Ep.058 Shortcuts: The Hits & the Missed

We all use shortcuts sometimes. Some of use shortcuts a lot. But how do you know when using them is advantageous and when they put you at risk of missing out on a great experience or the full potential of your work?

This little chat today goes over the true necessity of shortcuts and the sometimes unexpected things we miss out on when used imprudently. Take a break and kick back for this short but important little chat about the place of shortcuts in creative work.  

–

Leave a COMMENT: http://thesagearts.com/episodes/

–

CONTACT SAGE

Email: http://thesagearts.com/contact/

And join Sage on social media:

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/thesageartspodcast/

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/TheSageArtsPodcast

–

GET WEEKLY PODCAST NOTICES & BONUS MATERIAL:

Newsletter goes out every Sunday after an new episode goes up!

The Sage Arts Podcast

–

SUPPORT THIS PODCAST

· Buy me a coffee!

· Give back with PayPal

· Buy a STICKER! (Get 2 per order as of this release.)

· Buy polymer art books and magazines

–

CREDITS:

Cover design and photo by Sage; Illustration by Olga Kostenko

Music by Playsound

---

TRANSCRIPT

AI transcribed, unedited. Please excuse the copious errors.–

Maybe those things are a sign that you could have gotten the work to be better because you spent the time with it, that under the efficient and acceptable results that you do have is the possibility of something really stunning and amazing. Hello all my hard. Working creatives out there. Thank you for joining me on the stage. That’s podcast. This is sage and I am alone in the studio here today. So if you wanna, you know, metaphorically come in. Is it metaphorically? I think it’s metaphorically. Right. It’s not the word for. Come and join me on the lounge here. The dogs are off in the living room because river. Is in this kind of very large, almost like little jail kind of crate, because we’re preparing her for surgery. She’s getting surgery on Monday on both her elbows, she has elbowed dysplasia. It’s pretty bad, and she’s young, so we’re just doing the whole thing. We’re just we’ve got this great surgeon. Do this is his thing. This is his surgery. He teaches it all over the country. So we feel really good about it, but we’re going to be having to take a potentially double casted and cone headed dog in and out of a crate for the next two to six weeks. So we bought her this big thing that opens from the top and it’s like, I don’t know, it’s like a big play pen almost. But in any case, it’ll keep her hopefully settled. And make it easy for us to get her in. Out. But we’re getting her used to it. So she’s sleeping in there and embers. So sweet embers in there sleeping with her. Not in the crate, but in the living room with her. So yeah, I don’t have anyone in here with me today. So why don’t you come in, have a seat, bring a tea, coffee, a glass of wine, whatever feels good. And let’s settle in for it. Actually won’t be a particularly long. Episode this time the information I want to give you is. I don’t know. Maybe self-evident in a lot of ways, but I think it’s something that’s not often discussed because we’re. Always being sold. Things that solve a problem for us like. It takes me. So long to do certain parts of my artwork and so we are often looking for and find and discover. Or find other people that have discovered as. Or cut to make it easier and quicker for us, but I am not sold on that always being a good thing. I’m not saying it’s always a bad thing either. We will get into that and I I totally was gonna have a couple of shout outs for you and I didn’t put them together and I literally have these tiny windows in order to do recordings. So no, that I appreciate you and I appreciate the comments and the stories and everything coming through. And when I have a life that’s a little less crunchy, I’m gonna get back to talking about the things that you sent to me, but know that your words do inspire me and support me and keep me energized. So please do continue to send comments and stories. And anything that you want me to know or any questions that you want to ask me, you can write me at the sagearts.com website under the contact page and also comments on social media. I am pretty much narrowed down to Instagram as much as I would like to keep up with some of the other things. But Instagram is the main one that I check in on. But if you message me on Facebook, I’ll also get that as well. And those are the. Sage Arts podcast pages so you can reach out to me through those as well. And if you get something out of what you’re hearing here, you are welcome to support and give back through donations. You can use PayPal or buy me a coffee. We have buttons on those on the. Page like I say we. Where’s where’s this royal? We come from. Why do we do? That anyways on the homepage is, say, church.com that halfway down you find those buttons and all of these links are also in the show notes through wherever you’re listening to this from the description section or the show notes section of your podcast player or YouTube. Because I’m on YouTube now. Too, right. So I’m keeping business pretty short today because I just, I want to get into this before puppies, name me or something else happens. In any case, shortcuts. I want to talk about shortcuts. Do you use shortcuts in your artwork? Do you use shortcuts in your business? Are these things that you depend on and why do you go to them versus doing things the hard way? And maybe that seems like a stupid question, but in all honesty, shortcuts aren’t always necessary and aren’t always the right thing to do, but we use them because we’re in a society that says hey. Here’s how to do something easier. Here’s how to do something more efficient. We’re all about that, right? And I know you’re not alone. I do this all the time. I’m always looking for sure. But I’m always looking for ways that will allow me to do things quicker, if not also better, in order that I can do more because there’s so many things I want to do. It’s kind of ridiculous. But the one thing I have discovered, especially over the last, I don’t know, handful of months maybe since last fall while trying to juggle all this crazy stuff going on in my personal life. And putting this podcast together is that when I try to shortcut my process for creating the podcast, I just don’t achieve the kind of depth and impact in the content that I’m. Used to. You see, I usually kind of script these podcasts at least kind of outline. Script them at the very least, I spend time writing out these things that I wanna say, organizing my thoughts, figuring out how to logically get from one point to the next in a way that’s easy for you to follow. And then in that process, I discover new truths. And new views and adjustments to even my present views and discover things that I would never have seen without the close, thorough and somewhat time consuming evaluation that I go through in writing up the content for the. Joe, I find this to be true in making art as well. There are many, many ways to shortcut in art and being creative people. We are so up for the challenge to discover and perfect possible shortcuts. And then there are some standard go to. So for instance, you could create in broad strokes without getting into a lot of detail. That’s one way you can kind of shortcut. What you’re doing, you can also delve into like just the basic aspect of the ideas that you have, or you can make do with like what you have on hand rather than going to getting specialized tools or. Cereals. You can also borrow ideas that you find online. You can use tracings and other tricks of the trade to transfer drawings or buy textures or other premade patterning tools and aids. Or go smaller with your work, or try not to do new things that are overly challenging, or that you’re going to have a learning curve in. And in many of these cases, that approach is fine. It’s feasible, it’s relevant, and it leads to a level of success in your work that you need to keep motivated because you’re making finished work, right. But what do you miss out on when you’re using these shortcuts? The thing is, you don’t know what you’re missing out on. Maybe you’re missing out on nothing at all, but The thing is, you won’t know what discoveries you’ve missed unless you take the long, hard Rd. which isn’t, in truth, always the better Rd. But maybe when you’re feeling like something’s missing in the work when it feels like it’s less than it could be, when maybe you feel like you cheated, or maybe even feel some level of shame about the finished work. Maybe those things are a sign that you should have done more, or worked harder, that you could have gotten. Work to be better because you spent the time with it, that under the efficient and acceptable results that you do have is the possibility of something really stunning and amazing. If only you’d dug in a little. Deeper keep in mind, I’m not saying that shortcuts are all bad. They’re not, especially when it comes to like mundane, repetitive, busy work. At the same time, even the mundane busy stuff can have sometimes revealing and transformative moments, but that’s usually based on how much time you spend with work. And I’m going to talk about that. In just a moment. But you know, anything that we do on the work. The more time you spend with it, the more you’re going to have the potential for discoveries. But let’s first talk about what I think is a primary area for where shortcuts can be really detrimental, and I’d say that’s in the decision making and exploratory aspect of designing your work. Coming up with authentic original ideas takes time. And not just in the sketching phase or the exploratory work, but in your skill and experience. Levels. I feel like we can be in such a hurry to have finished work, that we shortcut the idea phase and that’s when we tend to look to other people’s work buzzing around online on Pinterest or Instagram, looking for inspiration and borrowing aspects. We know we can recreate quickly, or maybe we just do things that we’ve done before. And just do a little alteration to it. Or maybe we don’t give ourselves enough time to investigate and fail and fail again and have lots of bad ideas and have lots of bad sketches because one it doesn’t feel good to fail, but also because it takes a lot of time to fail and keep retrying until it’s done well. Short cutting in this area means that we may not fully understand what it is we really want to do with these ideas, or what ideas are really, truly exciting for us. Instead, we’re just going ahead and doing what we know we can make easily, but not necessarily what is going to be the best possible. Outcome for the work that we’re trying to do, I think that’s an important question we need to ask ourselves as we go to create a new pet. Are we excited by the design and the concept and the ideas we’re instilling in the work? Or do we simply come up with something that seems original but we know we can make it easily and quickly? Sure, there are times when you’re getting ready for a big show and you just need something. You know it’s halfway decent and can sell and can be done on time. I get it. I did a lot of that as a kind of survival creativity when I was working artist. But then I think about those pieces that I did spend a lot of time on that I was super excited about actually seeing the idea of them come to life. They were very. Different feeling to me than the things that I made because I knew I could do them well and I knew. They would sell. So the whole. Process of creating those really special pieces. It felt like kind of a gestation period, like having a baby, and I was so excited for them to come out into the world and have a life of their own because I’ve always seen my work as something that becomes its own entity and and does have a life of its own. I think of my work. As as coming into the world and then going off and having its own little adventures, because when they leave me and go live somewhere else, or or even just move with me from home to home or in different iterations of my studio, I think they do have a life of their own. Like they kind of have. Their own. Little experiences and the things that they witnessed. That’s just the way I think, but it’s those pieces, even the ones that maybe didn’t quite work out how I’d. Hoped they are the pieces that keep me creating. I keep creating for all my little art children and for the joy they bring me and the joy that I hope that they bring to others. And I’m guessing I’m not alone in this right. Some of you also consider your artwork like your little babies, right? And I think we see it that way. When the piece is something we have spent a lot of time with that we’ve had our share of ups and downs with during the process of creating. It’s kind of like that bonding experience we have with other people. When we experience the same thing at the same time and place and you’ve probably experienced this if you’ve been on a weekend retreat or a really intense class or even like kind of a shared disaster situation where you’ve all, you know, like, I was on a plane for how many hours on a tarmac one time we just kind. Of got to know everybody. Around you cuz we had nothing else to do. But when you’re sharing those kinds of moments when you spend that kind of time with other people and have these kinds of meaningful interactions, we start to feel bonded with them. And I feel like as we interact so directly with our work and there can also be a. Lot of emotion involved in the creative process. I think we bond with our art in a way that’s not dissimilar from when we bond with other people in a similar time spent and interactive manner. But when you take shortcuts, you might diminish that potential bond. And because there is less of a bond, you may not think as much or as deeply about the work and miss out on having a greater. Understanding of what you’re doing, what you’re trying to say, and what the work. Be for instance, you could paint or clay or collage or whatever with like rubber stamps that you buy from a big box store and you’d likely come up with some decent pieces pieces that you’re happy with that you can sell that your friends and family admire, but imagine how much more value you will find in the work and hopefully other people will find in. It as well. If you made your own stamps with your own designs. Now, yes, that likely requires a whole other set of skills and a lot of time to learn it and get it done. But if you do that, I think you’d find that during the process you discover imagery and textures and meaning that would not have been apparent to you if you had not gone through that. And of course it will give you a very personal mode of expression and originality. But the limitations of a mass produced tool. Or 8 or. Whatever you want to call it cannot. Not only that, you may discover a passion for creating things such as stamps or whatever custom thing you try out. And with practice, their creation may actually not take up whole lot of time. Once you have it down, but the added quality, the more personal nature of the artwork can increase not only the value of the work, maybe the monetary value that you can ask for. But also your joy in the creative process and your joy in seeing this very personal out. I’m not saying that you should make every tool and art aid that you ever use in order to find out whether you’re maybe into making them, or that every time you do that kind of thing that you’ll find hidden meaning and new depths in your work. It’s not always going to happen. Plus, let’s talk about the. Real crux of this site. Information we always have to balance our available time and our available skills and our available materials, not to mention our available funds with what we might get out of taking that longer and harder road and that’s a real consideration and a real concern because if it is taking longer and it is harder to do. You may not actually be finishing work or not finishing as much, or being frustrated and not getting to work as much as you would if you did do a few shortcuts and continue to enjoy what you’re doing. So that is absolutely valid and a very necessary consideration. So no, there’s nothing wrong with and nothing to be ashamed of. If you do use shortcuts, it’s just a choice. Like any of your creative choices. What I’m hoping you will get out of this little conversation is that taking that longer, harder Rd. occasionally or maybe more than just occasionally when it makes sense. For you. Could be really beneficial for your work and your satisfaction and your joy in what you’re doing, because you will get to know your work better. You will get to know yourself better, and you will have given yourself the time to make those kind of transformative discoveries. So don’t assume shortcuts are always a good thing. And don’t assume shortcuts are always a bad thing. Either they have their place, it just depends on what you want and. Need out of the work. What you’re doing, but yeah, I think we need to stop and ask ourselves about our shortcuts on a regular basis. So maybe each time we plan to use one, when we recognize that’s what we’re doing, maybe we can ask if this shortcut is necessary. Is it limiting what you can do or your mode of expression just to make things easier? Or do you feel like you’ve already plumbed the depths of what it is you’re trying to do? Or maybe would taking that time possibly give you more insight and understanding that will enrich the work and your experience in creating? That’s kind of a lot of questions. I feel like I’ve thrown quite a number of questions actually that you might want to ask yourself and I’ll go ahead and type those up, put them in the show notes, and I’ll put them in the newsletter as well, and maybe on Instagram. But if you’re in the newsletter, it’s the news and notices button on the homepage of the sagearts.com website. And that just goes out whenever there’s a new episode. And you get all little extras that might need to go with the podcast to help support the material that I’m giving you. Or check out the Sage Arts Podcast Instagram page, and I’ll get those questions listed so you could print them out and just kind of ask yourself those questions when you are facing the choices of using shortcuts. Or not. And I think asking a lot of questions while we’re working in general keeps us from being too complacent or being too lazy or getting in a rut because the more aware and conscious we are of what we’re doing and why the better creative decisions I think will make. So that’s really what I wanted to talk about today. I know this is a lot shorter than usual, but I don’t know that there’s much more that needs to be said. Just examine your shortcuts, why you choose to use them, and try to identify when it really feels like more of a laziness thing. Like, oh, I just don’t want to go do more work. And if you think the work that you want to do would benefit from taking the longer, harder. Food. But you just don’t feel like it at the moment. Maybe switch gears and do something else, do something quick and easy and fun and just something that you can just get into and and be in a flow. For a little while and then come back to that harder work. And if this is something that you’ve been wanting to do but just, it’s like overwhelming to think about some of this harder or more challenging things that you have to learn or the the time investment that you have to put into it, maybe start a little smaller on those things. And just take out one or two little shortcuts that you use and try doing it the whatever the old fashioned way. Try doing it by hand. Try doing it more. Some try taking the time with the work that you don’t usually take just little bits like you know, maybe an extra half hour here and there or whatever, and see if you don’t have discoveries and find more interest in depth in your work than you did before. Cause if you do that could get you really jazzed and really excited and maybe you’ll. Be able to get into it more and more, and next thing you know, you’re doing all this completely 100% original stuff with no aids from anybody else and just really authentic and personally satisfying work. That’s the conversation for today. Hopefully that gives you plenty to think about and will help bring your work to another level for you. So in the meantime, if you have any comments or stories or any insights that you might want to tell me about, and maybe I could share it in the future. My got my stuff together. I wasn’t going to say stuff, but you know what I mean. When I got my stuff together a little better, then I will share stories. So in any case, do write me at sagers.com on the contact page, respond to or direct message me on Instagram, get that newsletter so that you can keep up with the latest episodes and what’s going on over here. Here and then if you haven’t done so already, please do hit the follow button in your podcast player or subscribe on YouTube so you know when. The new episodes. Are out. It also helps get us further up the search engine list so more people can join the conversation. I’d also love to see any reviews or comments that you can put into the podcast. Hear that? You’re listening to this from so other people know what this is about and can come join us as well. I’m gonna leave it at that, keeping it really short. Like a 20 minute episode. That’s so awesome. Hopefully that’s good enough for you and I am going to give back to my puppies because I actually hear them already. Geez, for those of you have been following the the saga of the Puppy River prayers and positive. Energy out there for her surgery on Monday is I’m actually really super nervous. Because she’s going to be in pain. But I also just hope it works. You know that she’s going to be able to do all the things that she wants to do because she wants to do a lot. She’s like her Mama. Yeah. So go out there and get those experiences that help feed your muse and be true to your weirdness. And then join me next time on the Sage Arts podcast.