Category: Interviews

Eat Your Creative Vegetables

dannygregory2 Comments

I am on the newest episode of Youngman Brown’s wonderful podcast, Your Creative Push.  

In this episode, I discuss:

  • The importance of your partner understanding your creative needs.

  • Creative postpartum depression that often occurs when we are finished with a project.

  • Why I left the advertising industry.

  • Meeting Koosje Koene and how Sketchbook Skool started.

  • The value in seeing how many different artists make art as well as seeing where they make it.

  • The role that community plays in developing as an artist.

  • The difference in motivation when you are paying for something as opposed to getting it for free.

  • Going to clown school.

  • Giving yourself constraints or challenges.

  • What it means to clear space in order to start new things (or finish old things).

  • How I got past imposter syndrome (and my advice for Youngman in getting past his).

 

What is a genius anyway?

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Listen to me discuss creative genius (not that I’m an expert!), sketchbook keeping, creative habits, SketchKon,  and much more on Art Opening(s), a wonderful podcast, from the Artists Network. Listen here.

Also:

  • The four genius archetypes of art history…
  • Who can be a genius–and who can’t…
  • How creative habits are the antidote or leveler of the genius myth…
  • What drawing and sketching can show about the nature of genius…
  • Drawing’s ability to make us all geniuses–and dunces…
  • Suitable eulogies for the artistic genius…

Join me in a free workshop series!

dannygregory35 Comments
 I am excited to be a part of  Sketchbook Revival, a FREE online workshop series full of amazing presenters. I urge you to join me!
The workshop officially begins April 23rd and runs through May 4th. The artists leading the sessions will share their passions for creating in a sketchbook with everything from ink, to watercolor and mixed media, and also how sketchbooks can be tools for recording daily life, developing personal style, connecting with intuition, emotional well being, and so much more.
To sign up FREE, just click here.

SketchBook Club: My interview with Sara Midda

dannygregory14 Comments

After I discussed Sara Midda’s classic book “South of France” in an earlier episode, viewers asked if I could get her to join the Club. I could and did — and here’s her first ever video chat interview, in which she discusses her life, her books and her sketchbook habits. Fascinating!

Let’s gang up on the inner critic.

dannygregory8 Comments

I’ve written blog posts about it. I’ve made a podcast about it. I’ve even written a book about it. But the inner critic, the monkey in my head, remains a part of my life.  Keeping that voice under control is, frankly a lifetime project.

Here’s a powerful new weapon for your arsenal. Powerful and free.

Recently, I was talking to my pal, Jim Posner, who is a former Wall Street executive, turned Mindfulness meditation instructor. He can relate to everyone who’s ever been a victim of that inner critic. Many years ago he went through his own crisis —a job loss, while his wife was pregnant with their first child. He became terrified of the future, overcome by anxiety, and could barely function. He kept telling himself he wasn’t good enough. His inner critic beat him up so badly that he suffered debilitating panic attacks. Eventually he did crush that inner critic.

Jim asked me if I’d join him in making a free series of interviews specifically designed to help you conquer your inner critic, crush self-doubt, unleash your full potential and stifle the monkey. Kinda like the Shut Your Monkey podcast but with a whole new super-group of experts chatting on video.

Jim put together an amazing group of 21 experts  — best selling authors, accomplished doctors and scientists, well-known artists, CEO’s, top executive coaches and respected professionals in fitness and well-being. Oh, and me. I had an amazing discussion with Jim and it’s part of the lineup.

He’s interviewed each of us about mindfulness, self-doubt and -criticism, and he’s put it all together into a free online summit. Free, no sales, no shtick, no strings. Just smart people giving useful advice. Experts who really want to help ease peoples’ suffering and increase their potential.

Here’s how it works:

Click here to watch a video from Jim here that explains the idea and to sign up. Then, starting on April 24, every day for 21 days, you’ll get emailed a video interview with an expert. Pretty simple. Unless you’re a monkey.

I think it will be full of lots of useful ideas and insights that I, for one, can’t wait to put into practice. Let me know what you (and your monkey) think of the series.

How to make habit-making a habit.

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We’re not talking nail-biting, hair-twisting, or bonbon-wolfing. We’re talking creative habits that make your life a better place to be.

In fact, we’re literally talking — me and my pal Ronnie Lawlor chewing over the subject, part of a series we recorded to get you (and me ) on track for 2017 and the launch of her new kourse, A Drawing A Day (click here to sign up).

What habit would you like to acquire in 2017?

Two events

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A couple of things I thought you might like:

• Jamie Ridler had me on her show to talk about all things creative. I thought it was a pretty interesting chat and you can listen to it here:

• I’ll be on Facebook doing a Live event on Saturday, Sept 24th at noon EST. That means you can ask me anything about anything and I’ll be forced to answer it.
If you can, leave me your question in advance in the discussion area on the event page.
If you can’t, we’ll download the video and share it here. But it might feel a little shopworn and mildewy as such things are when preserved in amber.

New Podcast: Jennifer Louden

dannygregory4 Comments

I felt a little shitty and inadequate last week for giving the podcast a bit of short shrift. So I decided to compensate for it this week.

First step: be a day late releasing the podcast and the newsletter. Check.

With that bit of self-flagellation out of the way, I do think this is a great episode. First there’s some very important stuff from the Book (note, capital B), all about how the monkey tries to nail labels on to us, categoricals that distort who we really are and limit our futures.

Then a profile of a vile and insidious monkey subspecies: the Utopian. You know that little crystal-ball-gazing bastard. It’s the one that says, “Your life could be so perfect, so much better than this if only you would listen to me. Instead, it sucks and so do you.” Don’t worry, I put that Monkey of the Week squarely in its place.

Next up, a Monkey Tale from Susanna. it’s a return visit for her— she was also my first guest, way back in Episode 2.

And finally, a longish a chat with a very special guest: Jennifer Louden. Jen is a personal growth pioneer who helped launch the self-care movement with her first book, The Woman’s Comfort Book. She has gone on to write 6 more books on wellbeing and whole living which have sold over million copies in 9 languages. She’s been invited to speak around the world, has been on hundreds of TV and radio shows, wrote a national magazine column for Martha Stewart, and has led retreats and workshops and online communities for the last 25 years.

Click to get yours — free!
Click to get yours — free!

Jen has just come out with an invaluable new book called How to Follow Through on Your Creative Desire.

This book is a serious first aid kit for your creativity. Full of salves to heal the inevitable setbacks of making stuff and different-shaped Band Aids for every type of wound. Every creative person should keep it handy and you can get your copy for free.
Just click here and it’s yours. FUH-ree.

Thanks again for tuning in. But please, give me some feedback, yo.

It makes a difference. F’r instance, I heard there were a few people grumbling that my first episodes were a little hard to hear and that may well have been the case, I don’t know, I don’t listen to podcasts myself.

I have given a severe talking to my audio engineering team here at Gregory® International, Inc. and even raised my voice a little to show how miffed I was and it would seem the problem has been helped, at least so my VP of Audio Tech claimed at our last offsite on the corporate yacht. Honestly, it seems that no matter how many PhDs and Grammies and nose rings people have, they still can’t be counted on to mix a decent sounding podcast. Sigh. You have no idea how hard it is being me.
So don’t just write to complain.

Anyway, I really must insist that you make this whole thing a 2-way road. I give you blood and sweat and, in return, I just want you to buy hundreds of copies of my books, to book me to speak at your local prison, to send me home-baked lo-carb desserts, to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and leave glowing 6-star reviews, to leave recordings of your monkey tales at dannygregory.com/monkey and to, once and for all, shut your monkey! Do it!

Or better yet, subscribe to the whole series on iTunes (and leave a nice review).

Or you can visit monkeypodcast.com and listen to the episodes right in your browser.

What’s your experience with your monkey? How has it affected you, and how have you overcome it? Record your Monkey Tale at dannygregory.com/monkey.