By Teaching Others, Are WE Creating TOO MANY Artists?

I AM often asked these questions:

1) Are you worried that you are helping too many artists – that will one day take away your business?

2) Why would you help other people learn and succeed with their art when they will ultimately compete with you and yours in the market place?

3) Aren’t you worried that you will have a bunch of artists copying your style?

Abundance versus Scarcity, A Way of Thinking

I Copied This for School

I was happy to finally be able to make this video to explain my position on the abundance mentality vs the scarcity mentality. I would love to know how you feel?

Won’t your students take away YOUR business?

Will the copy cats out there, copy YOUR style and steel all your would be work? Absolutely not, your style is like a fingerprint. Only you can produce it. And I can’t think of anyone who has really gotten anywhere just by completely copying someone else’s style. Many have found their niche or their style by copying that of another or a lot of others. I say that is a good thing.

I will also say that if you have a unique style, like Will’s unique acrylic painting style, and as a lot of leaders and great artists do, and as a lot of unknowns also have, people will copy, and why shouldn’t they? Suppose it is such a cool style, You have mastered, that others start to mimic it or copy it. Good for you, that means something. And what about the market place. As that style becomes popular, there will be more demand for YOUR style of work. And the market is so big that it won’t hurt at all to have others doing similar work.
We talked to a young artist who has a neat and unique style of painting. We invited her to teach an online art course for Folio Academy. She wouldn’t do it because she was afraid that all of you would hurry up and copy her “style” and put her out of business. I believe that IF hundreds of artists, in fact thousands, learned her style and copied her and promoted their work, she would only do better. First of all few if any would nail “her style” and as more and more artists painted like her, that “style” if it is SO good, would become popular and more clients would want it. Creating a much bigger market then she alone could ever fill.

Art Schools MAKE their students “COPY” others.

copy of the Death Dealer

Most art schools will have a few assignments where you are to do just that. Copy a masters art work, or that of someone you idolize. I copied a piece by Franz Halls and a piece by my favorite fantasy fiction artist, Frank Frazetta. I learned a lot from it. If you know your history you’ll know that Franz Halls was already dead and I didn’t put Frank Frazetta out of business at all. I probably didn’t promote him much either with my insignificant attempt to mimic his “style”.

Author’s note. I was so proud of how I took the word Forgery, and made it look like Frazetta’s own signature. 

I have seen people sitting in front of great paintings like the Mona Lisa, right there in the Louvre, copying the daylights out of these paintings. I haven’t seen any one mistaken for Leonardo Da Vinci lately. Copy away. Okay, enough of the soap box. Wait, one more thing, Bob Ross was never replaced and all he did was teach “His Style and Techniques”. I’m just sayin.

EVERY ONE’S COPYING SOMETHING

I will also say what my instructor Bob Barrett said, and I paraphrase, “We all copy. Everyone is copying something. You can’t go through life and not be influenced by God’s masterpieces and other wonderful things. It is a good thing to look to other artists as well as nature and gain some insights from them.”

To fear that helping others will take from you is scarcity thinking.  

Are WE, art teachers for example, doing ourselves a disservice by helping others learn. Are we creating TOO MANY artist. They might grow up and crowd us out. It’s like raising chicks that will grow up and peck your eyes out. That is scarcity thinking from a scarcity paradigm. Where you think that if someone else wins then you lose. Steven Covey coined the phrase and made popular, Abundance Mentality.

Abundance mentality[edit]
Covey coined the idea of abundance mentality or abundance mindset, a concept in which a person believes there are enough resources and successes to share with others. He contrasts it with the scarcity mindset (i.e., destructive and unnecessary competition), which is founded on the idea that, if someone else wins or is successful in a situation, that means you lose; not considering the possibility of all parties winning (in some way or another) in a given situation (see zero-sum game). Individuals with an abundance mentality reject the notion of zero-sum games and are able to celebrate the success of others rather than feel threatened by it. ~Wikipedia

You, (Well all but one of you) will never be the best

The harder you work on your craft, and the better you become, the more you will come to the realization the you will never be the absolute best artist ever, there will always be someone out there better than you. Celebrate the success of others.
Having read the book, Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell has helped me come to realize that I have been blessed and have benefited greatly by having good parents, a good opportunity to go to school, to work with great people and live in a world of such abundance.

I also believe that you have to give to get. I give to charity, I teach, I do good deeds (once in awhile). Teaching could also be looked at as a greedy thing, as the teachers may be helping others but they too are being helped. When we teach we grow and learn and increase our ability and our happiness. When you verbalize a concept, to the students for example, you get these little “ah-ha!” moments that we learn from. So, Are we creating too many artists? NO. As the world grows, the need for artists as well as most other professionals grows.

My artist friend and business partner, Will Terry has a three part mission statement and it goes like this.

“1. To improve my art or craft continually and never stop learning.
2. Help others improve their work.
3. Create products that inspire, educate and entertain.”

At folio academy, we believe that part of “the meaning of life” is that we were put here to help each other.