*light guitar music*
So, I’ve been reading this book
called Your Brain on Art, it's actually coming out in March.
I have an advance reader copy, but I'll be linking to it below
because it is available for preorder and I'll let you know on Instagram
when it does come out.
So if you haven't yet, go follow me on Instagram.
But basically it's
this interesting nonfiction take on what neuroscience is discovering
about art. And how really as human beings, we are built to thrive
when things are artistic and aesthetic. How it physically changes us.
It releases all these neurochemicals and affects our our whole body.
It improves our memory.
And basically, humans are designed to thrive on art.
And I just think that so interesting. Like so much in society
does act like, “Art, or making things pretty, is just extra.
It's not that necessary.”
It's like the frills, right?
You know, like that concept of like no frills.
Well, like the frills matter.
The frills, like, completely can make our lives
better and our health better and our mental health better, too.
And I just think that's fascinating.
Anyway, “Your Brain on Art.” I’m about 20-ish percent
through it so far, but I'm really enjoying it.
Which speaking of art, Skillshare is sponsoring
this video and I really wanted to try this class
I saw on there about art journaling.
And so I thought we could do that and I wanted to share my thoughts
while we do that
on my goals because I know I
have this whole goal setting video and why I've been struggling with them.
I had some deep realizations I need to share with you guys
about the nature of change and everything.
But before we can get into that, let us actually get ready for the day
and get out of bed.
Okay, so you might have noticed that I rearrange the studio.
So I have a tendency to just want to rearrange furniture on a regular basis.
Though this rearrangement was mostly inspired by this mirror,
but this mirror is actually the same as the mirror doors in my bedroom.
In fact, this is just the mirror door out of my sister's bedroom.
She's recently
been sort of remodeling her bedroom. She hated these mirror doors.
So she took it out.
And I have actually been looking for a mirror for my studio for a while.
And do you know how ridiculously expensive
mirrors are?
They're so expensive, guys.
Anyway, when my sister was, like, taking these out of her room, I'm like,
“It's pretty much a giant mirror.”
So I have a dream of painting its frame white
just because I think that will go with a lot of the white accents in the room.
The fact the trim is white.
However,
I'm kind of scared because I'm like, “Do I use spray paint?
Do I use the same paint that is used
for the trim in this room?”
I'm like, “What if I mess it up?”
So that's why it's still gold.
In other studio news,
I separated my studio lights. The other day,
it looked like they were kissing. I was quite a scandalized.
I was I was like, “Both of you lights are too young for this.”
So I put them on opposite sides of the room.
I'm trying to find places
to put them that I can just put them and leave them there.
That is my ultimate goal, though, other than breaking up
their romance.
So, guys, I made a sandwich, that's falling apart.
Okay, well, not going as planned.
Which takes us, ironically, to something else I was really wanting
to talk about in this video, like I mentioned earlier. Which is
so if you guys saw
my video, I made a while back. The one where I was like, “I'm
going to completely change my life and do all these different things.”
Well, I've already shared in other videos how I was struggling with that.
I feel like it did put a lot of pressure on myself, but
I don't regret making that video.
And I think the reason why is because setting all those goals
made me aspire towards them.
And as I aspired towards them and failed epically over and over again,
I learned so much about myself
and I feel like I grew a lot as a person.
And so really that was something I wanted to talk about in this video,
which is, I would say the number one reason
I haven't been able to reach or even move towards a lot of my goals.
But before we dove into that, I need to eat my sandwich.
It shredded itself.
Okay, now I've ate my sandwich.
It's time to talk about the deep realizations of life I've had.
So when I made that video about changing my habits,
what I
did not realize was that in large part,
my habits were not the problem.
What the problem was was myself.
I was the problem,
as the Taylor Swift song would go.
Everything in our life, our habits, our routines, how we dress.
It comes from deep inside of us.
Pretty much what someone can see about our life and what we can easily
see about our lives comes from the things buried
deep inside us, like our experiences, our emotions,
our beliefs about ourselves
and trying to change our habits or something about ourself,
It's kind of like going around it backwards.
What we have to do is change ourselves and then our habits
and those things will be so much easier to change
because we do the deep, internal, personal work.
Now, let me give you an example of this
for better clarification.
I set the goal of going to the gym and exercising.
Nothing was physically stopping me from going to the gym.
I have a gym membership. I have the outfits.
I could go.
What was stopping me was the things deep inside me.
Beliefs like, “You know what?
If there's work to be done, I need to prioritize that.
Taking care of myself is not a priority.” And just other stuff
like a fear of the gym, fear of other people at the gym.
Like, I don't know, my gym is pretty, I would say family friendly,
but I have been to gyms sometimes,
but they're all like really buff and like gym people.
And I just feel so out of place and like, “They think I'm wimpy.”
That's just one example of how it was issues inside of me,
such as prioritizing everything over my health
that was stopping me from doing the surface trait of actually
going to the gym.
Another example would be like my struggle to learn Korean.
I have
everything I need to practice, to study, but I won't do it.
And I realize the reason I won't is because I'm pretty much convinced
I sound dumb.
I'm the worst Korean speaker in the world.
People like all Korean people, would probably cringe if they heard me
attempt to speak Korean and thereby I avoid it, if at all possible.
But I want to do it.
But it's my deep internal beliefs about my inability to learn a language.
I'm just not good at it.
I’ll never be good at it.
Everyone's going to laugh at me.
That holds me back.
And really, I know I'm not the only one with this.
I feel like all people have this about something in their lives.
So really it was this realization that it's the deep things inside of us
that actually need to change if we want to change any of our surface habits.
That made me realize that my journey to change
my life needs to be focused so much more internally, like
on personal development, on changing these beliefs
I have about my self, work, money, life, everything,
and then the habits will be easier to change.
Or they’ll change even just on their own.
And so I know I said in that video that I wanted to share with you guys,
not just that I changed my life, but how I changed my life.
And so here we are.
Here is a pitstop on the changing of life.
Anyway, I thought it would also be really nice,
this part of this personal development journey to start journaling more.
And I've seen some epic art journals and so I want to learn art journaling
with this class on Skillshare.
Of course, Skillshare is sponsoring this video,
so let me tell you guys a little bit about them
and then we can start working on art journaling.
So Skillshare is an online learning platform that has thousands of classes
across so many different topics, from art and design to cooking to crocheting.
There's always something new to learn on Skillshare, and I love how
it really caters to both beginners to more advanced users.
It doesn't matter
where you're at in your creative journey, there's something there for you.
And something I really love about Skillshare
is that their classes are pretty short and simple,
but they leave me with a valuable skill in my artistic journey.
For example, I mentioned before they took crochet on Skillshare.
I've crocheted so many scarves since then. Also, I still love drawing flowers
that I learned how to draw in Florals in Procreate with Sandra Mejia.
In today's video, I'm really looking to work on the project for the Class
Draw Your Life Intro to Illustrated Journaling With Mimi Chao,
and I'm super excited for this. And I loved how encouraging she was in this class,
pointing out that even if you are a basic beginner,
when it comes to art, you can still illustrate your life
and come out with something very cool and meaningful.
And right now, Skillshare has a special offer for you guys.
The first 1000 people to click the link in the description
below will get a one month free trial of Skillshare.
So definitely go and check it out.
If you're interested in learning new creative skills.
- Hi guys.
I am excited to share one of my favorite creative exercises,
illustrated journaling.
Illustrated Journaling, or illogging, as I like to call it, is fantastic
because not only do you get all the benefits of regular
journaling from remembering events to chronicling your life
to reflecting on issues, but you can really also use it
as an opportunity to simultaneously work on skills that you want to improve on.
- Okay, so in the class, this teacher teaches us
the really great way to do it using pictures as references.
But guys, I'm feeling incredibly low effort today.
So what I did is I brought in the inspiration pictures.
Which she told us to look at a camera roll for the past week
and get some inspiration pictures. And I put them as a collage in Procreate.
And now I'm just gonna trace over them.
I feel like I’m cheating Mrs. Puff.
But I just..
I just don't feel the effort to just draw them all freeform.
So I'm going to trace
and still try to make something coolly artistic out of it
Also,
Yes, you guys might have noticed I lost
the end of my Apple Pencil.
I've bought replacements for it, and then I lost all those.
Yeah.
*light guitar music*
You want to know something really hard to draw?
Palm trees.
Palm trees are so hard to draw.
Even though I was tracing, it was still hard.
An epic battle was fought with them.
So now that it's done, I feel like it's just time to make some dinner
and finish up this artwork
*music resumes*
So I just did the classic thing where I opened the giant pouring spout
of the spice instead of, you know, the shaker side.
So we're going to see how onion-y
this zucchini is going to turn out now.
oh, it's so past my time to go to bed.
However, I needed to show you my finished art.
This is it.
So for this week’s journal, I really wanted to focus things,
focus on things that made me happy or focus on things
that I was like new trying out or moving towards goals.
And also I have this quote
of “We are feeling beings who think.”
And that just really goes along with what I was talking about earlier
with how it's our feelings about things
that really affect how we live our life versus just thinking a thought like, “Oh,
I want to go the gym, right?”
Like we have to really work on those feelings because we're feeling beings.
Anyway,
that's also just one of the reasons I really wanted to
just start this illustrated journal to help
capture these realizations I have
on my journey as a human being.
That sounds so grandiose.
I'm sorry.
Anyway, also, I just love this concept of illustrated journaling
because if I really have the time to do this every week, we'll see.
Like I might try, but I'm not going to put too much pressure on myself.
Like, think about like you could have an entire book
of your year of illustrations to look back on and that would be so cool.
Anyway, I learned about the illustrative journaling in the Skillshare class
I mentioned before, and again, they have a special offer for you guys,
the first thousand people to use the link in the description
below can get a one month free trial of Skillshare, so definitely go
check that out if you are interested in upping your creative game.
And as always, keep being awesome because you're awesome. Bye!
*music resumes*