 To draw out my creative process, I started with a piece of blank paper, a big sheet of Bristol, and I sketched out my idea. This Bristol did not turn out to be the best idea for pen and ink work. It kind of feathers a bit with the ink, but I had already gotten this far, so I proceeded. There's two pie charts, one on either end of this drawing, and this pie chart is basically how I spend my time. I do something creative every day, and this is documenting what that creative time is spent on. I didn't include my sleeping time and eating time and walking the dog time. But about a quarter, a little bit more than a quarter of my creative time in a month is spent on YouTube content, creating videos for my Monday, Wednesday, and Friday videos there in Copic markers, color pencils, watercolor pencils, watercolor, pen and ink, regular old graphite. I've done pastel videos and all different kinds of things because I love to play with all the mediums. I love to try out everything. And for those of you who want more free content from me, watching my videos in mediums you don't normally use, which I know a lot of people don't want to do because if they're not a watercolorist or not a pencil artist, they only want to watch the Copic videos. You can learn a lot from those other videos because if you know me and the way I teach, I give tips on color and shading and layout and design and all sorts of things in every video. I don't necessarily limit them to one and sometimes leave and talk about if you're using another medium, here's something you could try and a way to mimic that. So don't think that just because it's a medium you don't normally use that you wouldn't learn something from it. So in addition to making videos for YouTube, I also do some videos sometimes for social media for Instagram and Facebook. There are going to be some others that will be added in the near future. So stay tuned for news about that when I figure out what I'm doing because I have some ideas for doing some live stuff elsewhere. The next section is for the classes that I teach and I teach over on my teaching site. I developed that because I wanted a place to do successive lessons one after another after another where things build on each other on YouTube. You get sometimes one concept in a video that you'll see the next step in it a month later. And that's not very helpful for teaching things. So I wanted a place where I could teach a group of concepts that build on each other. And that's where I developed my teaching site. There are really inexpensive mini classes there. There's jumpstart classes if you're just learning a medium and there's some advanced classes as well. There's stuff for kids. There's things for doodlers. Just lots of fun to be had if you're interested in that. Links in the doobly-doo. The stuff below the middle here is stuff that most people don't see very much of. Sometimes I'll show a still of it on social media. But this section is for things I make for friends and family and my house and other projects, Christmas gifts and birthday gifts and things that I just don't really show anybody. Then we have my plein air and sketching stuff. I go out with friends a lot. I belong to several art groups and we go out and paint together. We go out sketching in the city together. Lots of different types of work that I do out in the world. And those don't normally get seen. You might see a still picture on social media of what I did that day. But that's generally not something that ends up on my video content at all. I do love getting out in the world and doing things, not just sitting in the studio. It is inspiring to just get out and do something in a very different setting. For some people, if they're not sitting at their dining room table where they're used to drawing and creating, they can't fathom doing it. But I challenge you to try it because it is really well worth it in my mind to get out into the world and create. Next, we come to the idea section and that is kind of a mishmash. Each month, it's something completely different. And sometimes I'm researching things that I'm going to try in the future. Sometimes I'm just brainstorming new ideas. I'm journaling and filling sketchbooks with things that I want to do. Eventually a class I want to teach or a venue I want to do something at or a different way to approach something. And I usually don't get a chance to try all the things, though, because I, yeah, I have too many ideas. I have loads and loads of books full of ideas that just can't. There's not hours in the day. So then we get to the actual creation process. And that always starts with a big blank piece of paper of some kind. Sometimes it's the right piece of paper for the medium. And sometimes I switch that paper because it's not going to work with what I'm creating. If I'm making cards, there's going to be stamp sets involved. And I have a pile of stamp sets in my to-do list. Things that I want to do something with. Sometimes I get the idea instantly for that stamp set that I want to do. Other times it's going to take me a while to figure out what I'm going to create. I also have to decide the medium. And sometimes that medium is based on what I'm teaching. One medium is going to actually work better than another to teach that idea or that concept or convey it. And sometimes it's just the mood I'm in. I would just rather use one than another. And I also rotate the mediums here on YouTube. So I'm using different things all the time. Sometimes there's a calendar involved where I have to meet a deadline if there's a new release coming out. I try to get something out close to that. Or sometimes I'm actually in a blog hop or something where a bunch of people are sharing a new line of products. And then we get to the kind of head ideas, which is the storytelling side of things. I love to tell a story with my art. I think about the relationships between elements in a picture. You know, the different things that create a scene. And what story can I tell? Can I tell something that's going to make people laugh? Can I tell something that's going to move them to want to do something and take an action? What's that going to be? There's sometimes when the big idea is all about who it's for. So it's all about people. If I'm making cards for first responders, those cards might have a very different flavor than I'm making for someone else. If I'm making something that's going to be given to an individual, then I might customize it for them. If I'm looking for something for a particular gender, I'm trying to make stuff for men that might guide what the project is. But every project is going to have a different different flavor to it. And sometimes the thinking, the kind of ethereal head decisions drive things and other times it's more tangible things. Sometimes it's just you need a project because you've committed you're going to help somebody with their new release. And that's just what you do. So that just because there's graphics here doesn't mean there's any order to the things that I create. Aside from that, there's also is it for a season? Is it Christmas? Is it Valentine's Day? Is it a birthday card? Is it a painting for a particular event? Is it for a show? Is it, you know, all different kinds of things can guide it that way as well? And I don't really always know what those things are going to be for. And sometimes I end up creating a video in a totally different time of year for Christmas because I had that idea. And then it just sits there waiting for the Christmas season to come around because I had to do it. I had to strike while the iron was hot. Sometimes I'll forget things if I don't do that idea right away. And and that will just push me to get things done ahead of time. In general, I do have roughly eight to ten projects ahead of time scheduled in my YouTube channel. I move them around on a regular basis, flip flop them if I have another project that's more timely or that sort of thing. But it gives me a lot of flexibility so I don't have any things on fire. I don't create very well when everything's on fire and I'm under a really big, crazy deadline that is not how I function. Some people thrive in that kind of a situation. But for me, it makes me nuts if if I have something that has to post in two days and I haven't begun it yet. And there are some people who love that, you know, working over the night and and trying to stay up until three in the morning to finish it. And that is just not me. Now, this section is about the art ideas. So a little more in the tangibility. What is the big concept that I'm trying to teach? And this is where most of my projects get their their idea, their their their purpose. I think about color a lot and how to teach different ideas about color. I think about techniques and specific things about mediums. And a lot of it is ideas that I hope people can use for more than just replicating the project that I'm doing. While it's certainly fine that you replicate that, I want to give you tools that you can have in the hopper for creating with something else, that you can combine it with another idea. And I love seeing when a lot of my students, especially start combining things they've learned from different classes. That gives me a super big thrill to know that they're internalizing things enough that they don't need me to hold their hand. They're just they're soaring because they've gotten all these different pieces of information and they can combine them in different ways. So the ideas sometimes come from the color. Sometimes they come from the technique. Sometimes they come from just trying something. A lot of that time where I'm spending doing my own art and my own projects for friends and family, that's where I test things out. I sit on the sofa at night and I have a medium beside me and I just start playing with it. I play with it on different papers, that papers that it wasn't expected to work on and see what happens and just trying out different things gets me inspired to see what else I can come up with. So that there are the two sets of types of thinking that I do when I'm deciding on what I'm going to do with a particular project, it's either that what's the story, the outward purpose for it, the person who's going to see it and love it, or is it the internal teaching of the art that's important in that particular project? And sometimes I go immediately into creating a video, knowing I'm going to teach a particular thing. And then other times it doesn't happen until I'm halfway through creating the thing and I'm like, oh, that totally will make a great lesson. So I I get really tickled when that happens, because if I go into it, not knowing what I'm going to be teaching, it's a little more challenging to figure out how I'm going to impart some good information, something that's going to be helpful. So now we're on to the last pie chart over here on the right. And this is about where my work goes after I finish it, because I get a lot of questions since I post so many cards. What do you do with them all? Because a lot of people don't spend their whole day doing art. They don't have that many cards and they can't figure out where they'd send them. Well, a lot of my cards, about a quarter of them, go to friends and family. Sometimes, of course, immediate family, but a lot of times it's for friends like my toastmasters. I make things for them. I send cards out to people at my church or just different people that I know in real life. And they're they're people that I customize things for. And I know the events of their life, you know, their birthdays, their weddings, you know, sympathy cards when they lose someone, that sort of thing. And it keeps me in touch with them. I love physical mail going into someone's hands because they can look at that again and again and know that I'm thinking of them, that somebody cares about them, not just dropping an email in their box, but they have something physical that they can look at. And the number of times I get notes back that say it really meant a lot to get it on that day is really kind of amazing. The next group I don't really talk about very much because it's hard to explain what I do. But I send a lot of cards to people that I don't know. I'm a news junkie. I read a lot of local papers across the country. Read a lot of just news of things happening. And when I see something good happening, there's a first responder, a nurse, a policeman, a fire company, somebody who does something amazing. I look up if at all possible, the organization they're with and I make a card to send them. Other times it's like somebody in business makes a really good decision that I see they're doing something really good for the people that work for them. And I'm just so impressed. I send them a note. I usually don't even give my return address on the envelope. I just want them to know that somebody out there is watching. And it's a way to focus on good news and good things that people do. And that makes me happy to know that there's somebody somewhere that gets a random card and they realize there are people around the world that keep an eye on what they do and it might give them motivation to do good things again. This last section of Little Faces is my other big group that I send a lot of cards to. And that's my patrons over on the Patreon website. These folks all donate a little bit each month from a buck to three bucks, five bucks, ten bucks, 20 bucks, whatever they feel like all this free content is worth to them. And I send out cards on a fairly regular basis. Some people get one card a year. Some people at higher levels will get a piece of art every year. There's different things you can see on the website for what the rewards are for those. I know a lot of them don't do it for the rewards at all. They just feel like they want to help me stay in art supplies. So I don't run out of stuff, which is really nice. But they're such wonderful people and they give me a lot of good feedback. I ask them questions. I pull them on, you know, I'm thinking about teaching something on this. What do you think? And they're just really awesome people. They sometimes get sneak peeks. I'm not usually good at remembering to give them that ahead of time. But there are some videos that they'll get to see first and that sort of thing. Or if I know it's something really spectacular, I'll give them a heads up. So they know when something's coming. When something's coming. There are also certain levels at which they get a coupon code for classes and try to give them some rewards for all the support that they give me each month, which is fantastic and much, much appreciated. Big shout out to the Patreon peeps. The last section is going to be what I do with my fine art. I developed recently a fine art website and I've posted my paintings and some of my drawings over there. Some of them are for sale, not all of them, but a lot of them have been sold and mailed out, which is wonderful to part ways with them a bit so that I can, I can just make some room around here. I had a giant stack of paintings for a while and it's, it's finally getting a little bit more under control as people are falling in love with them and wanting them for themselves. So that is what I do with the fine art. Someday, who knows? I might have a show. I have no idea. We'll see. The final stage of this is just removing the pencil lines with an eraser. It's a kneaded eraser and I sense soft and the pen is all dry by now. So it's not going to smush anything. And I don't even have any purpose for this drawing other than having a reason to talk about my process. So I hope that you enjoyed it on my blog. I'm going to have some kind of close up stills of each one of these sections. You can see them individually if you're interested in that. But it's, yeah, it's been a fun little drawing to do and a way to think through what it is that I do here as an artist all day long on YouTube, etc. So that is all I have for you today. I hope you have a great one. Go draw out your process and see, see what it is that you spend your time on and what inspires you. What, what helps you make decisions about the art that you create. I will see you all later. Take care. Bye bye.