Hi everyone.
First off - I want to personally apologize for leaving you all hanging for so long. It's been more than two years since our last post, and while I think, in the long run, it's been better that we've focused our energies elsewhere, we never let any of you know about the change.
When Eve and I started this blog way back when, we barely knew anything, were still in art school, and were honestly just trying to share what little knowledge we had while trying to promote our artwork. We were pleasantly surprised when people would come up to us and tell us how they constantly read our blog and how it's helped them deal with their own lives as creative people.
We tried to constantly post relevant, helpful material, and at one time we were actually posting three times a week (that seems crazy now that we haven't posted for two years- gads!).
Anyway, I wanted to thank all the loyal readers who have asked us when we're coming back, and as a bummer it is to disappoint people, we won't be. At least not on this blog.
However, I want to let everyone know that sharing everything we've learned as artists through the years and helping other artists grow and succeed has actually become a huge priority in our lives. In the past years, both of us have gotten involved in teaching at a much greater level - Eve had a stint teaching beginning digital painting at Expression College, and Rick is still currently teaching entrepreneurship and business for artists at Academy of Art University.
Over the years, we've decided that Monkey + Seal would act as our joint shop - where you actually can buy merchandise, so we kept on thinking that this blog should more act as a place to talk about upcoming show and products and the like.
But we never could really get all that writing about art out of our system (I mean, we just ended up doing it as professors instead of here). That, matched up with both of our frustration with how some of the education systems are working, led us to create a new home for our writing on art and inspiration and success: Lift Off Art.
Lift Off Art is something that has been sort of Rick's backburner project for years now. As soon as he stopped writing here, Lift Off (in various forms) has been his end goal.
Lift Off is solely focused on arts education. We've really been working to create something more than just a blog (although there we always plan to write blogs and articles). Now that Eve is an Art Director, Rick has freelanced and owned companies and hired people, and we both got picked up by different art material sponsors, we want to share what we've learned over these past few years leveling ourselves up.
We have learned wanted to change the way art is taught, and we're doing that by launching a Kickstarter in March to really launch our first course offering. We've found that business books are often the antithesis to artists, art success courses don't have any hard evidence or data, and neither offers the psychological and emotional support that artists so often need. That's what we're trying to do with Lift Off Art.
So if you're interested in that, please make sure to sign up for the Lift Off Newsletter, and we'd love it if you helped spread the word about our launch via Thunderclap (free and easy),
But regardless, if you've found any of our posts here valuable, we'd love to see you over at Lift Off. Thanks again for an amazing seven years. We love all of you!
Cheers,
Rick
PS - Easy update for your bookmarks: http://www.liftoff-art.com/category/blog/
