorials, art critiques, and more.

“Dating”

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There’s creating content for Artprof.org (the easy part) and then there’s getting the word out. I don’t exactly have a degree in communications, so everything I’ve done in terms of marketing has had to be learned on the go. That means learning literally everything the hard way.

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned is the degree of disappointment and rejection the world is capable of. I thought I had experienced plenty of rejection working for over a decade in academia and the art world, two fields which are notorious for the immense amount of rejection people experience.  However,  all of that pales in comparison to what I’ve gone through for Art Prof.

There have been so many situations where I was certain that I had something in the bag, only to have people disappear without any warning. There was an article in the NY Times this week about ghosting, and although the article was talking about ghosting among personal relationships, it happens just as often in professional settings.

Naively, I assumed for the longest time that once I managed to get a reporter on the phone, (which sometimes took 9 months of constant prodding) that the article was going to be written.  Nope. I once did a 45 minute phone interview with a reporter from a major newspaper in the US, and then 2 follow up emails later…. nothing. That wasn’t an isolated experience either, it’s happened on several occasions!

Those phone interviews are the very few instances among hundreds of others that never come to any fruition. For every 200 emails I send (this number is not an exaggeration) I am thanking my lucky stars if I get even 1 positive reply. Even that positive reply can dissolve quickly into nothing. I’ve had reporters write me highly enthusiastic emails, say they would get back to me, and then just disappear.

So now, I don’t believe anything anyone tells me until I actually see the article in print. Even so, the universe still surprises me on occasion.

I was convinced that one contact had totally slammed the door shut. The best way I can describe it is this is a contact I had an in person “date” with that went incredibly well. I left the meeting convinced that I had made it far enough to at the very least warrant a reply afterwards. Getting to a phone call is a big deal, but an in person is meaningful. 3 followup emails, 9 months later, nothing.

Then yesterday I got an email from them.

Now with the door back open, here I am fantasizing of having 10 kids and growing old together with this contact. Except that we haven’t even been on a second “date” yet.  That’s how far away this is. If this works out the way it has the potential to, it could be a very, very big deal. I’m not talking about one splashy press piece, this would be seismic.

Do I dare to hope?

The Ship that Sailed

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I have a student I’m tutoring to help her prepare her art school portfolio, and I mentioned Sarah Sze to them as an artist to look at in terms of composing seemingly unrelated objects together into fluid and dynamic compositions. Sze is an artist I’ve admired for many years and I’ve followed her career with great interest. Curious about Sze’s most recent work, I found myself looking at images of her work on Instagram.

Big mistake.

I acknowledged a few years ago that in terms of the capital A art world, the ship had sailed for me. While there are a few artists who do find success in the art world much later in life, I think those artists are the exceptions.  If you’re not in the Art world by the time you’re 35, the ship is gone, and it’s not coming back.

I spent a long time (way too long) grieving over the Art world career I pursued for so many years, but you can only do that for so long without going nuts. Starting Artprof.org helped me move on and try to find a new purpose and meaning as an artist.

When I think about how different my life is since starting Artprof.org, it’s really quite remarkable.  Artprof.org let me to leave the bubble of academia and made my world so much bigger than I ever imagined. I’ve met so many people I would otherwise have never interacted with, I’ve traveled internationally, I have a consistent lecture schedule, collaborated with artists of all ages, received comments from my audience that make me tear up, and much, much more.

As much as there are visible, concrete results of Artprof.org that I am immensely proud of,  there’s still an tiny itch that comes back to haunt me now and then.

That itch tells me that the reason I didn’t “make it” in the Art world is because as a fine artist, I wasn’t good enough, I didn’t stick it out and try long enough, and that it’s my own fault because I gave up.  I’ll be the first to admit how toxic this thinking is, and I really should know better after all these years to even go there.  But it’s hard not to when I pick up that RISD alumni magazine, when an article shows up on social media and I read about my peers and colleagues who did make it into the Art world, who won MacArthur grants, who are tenured professors.

The vast majority of the time, I’m so immersed in Artprof.org that the itch might as well not exist.  As a project, Artprof.org has grown to the point that it’s so much bigger than me, and it’s roller coaster ride that is thrilling, challenging, stimulating and exciting all the time. I’m grateful that I was in a place in my life where a project like that was possible, and I couldn’t be more proud of my team at Artprof.org for everything we have accomplished together over the past few years.

For all those reasons, it’s generally not difficult for me to ignore that itch, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less on the days that I can’t.

Artprof.org is a free website for learning visual arts which features video tutorials, art critiques, and more.

Using Our Own Lesson Plans

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While we are building Artprof.org for artists, art teachers, and art students, you could also say that Artprof.org is for ourselves too!

Last week I was trying to think of what project I wanted to do for my RISD Project Open Door class.  During the fall semester, we did a chipboard sculpture project, a scratchboard project, a portrait drawing project with crayons, and a rubber stamp project so far this year. I try to keep the curriculum for that course really diverse, so that the students experience a wide range of media.

I started brainstorming the next project by a process of elimination: I didn’t want to jump into a long term 3D project, and we had already done plenty of drawing in the fall.

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Collage by Lauryn Welch

I wanted a 2D project that would be a good contrast against these other projects.  Then I remembered the Painted Paper Collage project that Lauryn wrote for Artprof.org. Her project was exactly what I was looking for.  The project introduced collage and painting, two areas that my students hadn’t done in my class until that point.  I had found my project, and I sure didn’t have to look far!

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I love that here I am, using my own website as a lesson plan resource for my own classes. This isn’t the first time either. One of my staff asked me a month ago whether I had a rough cut of our upcoming gouache painting tutorial, because they were going to be teaching a lesson on gouache and wanted a refresher on the technique.

If our tiny staff of 7 artists needs the lesson plans on Artprof.org, surely there is a need for our site in the world!

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Collage by Cindy Qiao

Our Audience

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Over the holidays, like every one else, I was evaluating the past year and asking myself if there were any fundamental changes I needed to make to Artprof.org. I was talking to a family member about our YouTube channel and he was surprised to hear that our 30 minute portfolio critiques are actually significantly more popular than our tutorials.

The average length of a video on YouTube is generally around 5-10 minutes. We did experiment a ways back with short format video, where we divided up our tutorials into several short segments that were about 2 or 3 minutes long. I was surprised when we started getting comments requesting the tutorials be in a video that was an hour long instead.

However, our audience seems really different in that they seem to like our longer videos more than our shorter videos. Compared to our 30 minute portfolio critiques, our 1 minute Crit Quickies haven’t fared nearly as well.  When my family member pointed that out, I started to realize how specific our audience is.

Last week we introduced Live Art Critiques on our YouTube channel, and we have a new schedule so that there will be 1-2 new video critiques every week so that we are consistently uploading new content. Our video tutorials are incredibly time consuming to produce, and there’s no way I can count on releasing our tutorials on a consistent basis.

Another revelation about our audience became clear when the submissions for the Live Art Critiques started to pour in. I’ve watched other YouTube channels of artists who do critiques, and the type of artwork that gets critiqued is really specific.  There is one channel I looked at that is all hyper-realistic colored pencil drawings of animals and celebrity portraits that look like xeroxes of photos.

The submissions we’ve been getting of course have a gigantic range of experience and skill, but what is apparent is that our audience is thoughtful, intelligent, and really trying to engage not just with the technical aspects of creating the artwork, but also on a conceptual basis. So many YouTube channels I’ve seen emphasize only technique, specifically photo realism, whereas our audience seems to be really thinking about their subject matter, and making an artistic statement.

Sketching Family

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I’ve been visiting family over the past week for the holidays, so I thought that would be a good chance to do some casual sketching here and there.

Although the act of drawing is what I am always excited about, one aspect of the drawing process that I really look forward to is noticing the little things around me that I wouldn’t bother paying attention to if I wasn’t drawing.

I’ve noticed in my drawing classes that frequently when students draw a model posing in class that they leave out details. For example, if a model has a tattoo, many students won’t draw the tattoo.  But it’s those specific details that to me add character to the person.

We were at a skating rink a few days ago, and my nephew sat down at one point to eat some candy and play a video game. I looked at the way his tangled headphones fell down to the right of him, the stripes on his sneakers, his black socks, the way his hair flopped down obscuring his face, and the Gatorade bottle that sat in front of his thigh. I’m sure that if I didn’t do a drawing of him, I wouldn’t have noticed any of these details. Now the stripes on his sneakers are ingrained in my brain.

In today’s fast paced world, it’s nice to have that time to really look at a scene and absorb every tiny detail in the moment.

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I’ve also noticed that when I sketch casually I start thinking about everything that I tell my students in drawing class.  Keep moving, jump around the page, don’t linger in any area for too lone.  See through the objects, search for where objects intersect and overlap over each other.  Forget about what I’m drawing, break it down into abstract shapes and relationships. Look at the subject more than at my drawing.

There’s a part of me that feels obligated to listen to that advice that I give my students, because if I didn’t, I feel like a total hypocrite! Oddly enough, sometimes I really don’t want to listen to my own advice, because I want to work on a part of my drawing that is more fun to do, but that I know will not help my drawing as much. (like staying in one area of my drawing for too long and bringing it to a finish before tackling everything else.) The funny thing is that as experienced as I am, I do find myself being tempted to do the indulgent parts of the drawing process; just like my students! A lot of things never change I guess.

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Breaking New Ground

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With every tutorial we produce, I learn from that experience and take from that knowledge where we want to go next. However, with the release of our Intro to Oil Painting course, it does feel like we are breaking new ground in a more dramatic way than usual.

When Artprof.org launched in February 2017, we had one video course; today we have over thirty! (That number still feels like barely a drop in the water though) When we had very few courses we prioritized producing courses that were beginning level, it didn’t make sense to start the site with the more complex courses.

There are still many gaps in beginning topics that we have yet to address:  we need to cover linear perspective (1 point, 2 point, and 3 point) we have yet to produce a pencil drawing course, and we still haven’t gotten to basic topics like plein air painting.

We’ve made an effort to produce courses that demonstrated relatively inexpensive, more easily accessible art supplies.  Which is why this oil painting tutorial definitely feels different. Compared to say drawing on paper with a pencil, oil painting is not remotely as accessible.  The supplies are expensive, disposal is complicated, and you need a facility to work that will provide adequate ventilation. On top of that, the process and techniques of oil painting are not simple and require lots of attention to detail.

Which is why the course ended up being almost 2 hours long, an epic tutorial compared to all of our other tutorials which range from 10 minutes to 40 minutes. All of our tutorials are time consuming to produce: the planning, shooting, editing, the post production work, etc.  is never quick. This oil painting tutorial was the usual work load times ten, there were honestly moments where I thought I would never see this tutorial make it online!

Despite my initial reservations about producing a tutorial this complex about a technique that not that many people will ever get to do, the response has been really strong. I’ve never gotten so many comments on our YouTube channel within 24 hours of releasing a video.

Perhaps despite how relatively inaccessible oil painting is, we should aim to produce more video tutorials along the same vein?  Would you like to see more of these “epic” tutorials from us, even if it’s in techniques that you may not be able to do yourself? Or does that take away from our mission to provide accessible content for everyone?

Stimulating Growth

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I think it’s inevitable at the end of a year to reflect upon the past year while also looking ahead to where you want to direct yourself in the new year. When I look at Artprof.org, part of me takes pride in what we’ve been able to accomplish in a short time period with very few resources. The other part of me has a burning desire to figure out what past strategies haven’t been as effective, and what we can concretely change for the better.

Change is a curse and a blessing in a project like Artproforg. We are lucky in that we have 100% creative freedom, there is no one we have to report to or get approval from to create our content.  On the other hand, that also means to me that we have a responsibility to continually improve upon what we have done in the past, which means continual change in terms of how we do things.

Compared to the chaos of the beginning of the project in 2015, (which I think is unavoidable when you start a project like this from scratch)  Artprof.org is relatively stable right now, but it’s always a concerted effort on my part to not drive my staff up the wall by changing things left and right. While logistical matters have become a lot more predictable, we are nowhere near being on automatic pilot.

While change is necessary for the project to progress, boy, can change be incredibly tedious; I’m not joking when I say that I spent an entire day on redoing the tags for our videos on our YouTube channel, or that I probably renamed each video course 3 times before I settled on ones that were clear enough but also loaded up with keywords to help boost our SEO!

As much work as all of these tasks are, change to me always feels good. While there’s always the risk that something may not work out, it doesn’t matter to me, I’ll just try something else.

A Bigger World

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I started my career in academia back in 2005, and have been there ever since.  While I love teaching at RISD, I have to say that academia is a really small, insulated world that very few people get to be a part of.

I didn’t realize until I started Artprof.org just how big the world really is. Since Artprof.org began, my world has expanded tremendously and it’s very exciting.  I’ve met people who I would never have encountered had I stayed in the bubble of academia, connected with people in other fields, traveled to places I would never have dreamed of, and so much more.

My world only continues to expand because of Artprof.org, and it’s not just the people and places, it’s the ongoing learning experience that Artprof.org brings to me.  Through many art suppliers, I’ve been exposed to tons of new art materials that I wouldn’t have otherwise tried on my own.

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Legion paper sent me three different types of Yupo paper:  heavy, medium, and translucent.  I’ve had students work with Yupo paper but never had the chance to work with it myself, so it was fun to play around with this new surface so we could create listings for it in our Art Supplies section.

I looked around my kitchen and saw a section of a pomegranate and knew that was the object I wanted to draw on the Yupo paper. The Yupo paper is a surprising surface; being so incredibly smooth, you expect wet media to not adhere to the surface, but it does beautifully.  The paper never buckles, and it’s super durable, not the type of surface that you can imagine every ripping.

I love that Artprof.org is an ongoing learning experience, for everyone, even the people who produce it!

Art Prof Art Supplies Giveaway

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YOU could win this treasure trove of art supplies with supplies!

Post a link to Artprof.org on social media + a few sentences about why you love Artprof.org, what you have learned from us, and more!

The most heartfelt, witty, humorous, impactful statement will win these art supplies!

Be sure to tag us in your post: @claralieu on Twitter & Facebook, and @art.prof on Instagram.

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