The Power of "Just a Little Bit More"

"I will not fail my friends..just a little bit more..."

In our everyday lives, we often slide down the slippery slope of mediocrity.  Whether it's sleeping in "just a little bit more" or it's "just a little bit more" before you turn off facebook and get back to creating,   "just a little bit more" ends up rolling into a huge pile of procrastination.  This, in turn, transforms itself into a barrier from you becoming extraordinary.

While there is nothing wrong with being ordinary, if you really wanted to be ordinary, I doubt you'd be reading this.  You're here because you hate that feeling of mediocrity that we all get (no seriously, from painters who are known the world over to Monkey + Seal) from time to time.

That dull feeling of not doing enough, that there is not enough time, that your work isn't ______ enough, that you don't know the right people or that it's just so damn hard to get up and stop watching anime and crappy horror movies on Netflix.  Mediocrity is that feeling of "just a little bit more" of watching television, or playing video games.

While we always want everyone to stay healthy and be sustainable, don't confuse sustainability with procrastination.  Also, while we believe that everyone will make it to their dreams someday, you can make "someday" come a lot sooner if you hustle and get down to creating.

So how do you defeat "just a little bit more" and move on to realizing your amazing true self?   We admit, it's especially hard since it's so easy to ride that slippery slope into "just one more," then "just one more," on repeat until you have bed sores and your eyes are burning from too much exposure to computer monitor radiation.  Well, you don't.  The thing that you change is what you do "just a little bit" more.

When it's late at night and you're working on a painting, think "just a little bit more."  When you're dancing and your legs are getting tired but you're wondering when you should quit, think "just a little bit more."

Overnight, no one goes from unknown to mega-celebrity, from student to master, from hobbyist to professional.  No one goes from being shy about your art to speaking about it in front of curators, or from getting stage fright to completely owning a stage without hard work.

We get it.  Doing stuff that helps realize your true potential is really difficult work.  You have to do things that you know you should be doing even though they might make you feel uncomfortable.  But if you do them "just a little bit more," they'll become easier and easier.  So try pushing yourself "just a little bit more" and start to realize that badass artist that you really are.

How to Fix the Problem of Style

Whenever you hear artists talking about "breaking into the biz," the topic of style will undoubtably come up.  We guarantee that at least one person will ask the question "Do I need a style?" or "How do I find my style?"

We can answer that very simply right off the bat:  "Yes, if you want a job," and "Lots of art.  Lots and lots of art."

The first part is pretty reasonable: art directors/gallery curators/talent scouts/literary agents/etc. need you to have a style.  You might wince at this truth, but believe us, it's true.  As a hiring manager, the art director is going to look for someone that is safe, reliable, and they believe they can trust.  For an art director hiring you as a freelance artist, they are literally gambling their career on you.  If you mess up a book cover that delays production, besides you getting fired, the art director's job could be on the line as well.  So it's safe to say that yes, you do need a style as the person hiring you is looking for something reliable, and a style is your reliable method of expressing yourself.

The second part can be depressing or comforting all at the same time.  It can be a major bummer, as there is unfortunately no shortcut to finding a style besides making tons and tons of art.  It's comforting in the way that it is something that will come, and you can only speed up by working really really hard.

Simple as that.

So we've all agreed that you do need a style.  Well, what if you have multiple styles?  What if you like to work in metal sculpture, but you also do spoken word?  Or what if you love to paint detailed landscapes in watercolor but also love huge abstract oils?  What if you're a modern dancer and a short story writer?  How can your fellow artists ask that you choose between your true loves?

Or how about the fact that you like changing your style up from month to month.  Maybe you like photorealism, then you like loose brush pen work.  Maybe switching from well-composed photos in black and white to wild experimentations with exposure and light.  How can you ever hope to just stick to one single thing?

Well, if you know us at all, you'll know that we're big on experimentation, and not big on binary thinking.  The secret to fixing the issue of choosing a style and sticking with it is knowing that you don't have to.  

Yes, you heard us right, you don't have to stick to a certain style.  Please keep reading before you run off and send your art director your new experiment in style, however.  

So while you don't have to stick with a single style all your life, or even all month, it is important that you develop a body of work that has a consistent style.  You want to show curators or art directors or whomever might be asking for your work that you can consistently (key word here) produce the same style of work.  

What you can do, however, is create side projects.  If you find multiple, very different styles that you're constantly switching between, we recommend making an entirely different artist persona.  While Monkey (ie Rick Kitagawa) is known for dark, creepy, scary paintings, his other artist persona creates wildly light-hearted, funny paintings.  By separating the two styles into two distinct artists, Monkey has allowed himself the freedom to constantly work in both styles, but also maintains the commercial appeal of having a consistent style that people can count on him for.  

If you don't want to go as far as to create a whole new alias, you can always just create little sub-portfolios.  You show the art director for the game company your game asset portfolio, and you show your giant abstract pieces to your interior decorator collectors, and you show your giant paintings of purple elephants to your group of collectors who are into that sort of thing.  The main thing is that you don't want the video game art director to think that you're only going to give them purple elephants - you want that person to think you're going to give them awesome game assets.  

So, while it is the harsh reality that if you want to make money, you will need a consistent style at some point, think of it like a project identity, less of like a ball and chain that will hamper your creativity.