Creating Momentum Through Imagination

Momentum is a fascinating thing.
I stumbled about this term a while ago and began to think what exactly it is, because, there is no real definition.

Some leadership guru´s want to sell me that momentum is the key to success, that it is a term like "flow" a mental state. But I come across inconsistencies when I try to understand what "momentum" is, so it isn´t just a rule you can apply or a state you can reach through meditation or hard labor. Many write about "creating momentum" as it were something that can be measured with success or money, sorry, I don´t think so.

And when thinking, analyzing this thing, I found that I see momentum as something very different, which is maybe the result of my holistic approach to things.

Momentum seems to be universal, it is the sincere authenticity that reflects in one specific point of time, which is, in the best case, shared by many people at the same time.

The fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 was such an event for example.
I rather see momentum as something pure, rare and absolutely authentic, a moment of true inspiration.

The fascinating thing is it´s a law of nature and like every principle it can be used, it can be directed!
However, there are many definitions and I don´t share the view that it is just a term. I really believe that there is more to it.

First part - where to find momentum, you need to experience it yourself. 
Below is a list with examples of events where I encountered true momentum, and I bet you can relate to most of them:

• You find Momentum in concerts; watch teenie-fans collapse, or feel the impulse when you see a "Pink Floyd" show, when performer and audience are in their best shape the result is an outstanding event that you´ll never forget but it requires energy from both sides to work, not just one. 
• The first date with your love, everything feels right, no regret, no doubt and no one can tell you are wrong about your feelings.
• A gallery visit, the artist is sympathetic, the works are intriguing, the wine is good, it is a great evening and ...you feel so great it would be bad to NOT buy an artwork!
• Regardless if Phantom of the Opera, a Disney masterpiece or a piece from Ridley Scott, which causes you to forget that you wanted to eat some chips. If a movie pulled you out of reality, I think that is momentum too.
• The same principle that works for movies works with games and books, great storytelling, authenticity and likable characters make us vulnerable and more likely to follow a story.
• Even a sweepstake or the lottery can make you create a momentum, because the more you spent, the more you are focused on the results and even bigger is the momentum you live in.
• That feeling you have when it turns 00:00:00 on your clock at new years eve. Isn´t that a great leap to celebrate the same thing with the whole world?

Second part: What are the keys that created momentum?

1. In the concert: the here and now is important for Interpreter and audience
2. The loved one: no doubt about your thoughts and feelings, you can´t do anything wrong
3. If it feels good, it can´t be wrong! (?)
4. authenticity and storytelling
5. The more attached we are to things, the less likely we are to win

Third part: How to incorporate momentum in your life.
This is the most important part but I guess the most difficult too.

• I think if we learn to embrace momentum as soon as we recognize it, we should allow for it and enjoy it, make the most out of a nice evening, enjoy life to the fullest where others stop. The best case is if you can even enjoy doing your work
• Learn that with the right person you can´t say anything wrong, you can say foolish things, but you won´t harm a loved one with words, if real momentum brought you together.
• Things that feel good can´t be wrong, if you have to decide on something make it depending on your guts. It takes a while to get used to it, especially when you are used to read horoscopes. Regardless if you wanted to buy something or hesitated to do something if there was the inner voice that hold you back, there is a reason.
• Be authentic, be you and write your story. Or with the words of Judy Garland:" Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else"
• It is true that the more attached we are to things we want, the less likely we are to achieve or get them. And this is the most important rule of all, while being the simplest one at the same time. If you want something really bad, let it go. And with "let it go", I mean something like:"write the letter and send it!" What would you want to do with all the unsent letters on your desk? Correct; you´d throw them in the bin, and that is exactly what your unconsciousness does when you create too much momentum around a thing you want to do, have or whatever it is.

As a result you see that momentum is something very different and so easy to understand. 

I came to this observation when thinking about the circumstance that some people are able to create momentum on a show, a talk or a gallery opening, whilst others struggle to do so. And I really wondered what it is. I think engagement is needed on both sides for momentum to work. I really bought that artwork from an artist friend as a gift to my wife, because it felt so right, the moment was right and I knew not just one person would be lucky after doing so, there were 4 lucky persons. My wife, the artist, the gallery owner and me.

Momentum through imagination?

Another important conclusion is the imagination aspect. It seems that all of the above feelings can be calculated and triggered or caused through persuasion. For example, if you listened to that storybook as a kid for some pages you were hooked to the story and wanted to know how it will end, understandable. When we buy a car or a house it is often imagination that works and stories that we tell to ourselves in order to believe that this or that decision was the right one. You can tell the power of imagination when you encountered it for yourself. 

If people talk about your gallery reception weeks after on facebook, you know you have created momentum, if your book became a bestseller or if your evening with friends was quite the spectacle, you know that momentum was part of it.

5 Ways To Inspiration Marketing

From my own experience I know that artists and creative professionals need a different approach to marketing than most other businesses.

The power artists, musicians and writers have is: "to inspire".To inspire means also "to give" something, a value is created for those who are able to see the beauty in things.

I have come across various sources for marketing and social media but found only a few suitable for creative freelancers.  

What I observed is that there are some overlapping aspects in different marketing strategies, from the psychology of persuasion, to copywriting and internet marketing, the goals of most marketing approaches are all equal: "to inspire action" and to gain a "win-win-situation".

Regardless if it is the book publishing company, the architect, or the freelance programmer, their goals are all the same, to ignite enthusiasm on the right people. 

If you can ignite a spark of inspiration by someone who is into a business which can benefit from your work, there are bigger chances to get proposals, than if your aim is to sell something, People have a sense for solicitors attitudes.

1. The question "why"
   Determine the reason why you do something and change your communication towards these simple 3 letters. Typically everyone knows "what" they do and "how" they do it, but only a few know "why" they do it. This question should be answered in the following manner and has a critical impact on the following points as well: Why do you do, what you do? Are you hobbyist, or living as freelancer? The goals can be utterly different and expectations from clients as well! Define yourself and build communication around this word, for example if you begin a sentence with "why" in mind, you start with a "because" in a sentence, the result is more persuasive because it automatically brings authenticity to the table.
2. The "Eiko" benchmark
   In a previous post I have explained my version of the definition on how Eiko Ishioka juried great design, her keywords for this benchmark are: Timelessness, Revolutionary and Originality. If your work can stand this critical test, the result is most likely ahead of any competition.
3. Are you "good" enough
   With "good" I don´t mean skilled or talented, rather if you have a positive mindset. It is crucial that every communication is positively tuned. There is a bigger chance that prospective clients want to work with you if they do a research and find almost only positive marks from you on the internet or publications, or wherever you may roam. Some artist play drama queen and enjoy results of having people talk about their case of this and that... there is just a tiny problem: the internet does not forget something, information are available forever and people remember always the first impression about someone. My aim is to write always in a manner that prospective clients can imagine a communication on a project as pleasant and fun.
4. Know, Like & Trust
   The three pillars of effective content marketing apply to artists more than to any other group, nothing spreads easier than images, music and stories through the world wide web. If people get to know your stuff and decide they like it, they are more likely to share it and the more people share your stuff, the more trustworthy you are. If people don´t talk about your stuff, then...think twice, start over and create "something to die for".
5. Do you have permission?
   Permission presumes trust. Permission is valuable and at the same time it has become a commodity, especially since social media. Permission marketing is valuable, because if used right, you give the right people permission to send you a newsletter, great offers and information (win-win-situation) as they become available. It´s also valuable to have the permission to send the art-director a mail that you are available for hire or your subscribers a newsletter with information regarding an exhibition or simply the permission to show some new works from time to time. Facebook and twitter made all of that easier, but the result is a flood of input and in this allowed scenario of information overload it is vital to stand out: speak only when you have to say something important, post new work when you think it is good enough, put the status quo into question and tell your story instead of doing what everybody else is doing. Enjoy the silence!

 When we understand the true meaning of inspiration, we understand marketing.

Artist don´t create stuff with the intention to sell it in the first place, the only way to make a living as artist is to adopt the habit to create stuff with the intention to inspire.

Color Inspiration, A Technical Guide For The Digital Artist

"Sam Dead" from "The League of Elder"

Currently I´m in a phase of making advanced use of colors in my work to enhance depth, mood and to underline certain values.

While doing so, I found a necessity to share this knowledge and insights in some kind of a reference. There are practical tips for everyday use, this post is useful for traditional artists as well.

When working in a professional environment there is rarely the time to go out and do plein-air paintings or studies, this is something artists have to do in their spare time, to form the foundations and understanding of perception of our environment. On the other hand it is extremely important to see processed works as well, to see the differences and to learn from these observations.

Basically, all knowledge artists have, is built upon passion and is acquired through personal experience, museum-visits, observation and anatomical studies have to be done volunteering for the arts.

Today I want to explore possibilities on how to find working color schemes.
There are several options to use colors and to prevent a misconception here: I just want to explore ways on how to technically utilize colors, not on how to apply them, because the color as inspiration is a universal approach followed by every artist on earth, regardless of the application or final use.

For this it is inevitable to have a decent knowledge on color theory, which is required to get the most out of this post, so if you get stuck on the term "tertiary color scheme" you should get into basic color theory first.

Below there is a list of different ways to get color inspiration, maybe I´ll do a post on how to apply a specific color scheme on a work later.

Like everything from brushes to reference images even colors should find a place in the artists library, lets go:


Inspiration from nature 
The first and most basic palette everyone recognizes, even if broken down to just two(!) colors.
Advanced color palettes can be found too but require a keen eye and understanding of secondary and tertiary colors.



Inspiration from other artists work 
The most common practice used by artists from all around the world. For artist, this still requires understanding of colors, but gives a potential idea of what is possible, what works and what not. Analyzing combinations from masters and successful predecessors is now easier than ever.


Inspiration from Movies

Image courtesy Walt Disney pictures

Movies shape and change our perception without us even knowing it, sometimes for the better sometimes for the worse. But since art has the freedom to be exaggerated, movies can be a valuable inspiration if used with care.

The best example for experimental and truly masterful use of colors are Disney´s works, find the powerful examples below from the movie "Lion King". For more screens / stills and movies make your own screenshots, or search Screenmusings.org for moods.

Image courtesy Walt Disney pictures

One great option is to make use of the mosaic-filter in Photoshop to get a palette out of a screenshot.
For a concrete use in paintings I´d suggest to pick up just the important colors with the Eyedropper-tool to create a swatch from there, or...

Inspiration through tools
It is easy to convert these to a swatch in photoshop via Kuler, opposed to the limited possibilities of the mosaic-filter technique, Kuler picks colors depending on complementary colors, various harmonies and moods.
A practical tool is the online page of Kuler where you can create schemes from an image directly and share them with others. Find my profile on Kuler for more swatches.

Kuler from Adobe

Another great resource to create instant color schemes is the free color scheme designer tool:

Free web tool for color schemes

Inspiration from photography
Photography is always processed and it is an advantage to know the traditional processing workflow, how toning and cross-processing works. Not that it is a requirement, but it helps to understand how Photoshop works. With the tools listed above, Kuler and the color scheme designer it is easy to pick color schemes from photography as well.

Fantasiox photography

Kuler result of the photo / left

There is a wide variety of tools out there that can be a timesaver for a professional environment, the list above shows just some free-options.

Regardless if you drape Lego´s from your kid together and make a shot with your handy to get a working palette, or if you watched a movie or if dabbling with oils inspired you to get an idea on how to do this or that digitally...
The important part is to keep on developing a sense for inspiration, where to find it, to keep it and then how to apply that to your work.
It is vital to study how filmmakers, artists and photographer use colors, how nature´s color reflect in different lighting situations and even more important; how we perceive them.

Colors are truly powerful for those who know how to use them, because they can "make" or "break" an artwork.