Hi, this is Eric and welcome to the new episode
of "Coffee Talk with Eric."
So, today I actually talk about
something more related to art.
So I wanna talk about inspiration and motivation.
Now, inspiration and motivation,
these are very commonly discussed.
So I'm not gonna pretend I'm some sort
of motivational speaker or something like that.
That's not what I'm about.
I am not Gary V,
but I do want to share a little bit of my experience
that happened to me lately.
So my son, my oldest son, he is in his seventh grade now
and because last year, the pandemic,
he has been doing remote learning for the past year,
year and a half.
And this year, when he go back to school,
he's starting to kind of fall behind
because he wasn't able to get as much help as he need
last year and it's affecting everybody.
I'm working at home too
and things are a little bit more difficult.
So he is falling behind, especially on math.
Now, I do believe that he is smarter than me
when I was his age,
so I am not worried at all,
I'm pretty sure he can catch up
and he will be able to get good grades and things like that.
But his confidence got a little bit a hit
when he sees that he's not getting good grade,
when he sees that he's falling behind.
So he told me that he lost his motivation.
He don't feel like doing his homework
and he don't feel like trying to work extra hard
to catch up on his schoolwork and things like that.
So we had a little bit of a heart to heart talk
the other weekend and he asked me, he's like,
"Dad, how do you get motivated to do all of the work,
and painting and everything that you do?"
And I just looked at him and I just said that,
"You know, man,
if you wait for motivation to come, it will never come."
Because motivation is not some magical exterior force
that just come to you and fills you up.
And you feel so pumped and you start to do something.
Now you can listen to motivation speech all the time,
and it might get you pumped up for a little bit,
but for you to actually consistently do something,
that motivation is not from anywhere but yourself.
You are the source of your own motivation.
If we think of ourself as a vessel for our creativity,
for our art, for our work,
then our heart is the engine,
our mind is the control center, and so on.
Then the motivation has to come from ourself.
Because unless you want somebody to push you,
unless you want somebody to control you,
like you're acting like a puppet,
then you need to be your own source of motivation.
But the good news is that getting started
is the hardest thing.
Once you get started, the momentum will just take over.
I have a commission painting,
that I need to paint a album cover,
a CD cover for a small creator, she's a pianist.
But I was pretty tired lately.
The last video that I did took quite a bit of time
and my day job is a little bit more demanding lately.
So sometime I do lost that motivation to get started,
but I really want to finish that
so I can move on to my next project.
So I tried to push myself.
So I take the white paper out,
I get my painting block out and just put it on the easel.
And I just started to sit in front of it and start.
Now, I don't know about you,
but looking at the dreadful, perfectly white paper is one
of the hardest thing when you are getting started.
It's really difficult to get over that mental hurdle
to really put down that first pencil mark
or first brush stroke.
But I did it anyways.
I start to draw and next thing you know,
I finished the whole line drawing.
And I took a little bit of break,
but I looked at that line drawing
and I really want to get started,
so that line drawing can urge me to start painting.
And I just thought to myself, "Well,
I don't know how much time I have,
but at least maybe I can finish her face."
Her face is like little portion of the whole painting.
You know, it's like 1/10 of the size of the painting.
So I thought that, "Well,
I can just finish her face first
because that's kind of like a focal point
of the painting anyway.
So I'll start from that."
So I just start painting her face
and after I finished painting her face, next thing I know,
I just continue on and finished the whole painting.
And I didn't expect that.
I just thought that I'll finish her face
and come back tomorrow and finish the rest of the painting.
But the momentum just take over
because I want to see how the full painting looks like.
I really want to share with her my result.
So after I'm done with the face,
I just continue and finished the whole painting.
And that's my own personal experience,
that once you get started,
once you push yourself to get started,
the momentum will just take over,
the creative juice start to flow within you
and you are able to start doing your painting,
finish your work.
But getting started is the hardest part.
Same thing as inspiration.
I sometimes heard some artists said that,
"I don't feel inspired."
Well, inspiration doesn't always just fall on your lap.
Okay? It's not like we're Newtons.
The apple will just fall on our head
and all of a sudden we got inspired
and we start to have our Eureka moment and start to do work.
For me inspiration is for you to actively looking
for things, subjects to paint.
I took a bike ride out because it's starting to turn fall
and there are a lot of beautiful colors starting
to appears around the neighborhood.
So I took my bike, riding around, took some photos,
and I tried to find inspiration that way,
actively looking for inspiration.
You know, and aside from that,
like, this is gonna sound cringey,
but every time I look at my wife,
I feel like I want to paint her again.
And I have quite a few photos that I can work with as well.
So that also kind of inspired me to do another portrait
of her as well.
I haven't done it
because I have some other project lining up,
but we are also responsible
to inspire ourself.
It's not like we're just sitting here,
something will just happen and we get inspired.
So I think it's very important for us,
especially as an artist,
we take back that responsibility and power
to create the motivations,
to be our own source of motivation,
and also to find inspiration ourself,
to actively looking for that.
Now I'm not going to pretend like I understand your life.
Some of us are going through a very tough time,
going through a job that is really so life-sucking
and left you with little to no energy to do anything.
So if that's you,
I hope you are able to get out of that situation,
you know, take enough rest and just really feel better first
and just really get you back into that state of able
to motivate yourself to do things.
But at the same time,
I do also see some people that even though
they are going through tough times,
they are physically able
and they do have the time and energy to do things,
but they choose not to because they want to wait
for quote, unquote, "motivation," to come to them.
They want to wait for a quote, unquote, "inspiration,"
to come to inspire them.
And to me, that's just not the way to do it.
You really need to push yourself to get moving,
to get started.
Because again, once you get started,
the momentum will take over
and you will be able to start producing stuff,
in comparing to sitting there idly by,
producing something is always better.
Even if you produce bad work,
even if you paint a unsuccessful painting
that you don't like,
it's still better than produce nothing, in my opinion.
So I hope this little "Coffee Talk" can be a reminder
for you and also be a little bit of encouragement for you.
And hopefully you will know that you are not alone.
Getting started on painting is not very easy.
It can be very difficult, but we are all in this together.
So hopefully you can really push yourself
to just get started.
Even just something small, like very simple,
a small value study painting.
And that can still be better than not doing anything
if you have the time and energy to do so.
So thank you for listening to this "Coffee Talk"
and I will see you guys next time.
(gentle music)