What’s Inspiring You This Week?

“I always thought I should be treated like a star.” - Madonna

Today at Creative Journey Cafe, let’s share some inspiration.

Here are a few things that are inspiring me this week:

1. A comic by Michael Sloan called Zen of Professor Nimbus.

2. Madonna’s latest video.

3. The new TV spot for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

4. The daily blog of illustrator/painter James Gurney, creator of Dinotopia.

5. Prince showing the kids how it’s done at the Coachella Festival.

What about you? What are you excited about this week? What’s inspiring you?

Leave a comment (and share a link)!

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“Formal education will make you a living. Self-education will make you a fortune.” - Jim Rohn

In my previous post, I talked about learning basic financial terms as a way to gain confidence about your finances.

Another thing that helped me was to give myself a crash-course in personal finance. I spent a little bit of time every day focusing on a particular subject - like mortgages, or IRAs. I’d study each one that I was interested in until I had a basic grasp of what they were about.

Beyond the definitions, and beyond making money itself, here are the basic actions most financial experts agree we should take:

1. Get health insurance.

2. Don’t spend more than you earn. Avoid credit cards whenever possible - pay cash or use a debt card instead. Even if you pay off your credit card every month, studies show that people spend 12-18% more with credit than they do with cash. (That’s why McDonald’s started accepting credit cards!) 

Establishing financial goals is also a good idea. Do you want a house? A car? Want to retire comfortably? Setting inspiring goals might stop you from buying that $40 concert T-shirt.

3. Keep a budget. Write down how much money you earn every month. Then write down how much you spend, including the little things, like that Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. $3 per day seems like nothing until you realize that’s $1,095 a year. Multiply that by 20 years - that’s almost $22,000! And that doesn’t include interest earned from investing.

4. Save three to six months worth of living expenses in an emergency fund. Create an “emergency” savings account, and deposit money there automatically & electronically every month. (Dave Ramsey suggests beginning with a $1,000 emergency fund as an initial goal, then building from there.)

5. Pay off all debts, smallest to largest. All that extra money you’re paying in interest to your credit card company could be invested in your personal savings.

6. Open a retirement account as soon as possible - an IRA or Roth IRA (there are several types) through a broker like Fidelity. Put the same amount of money in there every month (”dollar cost averaging“). Do this as soon as possible to take advantage of time and compound interest.  Again, make it automatic through your bank & broker. Once your retirement account is open, invest the money in mutual funds. What type of mutual fund(s) you invest in depends on your age, goals, and the amount risk you’re willing to accept.

These are the basics…again, just a few of the ABCs. There’s obviously a lot more to it, but the idea is to begin some of these simple steps if you haven’t already. 

If you have helpful tips or thoughts to share, leave a comment!

“All I ask is the chance to prove that money can’t make me happy.”
  - Spike Milligan

If you’re like most artists, you were born a dreamer with your head in the clouds. Growing up, you probably thrived in Art, Music, and English classes. You excel at painting, writing, cooking, or acting. Your friends think you’re a creative genius. You even graduated from college!

There’s just one problem - when it comes to money and finance, you feel like an idiot.

How the heck did that happen? Here are some reasons:

• Basic financial education isn’t taught in school.
• Artists generally care more about making art, not money.
• Art schools teach you how to paint, but they don’t teach you squat about money.
• Your well-meaning parents just didn’t teach you enough about financial management.

So here you are, thrust into this mysterious world of mortgages, credit cards, IRAs, and the stock market, and you feel like a dumb tourist lost in a land where everyone speaks the same language except for you.

Here’s the good news: you’re not alone, and you can fix the problem.

Where do you begin? You can do what I did - start educating yourself. The financial world has it’s own vocabulary, rules, and steps to follow, just like painting, knitting, and writing do. You’re not stupid because you don’t understand it. You just haven’t learned the language of money yet. 

Here are some simple ways to improve your financial IQ:

1. Start learning the vocabulary: whenever you hear a financial term you don’t understand, jot it down and look it up on the internet. Keep a notebook. Keep the notebook in your bathroom or someplace where you can review it easily.

2. Watch the financial channels on TV. Leave them on in the background. Absorb the lingo, watch the panelists. Take notes.

3. Listen to The Dave Ramsey Radio Show. Dave’s “ministry” is to teach basic financial principles to regular folks like us. He offers sound, hopeful advice and encourages a debt-free lifestyle. You can subscribe to his podcast on iTunes, or listen to his archived shows via his website.

4. Read these books: The Trick To Money Is Having Some by Stuart Wilde, and Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki.

Once you start learning the language of money and finance, the more confident you’ll feel, and the better informed you’ll be when making financial decisions.

Do you have any advice to share about becoming financially savvy? Any resources you recommend? Leave a comment!

“There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” - Anais Nin

Ah, Spring. Time to grow, time to shine, time to blossom…

Time to emerge, time to play, time to show our true colors…

O spring! May the warm air thaw our frozen hearts. May the gentle breeze blow the dust off our imaginations.  May the sunlight illuminate our hidden creative genius.

Here’s to spring! Let it remind you that the grass is always greener on your side. Let the blue sky reveal a clear path to your destiny. May you sing as bravely as the first morning bird! 

It’s spring! Who knows what magic awaits around the corner. Have faith with every step on your creative journey. You never know - you might discover a mysterious garden.

Is springtime inspiring you, too? Leave a comment!

 “The perfect temperature for tea is two degrees hotter than just right.” - Terri Guillemets

Before I explain what a cup of tea has to do with you and your creativity, let me ask a question:

Do you ever worry that people don’t appreciate your work?

I’ve noticed that sometimes, even when I do my best work, some people don’t seem to like it. Or worse - they ignore it. There’s no reason for them not to like it, really - it’s good, professional work.

You might expect criticism from strangers or competitors, but friends and family? They’re supposed to love everything you do!

But they don’t. Not always.

Even your colleagues and mentors will criticize you - people you respect. Ouch!

This is one of the harsh realities of being a creative person - especially if you work alone. You want that boost of encouragement and validation.  But here’s the thing…

You are not going to be everyone’s cup of tea.

It’s just a fact. The sooner you accept it, the happier and freer you’ll be.

Some people love chamomile tea but not Earl Grey. Some like green tea, others like peppermint.

Think of yourself and your creative work in the same way - as a particular flavor. Even if you’re the tastiest strawberry on earth, some people will still reach for a banana.

Don’t you find it amazing how millions of people love Barry Manilow’s music yet millions hate it at the same time? Still, Barry plays Copacabana again and again for his fans who adore him. He doesn’t change his flavor to win over Metallica fans, or Jay-Z fans. He knows he’s not everyone’s cup of tea, and that’s okay. 

People will criticize you. It can be helpful. Maybe your cup of tea could use a little sweetening, or a twist of lemon to add some zing. Stay open minded, for sure, but if you like your cup the way it is, by all means leave it alone. Your true fans will love you for it.

What flavor tea are you? How is your creativity like a cup of tea? Leave a comment!

Duane Keiser is a painter from Virginia with a trend-setting blog called A Painting A Day. The title says it all. Since 2004, in addition to his larger works, Duane has created a postcard-sized painting every day (give or take a few) and sold each one through his blog. His amazing work and clever marketing strategy have earned him an international audience of collectors and a feature in USA Today. I’m honored that Duane took time away from his easel to answer some questions at Creative Journey Cafe.

How did you develop the discipline to make a painting a day?

My painting teacher, Ray Berry, was also my karate teacher. I’ve practiced, quite intensely, a very traditional and rigorous form of Karate for around 23 years (Shotokan Karate of America). In a Shotokan practice we will often perform a single, basic technique a thousand times. We try to make each technique the best we can make it until, one day and tens of thousands of techniques later, it becomes second nature to us.

These kinds of practices are incredibly demanding and they require that you make up your mind to finish them. Our personal practices often involve setting up a specific challenge for ourselves like, say, making a thousand punches everyday for a month or making a practice of some sort everyday for a year, etc. (Ray made a hard practice everyday for 14 years and didn’t miss a day!) So by the time I attempted a painting a day, that kind of mentality was already ingrained in me. I’ve also been lucky to have been surrounded by people a lot more disciplined than I am throughout my life, so when I made up my mind to make a painting a day I did so with many examples of what real discipline is. I’m generally a slacker in comparison! 

For those of us who might try a similar experiment, what challenges will we face and how can we overcome them?

As I mentioned above, you first have to make up your mind and commit to the project. You will not get anything out of it if you treat it like a hobby - like something you can take or leave depending on how you feel that day. Ray always used to tell his students that painting is blue collar work (ie if road workers can work on a hot asphalt highway in 100 degree weather all day long, we painters can certainly drag our asses to our easels to paint, even when we’re a little tired, bored, frustrated or even sick.)

Time will be a problem too - you need to plan and build your day around each session. Keep your easel, paints, and brushes ready to go at all times so that you don’t have a half a dozen little things you need to do in order to start painting. Prepare a few dozen supports in advance.

Set up a reasonable duration for yourself because everybody has a different situation in their life. So maybe say you can make a painting a day for a week, rather than a month or a year.

Expectations: if this is your first time doing this, or if you’re just learning to paint, don’t worry too much about good or bad. Just paint. Treat your paintings like experiments or meditations - you are savoring some object or scene via paint. Whether that paint forms a masterpiece or not should not be a concern. It helps if, in the beginning, you take some pressure off yourself by making this a private affair - no blog, no selling, etc. Just paint. When you are done with each painting, pin them to a wall. When you have 50 or so, sit down and take a look at what you have and then maybe make a decision about making them public or not.

Can you talk about money and art? You seem to thrive as a fine artist, selling every painting you post on your blog. How did you develop your business side?

I, like many artists, was always concerned about business mixing with my paint and muddying my palette, so to speak. I didn’t want to end up making widgets - meaningless products created for sales (ie rent) rather than as a pursuit of a deeply personal aesthetic vision.

Being business savvy, I think, starts with viewing marketing and selling as creative pursuits rather than necessary evils. For instance, one day several years ago I decided to have an art show in my studio of my small works. I priced them extremely cheap. I bought lots of wine and beer - it ended up being a big party. It was a great time, lots of paintings sold and many people bought their first original paintings. I sold work that was honest and meaningful to me and lots of new patrons went home with paintings that were meaningful to them. It was a wonderful feeling and it was good business.

Your powers of sight are extraordinary. Your work is representational yet not photo-realistic. How do you define that line between rendering objects accurately yet not making it look like a photo?

I generally (I stress generally) don’t like photo-realist work because the paint itself is usually dead. There is no poetry, just a rather bland description. Paint is mysterious to me - you place a mark on the canvas, then another and another until, maybe, something happens. If it is right, the paint and the subject mesh together into some unnameable third thing. You are never quite sure how or why it happens but you know it when it does and it can just as mysteriously disappear on you if you overwork it. James Elkins compared painting to alchemy in the sense that it can be a transformative process whereby paint becomes something else rather than simply representing a subject (ie Rembrandt’s paint almost becoming skin in his self-portraits.) So I suppose I don’t really think in terms of stylistic lines (ie photorealism, impressionism, etc.) but rather I try to be sensitive to how the paint feels under my brush while at the same time staying connected to what that mark is representing.

What artists - contemporary or otherwise - excite you?

The ones that excite me include: the three V’s - Velazquez, Vermeer and Vuillard. Also, Rembrandt, Corot, Constable, Chardin, Cezanne, Hopper, DeKooning, Diebenkorn. Contemporary: Thiebaud, Howard Hodgkin, Ray Berry, Robert Bauer, Jane Wilson and about a half a dozen others I can’t think of at the moment.

What’s the purpose of art?

Honestly, I don’t think I can put it into words, which is probably for the better.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I’d like to thank Duane for his time and for sharing his knowledge and experience with us. Be sure to visit A Painting A Day, and forward this inspiring interview to your creative friends! 

Oh, and don’t forget - Leave a comment! Tell us what you think.

“I hope that after I die, people will say of me: ‘That guy sure owed me a lot of money.’” -  Jack Handey

Today at the Creative Journey Cafe, I thought I’d ask you a question:

What are your favorite inspirational quotes?

I’m talking life-changing quotes. Quotes you tack on your wall. Quotes that make you go “Oooooooh”. Quotes to live up to. Quotes that expand your mind, open your heart, get you through the day, and set you on a new path along your creative journey.

Here’s a few that I love:

“How simple it is to see that we can only be happy now, and there will never be a time when it is not now.” - Gerald Jampolsky

“Let go and let God.” - Anon.

“What will you do with your one wild and precious life?” - Mary Oliver

“Follow your bliss.” - Joseph Campbell

“It’s a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.” - W. Somerset Maugham

“Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a serious lack of imagination.”
- Oscar Wilde

“Enjoy every sandwich.” - Warren Zevon

“What’s wrong with right now unless you think about it?” - Sailor Bob

“Try not! Do, or do not. There is no try.” - Yoda

I could go on, but I’ll turn it over to you. What are your favorite life-changing quotes? Leave a comment! (and be sure to read the awesome quotes people are sharing!)

If Creative Journey Cafe was a real cafe, I’d hire these talented singer-songwriters to come and perform, and at the very least I’d play their music constantly for your enjoyment. You’ll find their albums available on iTunes, but here’s an introduction:

1. Eddi Reader

(Watch this video of Eddi performing Kiteflyer’s Hill.)

The first time I heard Eddi Reader I was driving on the highway when this beautiful song came on the radio that gave me goosebumps. I literally had to pull over and listen to the whole thing. It was called Kiteflyer’s Hill. Not long after I heard it, Eddi came to Boston and I got to meet her and give her a bunch of sketches I drew of her while she performed. She was super-cool and has a voice like an angel. I recommend her albums Angels & Electricity and Eddi Reader.

2. Kaki King

(Here’s a video of Kaki doing her magic.)

Her new album is called Dreaming of Revenge and it fulfills all your dreamy, hypnotic, acoustic-pop needs. She’s a guitar virtuoso of sorts, whacking the fretboard and doing all kinds of crazy stuff she probably shouldn’t be doing to her instrument, which is what makes her stand out.

3. Christine Kane

(This video is quintessential Christine.)

I saw her perform for the first time 10 years ago at a popular Massachusetts coffeehouse and I’ve followed her career ever since. Why wouldn’t I? She’s one of the best singer-songwriters out there. Her lyrics are tender and evocative, and she tells hilarious stories while she’s tuning up.

When she’s not making great albums and touring, Christine maintains a popular blog, teaches creativity classes to the federal government, and offers her “Great Big Dreams” retreats for women. She’s a true example of how amazing things can happen when you follow your heart.

Be sure to check out these incredibly talented artists! Do you have any you can recommend that we might not know about? Leave a comment…

“Do you feel lucky, punk? Well do ya?” - Clint Eastwood

Do you feel lucky to be a creator? I mean, do you ever stop to think about how lucky you are to do something you love that brings joy to others and rewards you at the same time?

Do you have a symbol - an object - that reminds you to be grateful?

I do. It’s a pen. But not an ordinary pen. It’s kind of special.

Here’s the story of how I got it:

I recently had the good fortune of parlaying my caricaturing skills into some free cruises.  (Yeah, I’d hate me too if I weren’t the one cruising.)

The first cruise was to Bermuda.  I drew for a couple hours a day on the ship, then hit the beaches and explored the island.  

One day I visited an art gallery. After viewing the paintings, I was about to leave when I noticed a dark hallway in back. I figured I’d check it out. 

At the end of the hall I saw a door opened just a crack. I peeked inside.

It was a room filled with hundreds of wooden sculptures. In the center of the room sat the sculptor himself - an old black man, tapping away at a block of wood.

He invited me in.

His name was Chesley. We chatted as I admired his work. He said he was a retired art teacher. He spent his days sculpting and volunteering at the island prison.

I told him I was an artist too, that I was drawing passengers on the cruise ship. When he heard this he stopped working and looked at me with a gleam in his eye.

“No kidding!” he said. Then he thought for a second. “Hey - see those pens over there on that counter?”

I noticed some beautiful wooden pens. “Yeah?”

“I carved those from Bermuda cedar. They’re worth $60 apiece. If I give you one will you draw me?”

“Absolutely!”

He dusted off a pad of paper, gave it to me, and posed while I drew him.

Then he said something that totally amazed me.

“Nobody’s ever drawn me before.”

I couldn’t believe it! He was at least 70, an artist and an art teacher his whole life, and the first person to ever draw his portrait was…me?

He swore it was true.

He loved my sketch, said his grandkids would love it too. He gave me the pen, shook my hand, and I left.

I still marvel at the bizarre twists of fate that led me to Chesley’s studio so that we could share our talents with one another. I used his pen at my very first book signing last summer, and use it on special occasions to remind myself what a lucky punk I am to create for a living!

Say, would you like to see Chesley in action? I found this video of him on YouTube, working in his studio…exactly the way I found him. 

Do you have a Gratitude Pen?  What object can you use to remind yourself to be grateful for your talent? Leave a comment!

“…Some of my better work has come later, I think.”
    -  Robert Duvall

Do you ever worry that you haven’t achieved the creative success you’d like?

Still trying to figure out what you want to be when you grow up?

You’re not alone!

Many famous creators bloomed later in life. Here are just a few inspiring success stories:

1. Rodney Dangerfield - He sold aluminum siding for years while he struggled as a writer and comedian. He didn’t get his first big break until he was 42.

2. Al Jarreau - The famous jazz vocalist didn’t release his first album until he was 38.

3. Julia Child - Her first book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, was published when she was 49. Her television debut came a few years later when she was in her early 50s.

4. Charles Bukowski - The famous novelist/poet worked at the post office for years. He was 49 when his first book was published.

5. Laura Ingalls Wilder - Her first book, Little House in the Big Woods came out when she was 65. It was the first of her 8-volume Little House series.

6. Stan Lee - He was in his early 40s when he created Spider-Man and most of his other legendary superheroes. His partner, artist Jack Kirby, started drawing The Fantastic Four when he was 44.

7. Colonel Sanders - Didn’t franchise Kentucky Fried Chicken until he was 65.

8. Robert Duvall - He was 40 when he acted in The Godfather.

9. Raymond Chandler - The famous novelist published his first short story at age 45. His first book, The Big Sleep, came out when he was 51.

10. Buckminster Fuller - The visionary architect and inventor didn’t truly begin his career until he was 32. Instead of committing suicide after going bankrupt and losing his daughter to pneumonia, he decided to conduct “an experiment…to find what a single individual can contribute to changing the world and benefiting all of humanity.”

I wish I had more women on the list, but there’s a book by Prill Boyle called Defying Gravity: A Celebration of Late-Blooming Women that you might want to check out.

I’m always inspired when I hear these kinds of stories, aren’t you? Leave a comment!