Do you create for the joy of the process or to create a product?
Come join us for a casual discussion between myself, Sage, and my better half, animation artist and director Brett Varon, as we discuss quotes from Picasso that lead us to investigate what we might be after in our creative endeavors as well as how our art can have a mind of its own. Among other things silly and sundry things.
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Credits:
Cover design by Sage; Illustration by Olga Kostenko
Music by Playsound
Transcription (AI transcribed, unedited due to lack of budget. Please excuse the copious errors.)
They’re not diabolical. Just passionate. I’ve only had two episodes out to date and I’ve barely told a soul but I’m already getting some great feedback. Two people said nearly the same thing, that they loved the ideas about more personally defining what success means to them, that money isn’t the only measure of success and that, in fact, in both cases, they prize the process and the work the most, so they found it affirming and clarifying to hear a discussion about choosing what constitutes success based on the individual’s assessment and needs and not on what other people judge it by. We’ll be talking about the value of process a bit today so hopefully, for those that are in the same mode we’ll be further building on those ideas for you.
I want to also note that we’ll be hitting on the idea that success is a very personal and varied concept that can be quite different for each of us every time I have a guest, at least once we get rolling in January. We’ll ask that questions so we can see all the many ways success is measured and found.
Today’s guest co-host though, can be strangely, hard to pin down so we’ll see if we can get that question in along with the rest of the conversation we planned for today. In just a few minutes I’ll be joined by animation artist, director, writer, and my better half, Brett Varon. Brett has been in animation for nearly 25 years, primarily as a storyboard artist and director. He’s worked for all the big studios including Cartoon Network, Disney, Warner Bros, and, at present, Nickelodeon. He’s made major contributions to such well known shows as Family Guy, The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, Chowder, Star vs The Forces of Evil and Animaniacs. His present project is a Sponge Bob spin off called The Patrick Show on which is a storyboard supervisor. But aside from animation, Brett is a voracious artist. He prefers drawing materials as his medium and has a sketch book next to him pretty much wherever he is in the house. He has worked as a gallery represented oil painter but these days prefers to create just whatever makes him happy without worrying or even considering selling his work.
So, without further preamble, let me call him in here.
Brett would you come join me?
Ok, we’re going to get him settled and turn on his mic…
It’s about to get a bit noisier and a lot more casual sounding. But hey, you come on in here too, in your imagination at least. Come sit down with us and let’s talk art.
[missing section]
Brett Varon 00:03:36 Each destroying of, uh, a beautiful discovery, the artist does not really suppress it, but rather transforms it, condenses it, and makes it more substantial. What comes out in the end is the result of discarded fines. So Picasso made this comment about about not falling in love with the beautiful things you might come up with. Like when you when I like when I draw something, if the lines start becoming aesthetically, really pleasing, uh, and I’m making pretty things instead of fall in.
Sage Bray V 00:04:03 Love with those individual characteristics.
Brett Varon 00:04:05 Yeah. And I don’t want to mess with it, or I get really self conscious because I’m like, oh, I don’t want to m mess up. But he says just the opposite, to tear those things down as the first thing you do, which I love that idea.
Sage Bray V 00:04:15 That’s great.
Brett Varon 00:04:16 Yeah. It makes it so not about product, but so much more about a process, a, uh, series of discoveries. And so the result is discarded fines. You find something, and you go to the next thing and the next thing.
Sage Bray V 00:04:29 So it’s not so much about what you make, it’s about what you don’t include. It’s almost a subtractive method that he’s looking at. Like in writing, I think it’s the same idea in writing, we have a phrase kill, uh, your darlings. So when you fall in love with a phrase or set of words or description or passage or whatnot, and, um, you just can’t take it out because you love it so much, even though it doesn’t serve the story, you’re having to ask yourself the question, does this serve the story I’m trying to tell? Does it progress the plot? Does it build the character? Does it at least, uh, add atmospheric texture? And if it doesn’t do any of those things, you need to take them out, no matter how much you love them. And a lot of writers have, like, a page or file or whatnot that they just cut them out and put in there so they’re, like, removed, but they’re not dead kind of thing.
Brett Varon 00:05:20 Kind of save the baby. Save the baby.
Sage Bray V 00:05:22 But it’s kill your darling. So it sounds like the same thing. Because if you fall in love with very particular characteristics of your artwork, then you may lose the overall impression or what is that you’re trying to say, what it is you’re trying to present. And the design could be weaker for keeping those pretty little bits in there.
Brett Varon 00:05:44 It’s putting aesthetics over purpose.
Sage Bray V 00:05:48 It’s like looking at the gems and not the whole piece of jewelry. Uh, you put that above serving the whole piece, one individual aspect of it or a few individual aspects or characteristics of the design end up having everything else built around it. Which I think can be a good thing to pay attention to, but at the same time, if you really fall in love with those things since I think a fairly common approach to doing art is to share your own aesthetic. So if you really love something, that’s great, but then you need to go back and redesign the piece to focus on that aesthetic and present that aesthetic, that thing that you love in a way that you are able to communicate what it is that you love about this to the viewer. I think if you try to make something work based on what you’ve already done, because you’ve fallen in love with little individual pieces, even though it doesn’t work with the rest of the piece, then the piece could suffer from it. Right, exactly.
Brett Varon 00:06:46 It’s like we get off track, the priorities get, uh, muddy. Uh, because I think approval plays into such a big part of so many artists. Like, we want to be accepted and acknowledged and recognized, and it’s the worst way to approach doing anything, even though we all have to go through that process and have a relationship with that set of thoughts or those feelings. You take yourself out of them when you acknowledge what you’ve done in the moment, and you think it’s precious already.
Sage Bray V 00:07:14 Right.
Brett Varon 00:07:15 It’s a, uh, contradiction, because we’re makers of things. And so if it’s pretty great, if it’s ugly, or if it’s poorly, people are going to judge it all over the place. But it’s just got to be genuine for wherever you’re at that moment. Or if you make a series of things, just keep exploring them and trying to understand them. If it’s a procedure of trying to please people’s, uh, tastes, there’s just transient. But I think they’re really great to talk about, because in the circles I work in, there’s a lot of professional climbing in the ladder and competition, and people can become part of the equation when it comes to doing your actual creative work. And here in this conversation, that’s the idea is to talk more about what is genuinely a clean experience when it comes to exercising that part of your mind that’s creative not about making products is what I would say. But some people look at it differently. It is about making products, and they made a creative thing, and here’s the proof. But to me, it’s more of a discovery of things you haven’t seen or things that you don’t know what they’re going to be.
Sage Bray V 00:08:20 Well, I think it’s important to recognize whether you are making a product or whether your exploration and the curiosity is at the core of your creativity, at the core of making a piece of art. But if you think in terms of products, it’s very hard to get away from that. If you’re selling artists, you are being told you need to make stuff for particular market, you need to pay attention to the trends, you need to look at the popular colors right now and what does your audience want to see? What price points do they want to see? How big or small can they be? And those are all product oriented choices and decisions. And if you’re focused on those things, do you get away from actually making artwork and just start making products? And I think it can be both. There’s no reason it can’t be both. But it’s just a matter of being vigilant that you it’s a good point. Notice when you are making things according to what external forces or ideas want or present versus what it is that you want to be making and what you want to share. And um, the explorations that you want to do as an individual. Because art isn’t just about making a thing. It is about the process that you go through as an individual to discover things about yourself and about the world around you and about how you see it in writing. It’s very much the same thing. You write a story because you have a curiosity or interest in the story. But in the process, you discover a lot of things about what you believe or what you think, or how you see people, or how you see the interactions of people and your judgments. And although art is not as literal in that the communication of what you think can be very straightforward in the written word, but in art can be a lot more subtle and often is a lot more fed by what the viewer sees. And so someone who sees your artwork may not see what you saw in it because they put themselves in it a lot more than they might do into a story. Although in both cases, the, uh, viewer or the reader will put themselves in and that’s how they interpret what they’re experiencing through your artwork or your writing.
Brett Varon 00:10:18 Yeah. I guess we have to decide, every one of us, as artists, like, what do we do naturally? What is our inclination? Do we want to sit and do inquiry kind of art wonder and do and redo and try to understand things better by doing them? Or do we set out to paint a pony and make that the best pony that you’ve ever seen?
Sage Bray V 00:10:39 Right. And that feeds into the idea of authenticity. Right.
Brett Varon 00:10:43 Yeah.
Sage Bray V 00:10:43 Are you doing that because you are digging down and finding those things in yourself? Or are you doing it because everybody likes ponies and you know, you can sell a picture of a pony, so you’re going to paint a picture of a pony because you need to make some money and pay your bills, which that’s also valid because your intention may simply be that you want to make a living doing something that you enjoy the process of. But then I think if you aren’t going through the process of exploration, like, if you define your own type of pony and what you think a pony should be and what you want people to see in a pony, then that’s artistic. That’s an artistic approach. If you paint a pony because you’ve seen all these other people paint these particular types of ponies that look like my little ponies or whatever, then you make them m look like my little ponies in order to sell them. But you’re not exploring the idea for yourself.
Brett Varon 00:11:33 You’re making a product.
Sage Bray V 00:11:35 Um, then we’re going back to the conversation about making a product. Yeah, but I think it’s part of our communication with each other. If we’re going to talk about the types of art that someone is doing or artistic efforts. When you’re talking about artistic efforts, if there is no exploration, I don’t think it’s an artistic effort at that point. I think it’s a craft. And you are crafting something, and you have a honed skill to be able to do something like that, to be able to take something that’s already out there and reproduce it. Because, like Warhol, for instance, he hired people to reproduce these things or take his design and just do it in a different color or whatnot. But at that point, those people aren’t artists. They are not making any of the design decisions. They’re not doing any kind of exploration to determine what it should be.
Brett Varon 00:12:22 They’re following directions.
Sage Bray V 00:12:24 They’re following directions. So then they’re a craftsperson. They can be an artisan, they can be extremely talented. But isn’t an artistic endeavor if the exploration isn’t part of the process?
Brett Varon 00:12:34 That’s a good question. Yeah.
Sage Bray V 00:12:36 So, um, why don’t you read us a couple more from that book? Um, what else is Picasso saying?
Brett Varon 00:12:42 Here’s some shorter ones. This is a good one. It also ties in what we’re talking about. It says, Painting, uh, is stronger than I am. It makes me do what it wants.
Sage Bray V 00:12:52 Oh, that’s so good. It’s not great.
Brett Varon 00:12:54 It’s right to the point.
Sage Bray V 00:12:54 Well, I think it’s kind of a surrendering to the work. So it’s like you have almost personified art. Like, it has its own, uh, own intention and its own drive.
Brett Varon 00:13:07 It’s its own being, its own life, its own being.
Sage Bray V 00:13:09 Yeah. And if you do that and I and I think a lot of people do that in various types of art and in writing. And whatnot that you think, oh, this thing is taking me for a ride. My artwork has decided it’s going to do this and it’s going to go here. And it’s like, I didn’t want it to be purple, and all of a sudden it was purple. It’s like, why and I love that idea. But of course it’s us, whether it’s our unconscious or our experiences coming to the surface that push those things to be that way. I like how that externalizes it. We can see the magic of the process and not just be like, oh, well, that’s just me and my unconsciousness is doing this. But it is a magical process, and I love that. I never want to lose that sense of awe wonder. Yeah. Working with, um, visual arts or any kind of creative endeavor, there’s a measure.
Brett Varon 00:14:02 Of being an observer as you are a doer as well. So you’re kind of incredible in a way, being a way of follower. You’re following something that feels right, but you can’t define why you’re doing that. And, uh, I think that inclination is what makes us artists to a degree.
Sage Bray V 00:14:20 And I think that would be something interesting to explore in terms of authenticity. Because if you do let it run off by itself, then you are really tapping into more unconscious or deeper inclinations within yourself. So does that represent the authentic side of you when you let it run, when you let it go do its own thing? When you’re not questioning and judging and measuring?
Brett Varon 00:14:44 Yeah. The critic, the editor, these are all functions of our mind. And artists want to do something. We want to share it, for the most part. But the truth is, when we’re in the moment of doing our art, that’s the satisfaction and that’s the reward in and of itself, not the results of it.
Sage Bray V 00:15:01 Yeah, absolutely. I don’t know if it’s true for everyone that the, uh, process is a reward for them, but I hope everybody finds something in the process that is rewarding and gives them joy. I think if it doesn’t, then it may be time for them to re examine what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. Right?
Brett Varon 00:15:18 Oh, absolutely.
Sage Bray V 00:15:19 Yeah. So on that note, I think maybe we can talk about that a bit more in the future, but maybe right now we keep this one short because I really don’t know how this is going to come out. This is the first time we’ve done this. Uh, okay. And then one last thing before you go. I want to ask all my guests, and you are a guest of sorts. You’re going to co host here and there.
Brett Varon 00:15:40 Yes. Weird to hear that, but yeah, I guess I am.
Sage Bray V 00:15:43 You’re a guest in your own house. So one thing I like to ask everybody, how do you measure success? What is your version of success, artistically speaking?
Brett Varon 00:15:52 There’s a few, I suppose, but mainly follow your bliss.
Sage Bray V 00:15:57 Nice broad. I was going to ask you more. No, I think it’s good. I think it’s good to have a nice broad answer because then, um, we can talk about that more.
Brett Varon 00:16:06 Yeah.
Sage Bray V 00:16:07 In the future.
Brett Varon 00:16:08 I could definitely say a lot about that.
Sage Bray V 00:16:10 Right. Yeah. Great. Well, thank you so much for joining me. And, uh, would you join me again?
Brett Varon 00:16:15 Cool. Yes. No, actually, I won’t. I’ve changed my mind. Of course I will.
Sage Bray V 00:16:24 Honestly, we do this all the time, and half the time, I’m like, I wish we had this on tape record. So if I just whip out a microphone anytime, we start talking, that would be so awesome.
Brett Varon 00:16:33 And now we do sort of yeah.
Sage Bray V 00:16:36 But I got to grab you and pull you back in front of the microphones.
Brett Varon 00:16:39 Yeah. Figure it all out. And then, like, okay, go hold on to that thought.
Sage Bray V 00:16:43 So, anyways, great. Well, thanks so much. And for those of you listening, if you have thoughts or comments or feedback on your, um, own stories, I would love to hear them. You can reach out to me by email at the sagearts@gmail.com, or you can go to the website www.The sagearts.com. Use the contact page there to write me or click on the red button that’s in the bottom right corner. You can use that to leave me a voice message. If the things I’m talking remind you of experiences you’ve had, if you’ve had some tremendous breakthroughs and epiphanies about what you’ve been doing with your artwork, I would love to help share your stories. You can send me your stories, thoughts, opinions, requests or whatever you want by email at theSagearts(at)gmail.com or you can go to the website at www.thesagearts.com Use the contact page there to write to me or click on the red button in the bottom right corner to leave me a voice message. You can also reach out to me on Facebook at facebook.com/theSageartspodcast, all one word or, the same thing on Instagram so Instagram.com/thesageartspodcast, all one word.
If you like what you’ve heard so far and want to help me with the expenses of putting on this podcast, I do have a Buy Me a Coffee page at buymeacoffee.com/thesagearts where you can make a one time contribution. I am working on a membership option and once that’s going it should show in your podcast player but I’ll also announce it on future episodes since it’ll include additional stuff like exclusive episodes and live chats. So that’s in the works.
So that is it for this time. I’m sorry. This should have been out on Monday. It’s now Friday because we have some technical difficulties. I’m still in the learning phase, but I appreciate your patience with me. Should have one more podcast out next week before the start of the year, and then we’ll really get going come January 6 with my interview with Christy Friedson. So thank you for joining me. I look forward to having you next time on the Sage Arts podcast.
