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You are dedicated to your craft. You have spent countless hours honing your skills. You have a boundless curiosity for the underlying theories and structure of communicating ideas. You are the artist who finds the connections between your medium and other communications media. You are the artist who relishes in a setback; after all, it's a new opportunity to learn and grow. Inspiration is more than a haphazard mode of thought requiring constant nurturing: it is your natural state of mind.

Lean Into Art is where you go when you're ready to push yourself as an artist in new ways. As a place to learn communication arts online it combines an art-journaling approach, the best of live and time-shifted classes, and a recognition system that encourages students to finish projects, give feedback, even participate in teaching.

It's a big art challenge - that's why we put the enticing warning in the name. You have to lean into it.

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Friday
May182012

LIA Cast 36 - Preparedness, Pt 2

In this follow-up to LIA Cast 34, Rob takes Jerzy through some more practical examples of how diagramming, spreadsheeting, and mood mapping can help you sort through and prioritize the many creative projects that can line up to demand your time.

 

Also: What should we call the LIA Cast listeners? Let us know via Twitter or G+!

Links mentioned in this episode:

Social Networking

 

LIA Cast 36 - Preparedness, Pt 2

Wednesday
May092012

LIA Cast 35 - Artisanal Entertainment

Should visual artists think of themselves also as entertainers? Can the work speak for itself, allowing the artist to stay behind the scenes? What about a little of both? And what does it even mean to say one is an entertainer?

We walk around these questions this week and examine some well-known entertainers to see what they do to foster engagement with their fans. We also spend some time looking at what benefits such engagement brings, from networking to audience building to having more fun at public events.

Links mentioned in this episode:

Social Networking

 

Download/Listen

 

LIA Cast 35 - Artisanal Entertainment

Monday
Apr302012

LIA Cast 34 - Are You Ready To Buy The Car?

Spreadsheets are sometimes the symbol of numbness-inducing number-crunching to creative types, but in this week's audio-only Lean Into Art Cast, Rob walks us through how they can be used to make better choices in our creative lives. As it happens, it's a lot like buying a car!

Links mentioned in this episode:

Social Networking

 

 

Monday
Apr232012

Polytechnicast - Juggling Part 2, De facto Hiatuses

Juggling_part_2_-_de_facto_hiatuses

In this mostly "art journal" style episode of the Polytechnicast I reflect on how I’ve been applying something I learned via juggling to my creative projects. I also share how that relates to which projects are getting my time and attention.

Links Mentioned and Related

Follow Rob on Twitter or his blog at Interactive-Storyteller.com and workshops at Lean Into Art

Polytechnicast_-_Juggling_Part_2,_De_facto_Hiatuses.mp3 Listen on Posterous

Friday
Apr202012

LIA Cast 33 - The Applause You Deserve

 

Please RT! Check out and "Like" my FB page! How about a +1? Give my Kickstarter a mention, why don't ya?

The gatekeepers (publishers) have been removed from your path to getting your work seen, but does this then make the public itself the gatekeepers? If so, how do you reach out to them and share your work? If we agree that we all have to do our own marketing and publicity, how do we do it in an effective and pragmatic manner?

Are the social media experts right, and we simply need to cajole the more famous members of our fields to mention us? Remind our constuencies to re-tweet, like, and +1 our stuff? We all want applause for the work we do, but how does our thinking change when we rephrase the question to getting the applause we deserve?

Links mentioned in this episode:

Social Networking