What can you do in 15 minutes? Eat a bowl of cereal? Walk the dog? Go through your mail? Can’t do much though right? It’s interesting that we tend to look at time a bit differently than other things. Take money for example or a pile of dirt. Hold on, dirt? What?… bear with me here. To buy a house or a car most of us have to save a little each month or get a loan and pay it back a little each month. Likewise, moving a pile of dirt is done one shovel full at a time unless we own a bulldozer or have some sort of super power.

When did it happen? When did we grow past our childish impatience to sit in a car for an eternity, just to arrive at an exciting destination? When did that excruciating wait time turn into a more mature appreciation of the journey itself and give rise to the delightful exclamation, “road trip!”? It certainly changed for me and I find that interesting because my patience for creating art did exactly the same thing and in very similar ways. Ok, so the analogy isn’t perfect. Nobody wants to travel all the time. I guess the joy in a “road trip” for me is a break in routine, a change of pace, fresh sights and sounds. So the analogy breaks down a bit. In one way, however, the analogy fits perfectly, the maturity to enjoy the entire journey, not just the destination. For a moment let’s contemplate our mental approach to that journey that is our artistic development.

Well, in my not-so-humble opinion, YES! But what exactly do I mean?

What I’m NOT talking about is quitting your current job, doing nothing but art and trying to get paid for it. I realize a lot of my YouTube audience and by extension, blog readers here, are leisure time artists just trying to enjoy themselves with art, produce some satisfactory results and perhaps improve.

So, that last one, improving, THATS what I’m talking about here and this is where a professional mindset will help you regardless of whether you aspire to reach a professional level or not. Even more specifically, lets deal with one important way to facilitate improvement and that’s problem solving.

It’s interesting and a little mind blowing when you consider all the definitions and opinions of what constitutes good art. It’s also no exaggeration to say you won’t find one official standard or majority opinion. Elvis on black velvet is art to one person while “Water Lillies” by Claude Monet another. Ok, bad example, maybe there is a majority opinion on that one, but hopefully you get my point. Good art means different things to different people. An artist will likewise grapple with the concept of what makes their own work more artistic. What should an artist strive for to become a more creatively artistic artist?

WARNING: what I’m about to express now is opinion. Furthermore its MY opinion and will not be shared by all. GASP! I know right. But you think about it and decide for yourself.