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491 - Determining Your Current Creative Stage and Shifting Focus with Illustrator Chris Piascik - Creative Pep Talk | Wave AI Podcast Notes

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491 - Determining Your Current Creative Stage and Shifting Focus with Illustrator Chris Piascik

Creative Pep Talk

Wed Feb 05 2025

Summary

Creative Pep Talk Episode 491: Determining Your Current Creative Stage and Shifting Focus with Illustrator Chris Piasek

Release Date: February 5, 2025

In Episode 491 of Creative Pep Talk, host Ryan Reynolds engages in an insightful conversation with illustrator Chris Piasek. The discussion delves into understanding one's current creative stage, the challenges of shifting focus, and strategies to maintain a thriving creative practice. Here's a detailed summary of their engaging dialogue.

1. Understanding Your Creative Season

Ryan Reynolds opens the episode by challenging the traditional questions about creative focus—whether to prioritize grinding out work or to let creativity flow organically. Instead, he introduces a pivotal concept:

Chris Piasek [00:48]: "Everybody has different opinions and I would say they're all wrong because it's the wrong question. It's not about what is the most important thing to focus on in your creative practice. There's a question before that, which is what season are you in?"

Chris emphasizes that recognizing one's current "season" or stage is crucial in determining where to focus efforts. Different stages require different priorities, making this self-awareness the foundation for a balanced creative practice.

2. From Daily Drawings to YouTube: Chris Piasek's Journey

Chris Piasek shares his transition from a rigorous daily drawing project to a more curated YouTube presence. This shift was partly influenced by personal life changes, including becoming a parent:

Chris Piasek [32:40]: "I stopped the daily drawings like three years ago when my kid was like six months old because I was just, if you've ever had a baby, there's a lot to do."

Despite the challenges, Chris found that this transition didn't hinder his creative output but rather opened new avenues for growth and community engagement.

3. Balancing Strategic and Exploratory Creativity

A significant portion of the conversation revolves around balancing structured (strategic) creativity with improvisational (exploratory) approaches:

Ryan Reynolds [10:00]: "I think the more I learned about the strategy side and I got better at that, then I had to really force myself to go back to doing it the way you just described, which I would think more of as the improv improvisational."

Chris adds to this by highlighting the pitfalls of diving into projects without adequate planning:

Chris Piasek [10:42]: "I start changing it, and then it gets so complicated and takes so long and I have no idea what's happening."

They agree that while strategic creativity sets clear goals, exploratory creativity fosters innovation and personal connection to the work.

4. The Influence of ADHD on Creative Practices

Both Ryan and Chris discuss how ADHD can both challenge and enhance creativity:

Ryan Reynolds [09:07]: "ADHD people are naturally creative because they get bored. So they have a natural thing of, like, looking over, like, I wonder, what's that? Like, let me go that way."

Chris Piasek [09:12]: "You hyper focus so you take it more seriously. You don't just dabble in all these different things."

This dialogue underscores the importance of leveraging ADHD traits, such as hyperfocus, to deepen creative engagement and productivity.

5. Time Management and Embracing "Wasted Time"

A recurring theme is the concept of "wasting time" and its paradoxical role in creativity:

Ryan Reynolds [12:05]: "Wasting time is one of the most essential parts of creative practice."

Chris Piasek [13:05]: "I fully believe it's still so hard to not get the feeling like I'm wasting time, even though I know I am."

They discuss the societal pressures against idleness and advocate for creating pockets of time dedicated to exploratory activities, which can lead to unexpected creative breakthroughs.

6. Building Community Through YouTube

Chris elaborates on how transitioning to YouTube has enriched his creative journey by fostering a strong community:

Chris Piasek [39:21]: "The community that I found on YouTube has just been amazing and it's just been incredible."

He highlights the benefits of deeper connections formed through video content, which go beyond the superficial interactions typical of other social media platforms.

7. Transitioning Stages: Challenges and Growth

The discussion touches on the difficulty of shifting creative stages, especially when leaving behind long-standing practices:

Ryan Reynolds [34:19]: "You're the hero of this episode."

Chris Piasek [35:03]: "I don't think I would have left otherwise."

They explore how external factors, like economic changes or personal life events, can force transitions, leading to growth and new opportunities.

8. Embracing Personal Interests to Stand Out

Chris advocates for creating work aligned with personal passions rather than conforming to market demands:

Chris Piasek [18:56]: "I started drawing and illustrating and making stuff about stuff that I was interested in... it would appeal to a broader audience."

This approach not only enhances personal satisfaction but also attracts diverse audiences who share similar interests, as exemplified by his work on bicycles and cars.

9. The Magic of Creative Evolution

Both speakers reflect on how consistent creative practice transforms individuals over time:

Ryan Reynolds [38:11]: "If I wasn't making that podcast, I might be that person today."

Chris Piasek [31:48]: "I have this idea for a video where it's like redoing old drawings to prove that you've gotten better."

They acknowledge that creative endeavors shape their identities and lead to continuous personal and professional development.

10. Practical Tips for Creatives

Towards the episode's end, Chris shares valuable tips for aspiring creatives:

Draw What You Like: Focus on subjects that genuinely interest you rather than what you think will get you hired.

Chris Piasek [20:00]: "Do what you love. Just draw stuff you like."
Revisit and Redraw Past Works: This practice not only showcases improvement but also deepens your connection to your work.

Chris Piasek [30:00]: "Redraw what you like, go back to a drawing that you like, but you feel like, you know, if I did this again, I'd do it in a totally different style."
Engage with the Community: Utilize platforms like YouTube and Discord to build and interact with a supportive creative community.

Conclusion and Call to Adventure

Ryan concludes the episode by encouraging listeners to assess their current creative stage and choose an appropriate action:

For Early Stages: "Draw what you like. Do what you love." Engaging in personal projects can help you connect with like-minded individuals and open unexpected opportunities.
For Later Stages: "Redraw what you like." Revisiting past works can reinforce your skills and inspire new creative directions.

He wraps up with heartfelt thanks to Chris Piasek and the Creative Pep Talk team, emphasizing the importance of continual growth and adaptation in one's creative journey.

Notable Quotes:

Chris Piasek [00:48]: "There's a question before that, which is what season are you in?"
Ryan Reynolds [10:00]: "Strategic creativity sets clear goals, exploratory creativity fosters innovation."
Ryan Reynolds [12:05]: "Wasting time is one of the most essential parts of creative practice."
Chris Piasek [18:56]: "Drawing what you love attracts a broader audience."

Final Thoughts

Episode 491 of Creative Pep Talk offers a deep dive into the fluid nature of creative stages and the importance of self-awareness in nurturing one's artistic journey. Through Chris Piasek's experiences and Ryan Reynolds' thoughtful inquiries, listeners gain valuable insights into balancing discipline with exploration, leveraging personal interests, and building meaningful creative communities.

For more inspiration and strategies to enhance your creative practice, visit Creative Pep Talk and explore Andy's work.

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Transcript

Chris Piasek (0:03)

On the creative journey, it's easy to.

Ryan Reynolds (0:06)

Get lost, but don't worry, you'll lift off. Sometimes you just need a creative pep talk. What is the most important thing to focus on in your creative practice? Is it about just grinding and trying as hard as you can to push it forward, forward? Or is it more about letting it go and letting it flow? Do you need to focus on quantity and just pumping out as much stuff as you humanly possibly can? Or is it about holding back, curating the quality of each decision and each launch and what you put out there in the world? What is the most important thing to focus on? Everybody has different opinions and I would say they're all wrong because it's the wrong question. It's not about what is the most important thing to focus on in your creative practice. It there's a question before that, which is what season are you in? What stage are you in? Because all of these things are important to be a top priority at different times in your creative process. And the difficult part or the most, the most top priority that you have is to make sure you know what stage are you in? Discern what is the most important by figuring out the season you're in, because that determines what your focus needs to be. And that's a pretty big challenge. Now today on the show we have Chris Piasek. He is a buddy of mine. He's a podcast guest that we had on just like seven years ago. He's an illustrator I've known for a long time. He's also ADHD cut from a similar cloth in some ways and then in a totally different fabric as well. I always have a great time chatting with them. For that reason, Chris did a super long daily drawing project where he was posting a new thing every weekday for a long, long time. And then he since moved on to posting YouTube videos and really a more curated release that is a little more sporadic. And last time he was on the show, we had a big chat about his daily drawing practice. This time we talk about moving from that stage into this current stage that he's in, how he knew it was time to switch, where his focus has shifted since. And I think that there is a lot in this conversation that can help you figure out where you are right now, where your energy maybe needs to be focused and how to shift that when the time comes. Had a ton of fun catching up with my buddy Chris and I hope you really enjoy the episode. There's a lot of stuff that inspired me and Sophie as we were going back and Working through it. Stick to the very end. For our cta, every single episode of the show, we try to give you something to do with the ideas. Not just to feel good, but to do something with them. And usually the cta, it's a call to adventure, a creative call to adventure. This time's a little bit different. It's a call. No, it's not a call. It's a choose. Choose your own adventure. It's choose the adventure. And we're going to give you two prompts, and they are going to be determined by which stage you're in. So if you're in an earlier stage of your creative practice, you might do the first one. If you're in a later stage, you might do the second one. And hopefully it will get you thinking about and acting with the priority of the season that you're in. All right, let's get into it. I'm a believer in the idea of dressing for the job you want, not the job you have. And I have applied this to my creative practice, too, which means if you want professional results, you need to present online like a pro. And that means going beyond social media and having a professional website that reflects your style and looks legit. I rebuilt my site this year with Squarespace's Fluid engine and was so happy with how easily I could build my vision without coding, that when they approached me to support the show, I jumped at the chance because I love and use this product. So go check it out. Squarespace.com peptalk to test it out for yourself. And when you're ready to launch your site, use promo code peptalk all one word, all caps for 10% off your first purchase. Thanks goes out to Squarespace for supporting the show and supporting creators all over the world.

Chris Piasek (18:59)

Well, so I think, you know, for me and I think a lot of other people, when they're like, starting out and you're like, how do I start getting work? How do I get hired to do illustration work? You start looking at People who do illustration work and who are successful. And then you start to think, like, okay, well, I need to make this kind of work, or I need to think about what someone's going to hire me to make, and then you just start trying to just make stuff based on that. And that's not a very creative place to make things from. It's like, yeah, like, you see also, too, like, the assignments that sometimes you see that even great illustrators do. Generally, the art director saw something else that they made, and they just sort of wanted to adapt it to this new thing. So maybe that original thing was more interesting and it was maybe about something else entirely. But for me, the biggest thing in realizing this was, you know, the stuff that I made thinking that it would get me hired or people would see, like, didn't really get much attention. And when I started drawing and, like, illustrating and making stuff about stuff that I was interested in, not only did I have more fun doing it, so I'd, like, spend more time on it, and I would enjoy it, and it would just. I would also have this, like, deep knowledge about what I was making, too. And that allows you to, like, make it even more interesting because you can like, put in all these other special things or, like, maybe little inside jokes or just. Just lots of little things that make it unique and special. And then when you put that stuff out there, it's going to appeal to a broader. You're not just, like, making something that you think an art director is going to like. You're making something that you like, and then other people who like that are really going to resonate with it. And if it's great illustration, those are, you know, people who might hire you will see it, but then it's going to get in front of people who maybe don't even care about illustration, but they care about that thing, and then that's going to spread it out. Yeah, I mean, it's a good example of. This is a long time ago, I drew, like, every bike that I've ever had. And people who weren't into illustration but are into cycling were like, oh, I remember I had the same bike, and I love this. And telling me their stories about it, and it just, like, resonates on a deeper level. And then it end up, you know, getting picked up by Bicycling magazine and then just, you know, led to a bunch of work within the bicycling industry because. And I feel like if I tried to, like, make something for an art director to see, that's, like, it Would have never thought to do that.

Ryan Reynolds (43:49)

I wouldn't go that Far. I'm back. I'm back to give you a call to adventure. Well, choose your adventure. Choose the adventure today as the cta. First of all, thanks to Chris for making the time to chat. It was great hanging out with you, bud, and I hope we get to do it again soon. Hope to see you in real life sometime, man. You go check out Chris Piasek on YouTube now. You hear he's got great stuff on there. He's. He's making all kinds of interesting stuff about Adobe Fresco. A lot of, like, drawing on the iPad kind of thing. Also sharing his stories and insights. And some. I don't. Some really interesting drawing challenges. Just tons of fun too. He edited, edits them well with all kinds of bells and whistles. He just does great, great stuff. So I appreciate. I appreciate you, man. And I'm back with the creative. Choose the adventure and you've got two choices, depending on the stage that you're at. If you're just starting out in your practice, I recommend you do the CTA that we talked about at the start of the episode. Draw what you like. You've heard. Do what you love. But what about just what you like, man? What's the stuff that you're just like, into? Just draw those things. You know, there's a lot of times where if I just trust that, like, man, I've been enjoying drawing snakes lately or drawing skulls or drawing swords, whatever S word you want to draw that stuff. Just trust it. And then you can editorialize it, then you can frame it. You know, it's that kind of like sudio. Another S word. Phil Collins, I believe he's like making that song in the studio, doing Sue Studio just says some random stuff and then rolls with it. It's like, you know what? Let's just keep it. Sometimes you just keep it. Then sometimes you mold it into actual lyrics. Phil Collins. Hello. Come on, man. Go the extra mile. Actually, that song's great, but just draw stuff you like. And the more that you do that, the more you're going to connect with people that like that stuff. And lots of interesting things can happen when you do that. You know, I. I did a bunch of series on this show about video games because I got really into video games in my old age, again in my 30s, I got back into video games. Z, Zelda Elden Ring. Zeldin Ring. That's not a thing. But that'd be cool. Cool mashup. And I've done all this stuff on video games and I got a job doing stuff for Xbox because of that, because I vocalized it, because I put it out there into the world. So if that's you, if you haven't really done a lot of that exploring that, maybe you're late in your career too, but you never really let yourself like anything and just make something, do it, try it. Or if you feel like you know what I've done that I've done a lot of that. Maybe you can do the second one which Chris brought up, which was redraw what you like, go back to a drawing that you like, but you feel like, you know, if I did this again, I'd do it in a totally different style. One of the ways I've done this is when I have went to make something I really like that I did in gouache, traditional painted thing, and I wanted to turn it into something that had flat color for a sticker or a shirt or something. Then I would be using this other technique that I use. And some of the stuff that I've made that used to be paintings and now they're these flat color things are like some of my all time favorite things that I've made. And also I learned interesting things from that. I actually have a piece that I did for a magazine that I've been wanting to redo, not because I don't like it, but because I want to remember what it feels like to make that piece. And I think this is an interesting thing that happens. I imagine if you're a musician and you have to go relearn old songs, that it actually might unlock some things that you've left in the past and forgot about. So maybe you're in a later stage, need to do that. But ultimately I hope that you reflect a little bit on what stage you're in, what things that you need to let go of, what things you need to bring forward. And maybe revisiting some old stuff will help you do that. That massive thanks to Chris Piasek for coming on the show, having a chat. Huge thanks. Just an equally huge thanks to Sophie Miller who helped me craft this episode, editor on the show, co producer on the show. Huge thanks to Connor Jones for audio and video edits and sound design. Thanks to Yoni Wolf and the band wife for the theme music and the glorious soundtrack. And it. Until we speak again. Well, while we're speaking now, might as well. Thank you for listening. And until we speak again, stay Peptide.