Ep #13: Building an art career without social media - with artist Louise Stigell

Podcast

Jul 22

In this episode, I sit down with Swedish watercolour artist, educator, and creative business coach Louise Stigell for an honest conversation about building a sustainable creative practice on your own terms.

Louise's journey is one of transformation and intentional choice-making. After burning out from her career as a freelance writer and web designer in 2020, she rediscovered art as therapy and never looked back. What started as painting birds for healing became a thriving multi-faceted creative business that includes original artwork, YouTube content creation, online courses, and voice coaching for fellow creatives.

Louise doesn't mince words about what she calls the "pornification of art" on social media platforms. We dive deep into why Instagram's highlight reel culture creates unrealistic expectations and how she's built her business primarily through YouTube and email marketing instead.

From her game design background, Louise brings a fascinating perspective on gradually "levelling up" your comfort zone. We explore how she overcame social anxiety to start a YouTube channel and how that confidence translates across all areas of her creative practice.

Finally, Louise offers invaluable advice about the tension between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation when you turn your art into your livelihood. She's refreshingly honest about the challenges of maintaining your love for your craft when it becomes your income source.

Listen to the episode here (click the arrow at the bottom right to play), or find it wherever you get your podcasts:

Find out more about Louise:

Louise Stigell is a Swedish watercolor artist, art educator, and creative business coach. She re-discovered art during a period of burnout in 2020 and loved it so much, she left her old profession as a freelance writer and web designer to embark on a new life as an artist. She immediately gravitated towards animals as a subject, and birds in particular - her spirit animals. And fell madly in love with watercolor for its ability to challenge her perfectionism and need for control.

Being a camera shy introvert, she also decided to challenge herself to start a YouTube channel. She now runs The Calm Creative, where she shares art & creative business advice with 50k+ subscribers. She uses her long background experience as an online entrepreneur, digital strategist, and copywriter to coach other creatives in growing their businesses. She writes weekly posts on her Substack, The Calm Creative, and teaches classes on wildlife sketching and watercolor on Skillshare. She loves crows, and dressing in black.

When not painting, she likes to birdwatch, sing, lift heavy weights, play video games, or binge read novels.

Visit Louise’s website
Find Louise on YouTube
Find Louise on Instagram
Find Louise on Substack

Introduction
Eli: Hello and welcome to Zuzu's Haus of Cats Presents. I'm your host, artist Eli Trier, although you can call me Zuzu. And on this podcast, I talk to my fellow artists about the magic of the creative process. We'll talk about what they make and in particular, how they make it. Their rituals and workflows, inspirations and disenchantments, ebbs and flows. We'll even take a peek behind the scenes of their businesses to see how they're using their creativity there too, and how they balance the needs of their business with the needs of their art. If you're interested in getting a behind the scenes look at what makes artists tick and enjoy conversations about art, creativity, neurodivergence and business, then you're in the right place.
Hello and welcome back. Today, the Haus of Cats is proud to present my guest, Louise Stigell. Louise is a Swedish watercolour artist, art educator and creative business coach. She rediscovered art during a period of burnout in 2020, as so many of us did, and loved it so much she left her old profession as a freelance writer and web designer to embark on a new life as an artist. She immediately gravitated towards animals as a subject and birds in particular, her spirit animals, and fell madly in love with watercolour for its ability to challenge her perfectionism and need for control. Being a camera shy introvert, she also decided to challenge herself to start a YouTube channel.
She now runs The Calm Creative, where she shares art and creative business advice with 50,000 plus subscribers. She uses her long background experience as an online entrepreneur, digital strategist and copywriter to coach other creatives in growing their businesses. She also writes weekly posts on her Substack, The Calm Creative, and teaches classes on wildlife sketching and watercolour on Skillshare. She loves crows and dressing in black. And when not painting, she likes to birdwatch, sing, lift heavy weights, play video games or binge read novels. Please join me in welcoming Louise to the studio.
Getting Started
Eli: Thank you so much, Louise, for joining me today. It's been a long time coming, us talking. I'm so glad we finally made it.
Louise: Me too. Really happy to be here.
Eli: So do you want to kick us off by telling us a little bit about who you are, what you do, how you got started? Give us your potted life story.
Louise: That's always so hard. My background is really all over the place, but I've always been a creative person. Mostly growing up it was music. So I've been playing the piano and singing, all of that throughout my childhood and also a lot of drawing and art. My mum is an artist, so I've always had that around me. So I've dabbled in art all my life, not so much when I became an adult. You know, when you realise I should get a real job. I need to stand on my own two feet and make money and what can I do that makes money? That whole thing.
And so writing has been mostly what I've been doing throughout my career. I've been a freelance journalist, writing short stories, writing copy, being a copywriter. Eventually branched into web design as well. And my education has been mostly, I mean, music growing up, studied acting for a bit. I'm a hobby actor all over the place. And then I went to college and studied game development because I am a nerd. I'm a video game nerd.
Eli: Oh, wow.
Louise: So my official schooling, I suppose, is as a game designer, game developer. But then when I was finished with my studies, I went sort of the more entrepreneurial route because I've never been good at being an employee of a lone wolf, entrepreneurial soul kind of person. So I realised that pretty quickly that I need to do my own thing. And the thing that I could think of that I could do on my own and could bring in an income was my writing. So that's how I got started with the freelance writing and also started a few companies, ran a few blogs. And yeah, most of my career, that's what I've been doing, freelance writing, freelance web design, and various entrepreneurial ventures, both with other people and by myself.
The 2020 Turning Point
And then came 2020. And I burned out. I'm not alone in hitting some kind of wall there. In 2020, I just sort of threw in the towel. I saw all of my other freelance colleagues really struggling to get clients and navigate through that whole pandemic situation. And I had already been running low on steam by that point. So that kind of became my breaking point. I can't do this anymore. I don't want this. Doesn't feel like me. It's not fun anymore. So I went on sick leave.
And I had the great fortune of having a partner with a stable job that could also contribute some economic safety. I'm really grateful for that, but I went on sick leave and during that time, I kind of rediscovered art as a therapy, as a way to get away from the screens, get away from the noise of the world and the stress and my identity crisis. I tried a little bit of baking and knitting and gardening, and I just, this is supposed to work. People tell me this is what healed them from the stress and the depression did not work on me at all. I just got really stressed by trying to make vegetables grow.
So art was like, it felt like coming home. And I started spending my whole days drawing and painting and trying out different art mediums trying out watercolour, giving watercolour a real shot for the first time. Because the first few times I tried watercolour, I hated it. Which I think is a common experience.
Eli: Yeah.
Louise: But I came at it from another angle during this time, because before that, when I had dabbled in art, I had been very goal oriented and I need to learn this. I need to get good at this. I need to compete with all of these other artists online. It just felt like doing boring homework because I did a bunch of exercises that I didn't really enjoy. And I felt pulled in all directions. I didn't really know why I wanted to make art and what I wanted to draw or paint. But during this time I approach it more as a calming therapy for myself. And I started to really lean into painting the things that I really love, which is birds because I love birds and always have and animals in general. And so I started painting watercolour birds and I really loved it. And the more I painted, the more at ease I felt, the more energy I had, felt more like myself than I had before.
And I wanted to feel like that all the time. And so that's when I started to think about what I wanted to do next in my life. And eventually I took the step of casting away my previous life and starting a new one as an artist and embarking on this journey of learning art myself with the help of the internet and finding my creative voice, making my first painting collections, starting my YouTube channel to challenge myself, challenge my introverted, camera shy nature, and just share what I was learning and my journey. That's where I started.
Learning in Public
Eli: Yeah, I really appreciate that about you, your willingness to learn in public and you have this vibe around you. It's not like, oh, I know everything and I'm going to teach you everything I know. It's more like you come along with me as I'm learning this and I'll share what I'm learning as I'm going along. What made you decide to do it that way rather than just presenting a final polished thing to the world?
Louise: I think it's that thing that the older you get, the more you realise that you don't know everything. You're not really an expert and you're not really someone other people should listen to. I had been going through that kind of humbling journey of, I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm not in a position to tell other people what to do. In my previous online business before that, I had written a self help book, a creative entrepreneur, creative entrepreneurship for highly sensitive people. That was my whole thing with that business. I was really passionate about that. And I had written this book and mostly consisted of stuff that I had learned from others. And sure, I had a lot of experience in it, but the whole tone of that book was really I know what I'm talking about. This is what you should do and reading that book today. I mean, it just makes me cringe so much. It's so self help-y, it's that self help language.
And I just find this other approach so much more liberating because I can be honest about where I am at in my journey, I can still be honest about what I am good at. And the advice I can give to people. But also, recognising that everyone's path is going to be different. And I don't automatically know what's best for someone, but I can help other people kind of realise what's the right path for them to take and give some ideas and experience for myself that I preferred following other creatives with that more kind of humble attitude. And just by sharing their journey and their insights and their mistakes was so much more helpful for me. And it felt more honest and I could still pick and choose the things that felt relevant to me and that I could use on my own path. And yeah, just approaching it that way felt much more, it felt more comfortable for me because I could be more honest and humble, I guess more free in my expression, not have to seem like some kind of expert.
The Pornification of Art on Social Media
Eli: Yeah. And I love that the ideas that you do suggest are often very much outside of the mainstream advice that a lot of other people are giving. You've been very vocal in your... What's the phrase you use? The pornification of art on social media. I just love that phrase. It's so punchy.
Louise: Really? I got quite a bit of pushback from people actually. Why do you have to use that word?
Eli: Really? I think it's so true though. I mean, social media has done for art what porn does for sex, you know, it presented with very, I don't know, idealised version of it with all the messy bits taken out, all the intimacy taken out, all of the important bits taken out.
Louise: The human bits, the human bits. Exactly.
Eli: Can you talk a little bit about that?
Louise: It just had been something I had, a thought that had popped into my head when especially being on Instagram, I struggled so much with Instagram tried to make it work for me try to enjoy it. But increasingly, especially with the launch of reels, and just short form content in general, and seeing how it changed how artists shared their work, both their process and their finished work. just felt like it got more and more extreme and polished and to the point of, you know, looking at an artist's Instagram page or just, it's just reel after reel of just perfectly executed paintings, you know, no mistakes, no pauses or anything.
And all of the reels, would they just slowly turn around with this huge perfect painting and look at me, look at my great art. When you know as an artist yourself, you know that that's not what it actually looks like. Everyone has failed paintings, sometimes weeks where nothing just works. I'm in such a period right now. I've been really struggling and feels like I've forgotten everything about how to paint and nothing I do comes out right. And I haven't been able to film my process because that just adds another layer of, I have to execute this perfectly.
But yeah, that's not how the process looks like. And even though maybe you know that maybe even non artists know it, I don't know what non artists think the art process looks like. But even as an artist yourself, you know that that's not what it looks like. And yet when all you ever see online is this perfection and the highlight reels and the shortcuts and anything, it just seeps into your whole mindset. And I don't know, it's hard to explain, but yeah, it felt kind of like stripping away all of that humanity and imperfections and yeah, the humanity from art and giving unrealistic expectations of what the process is like, especially as a new artist, learning art does not look like that. And I don't think it does for experienced artists either.
Eli: No, I don't know any artist that magically produces perfect painting after perfect painting. Even the process of making one painting. I mean, often it takes me months to just do one painting. And there's a lot of sitting and staring at it and doing something completely different. And it never happens in that bish bash bosh, you know, here's a nice 50.
Louise: Yeah, exactly. I feel like often I have to and my process is a lot more impatient, I could never take weeks or months, months to make a painting. But also I work in watercolour, which is a pretty quick medium can be at least. But I often feel like I have to step away from it. I have to think that it's done and hang it on my wall so I can see it in another light because once it's on the wall, can see, hmm, I guess there's more I could do. Or the other way around, I have to step away from it to realise that actually it's done and now I should not go back in and try to fiddle with it because I'm just going to ruin it. So yeah, stepping away from it is an important part of the process.
Stepping Away from Instagram
Eli: Yeah. Tell us a little bit about your decision to step away from that because are you not on Instagram at all now? Is that correct?
Louise: I'm more in between, you know, I still have my profile and I have done experiments in the past, short sprints of putting up work just to see, it work? How does it work now? The algorithm changes all the time, but I wouldn't say it's an active part of my business. No, I don't rely on it. I have never seen any significant results from it, but I still have it there, as a way for people to maybe discover me.
Eli: Did you come off it entirely for a while?
Louise: Yeah, two times, actually. The first time was back in I think 2016. And of course, I ran a completely different type of business then was not as visual, as artists. But that's the first time that I really felt like I don't want to do this anymore. This is bullshit. And I had read Cal Newport's book, Deep Work, that came out at that time. And he had this really popular Ted talk about quitting social media, which impacted so many people, myself included. So that's kind of the catalyst that made me do it. And it was such a liberating thing for me. And I was off it for many years. I didn't even use it to follow other people or anything. I wasn't on it at all.
And then I picked it up again when I started my art journey, because I figured maybe it's different this time, you know, I have visual things to share. Maybe it's easier for artists. I don't know. And I tried it for a while and I realised, no, it's the same platform. It's even worse now than it was back in the day. Not a lot of results from it, just a lot of busy work and a lot of stress and what I call comparisonitis, just being so blown away by the talented artists that are on the platform and that are sort of pushed upon you. And now more than ever, you know, it doesn't matter who you follow, you're still going to see random people in your feed and often very, very talented people. And so it can really just paralyse you.
And so that's when I stepped away from it. The second time it was off it and I focused on YouTube because YouTube actually felt fun. It felt like building a body of work in a way that work that has a lifespan, but doesn't just die after 24 hours. And it was fun and challenging. And so that kind of took the place of Instagram. And then I've made shorter experiments where I've just uploaded my stuff and yeah, haven't much attention to it. You know, it doesn't take me a lot to just schedule a few posts. Yeah, no, I've been on this on and off relationship with Instagram. And now I guess I'm somewhere in between. It's still there, but I don't really care about it.
Marketing Without Social Media
Eli: So what's your relationship with marketing and sort of social media as a part of it these days? How are you marketing yourself? How are you reaching your people? How are you being discovered?
Louise: Well, social media, I've understood is a very loosely defined term and people kind of categorise it differently. I haven't really considered YouTube to be a social media. I know a lot of other people do consider it a social media, but I've argued that if YouTube is social media, then blogs or social media, everything we do online is social media because there are social aspects of everything online. But YouTube is a search engine in my mind. And it feels like, I said, building a body of work of my content that I could take off the platform. I could take it anywhere I want. It's that I'm creating assets that have a lifespan.
And so that's how I approached YouTube and also email marketing has always been a cornerstone of all of my businesses. It's the number one thing that has driven sales in my business, both as a freelancer and as a digital content creator, digital product creator, a course creator, all of the various things that I've sold throughout the years, including art. Most of my sales have been through emails because it's a one-to-one format and it's more intimate. People have given you explicit permission to be in their inbox. They are probably going to see what you send out. There's no algorithm that's going to filter you away. Yeah, that's been my number one focus. And the one thing that I've always liked, this is the one thing that I cannot let go of no matter what other things I do. So that is my main, what I call nurture channel, because I like to think of them as discovery channels and nurture channels. You can't just have a nurture channel because people don't just stumble upon your email list. So a little bit they do on a platform like Substack, which is what I'm using right now. But you also need to drive traffic to it in some way. And that's where we have a lot of options. We can use something like Instagram, we can use social media to drive traffic to our email lists, but it's increasingly or decreasing the effective. We can use content creation, like a blog or YouTube or podcasts. That's also a great way to get people into your world and invite them to have a more intimate relationship with you in the form of emails.
But you also, you don't have to be a content creator. can also utilise other people's platforms. And you can be a guest on other people's podcasts. You can be a guest contributor on publications and in magazines, and you can pitch yourself to local newspapers. Whenever you have an exhibition, you can get your art into stores. There are so many ways, depending on what kind of artists you are, what kind of art you make, you can utilise the audiences that are already out there that someone else has built. So yeah. And that doesn't require social media at all or being a content creator, but I, for myself, I've always liked creating content. I've liked expressing myself, writing, making videos and helping people also the more coaching aspects, sharing my journey and my insight. It's in my knowledge with other creatives. So I like it, but it's not for everyone. And I don't think it's mandatory to create content or be on social media. There are many, many paths.
Eli: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. There are so many different ways to be an artist and so many ways to monetise your creative practice in whatever way that looks like for you. And part of fun of being an artist really is just all the different ways that we can market and play and make money and all of it.
Louise: it's the time of like the... there aren't many gatekeepers left for creative industries. You can just go out on your own and build your personal brand and get your art into the world and make money as a creative. And you don't have to beg for permission anywhere if you don't want to. Of course, that path still exists. You can get into galleries, you can work with galleries and all of that path. but it's, again, there are many paths. So we have more freedom than ever. It's also harder in many ways, but yeah, it's a double edged sword, I guess.
Managing Multiple Income Streams
Eli: So one of the things that you do in your business, you're sort of split, you sell some of your arts, you obviously do your content creation stuff, you have courses that you create, and you're also recently started doing voice coaching with creatives and artists as well. So you have these multiple, multiple strings. How do they all sort of fit together in your sort of day to day?
Louise: Sometimes they don't, honestly. That's the downside of having many different income streams and enjoying variety in your work, which I've always done. But then the challenge becomes how do I focus so I can actually get anywhere. But for me, it's a periodical thing. I try to not push myself to create art if I don't feel inspired to do it, because I don't have to just make art. when I am inspired and I want to release a collection, I focus on that a lot more and I share a lot more of that. And I have segmented my audience. So I have a Swedish newsletter, which is mostly for my art. So that's where I share when I have news around my art. And then my English newsletter, my Substack is much more geared towards other creatives. So I still share my art, but I share it for my more this is what I'm learning. This is what I'm creating. Not with the intention to necessarily sell my art, although it's still, I still sell paintings to people all over the world, but I don't emphasise that in that type of content.
And I don't being, being kind with myself and not forcing myself to be always on in all of these different parts of my work. So it ebbs and flows what I focus on. And like you mentioned, right now, I really enjoy coaching. And I've discovered a way to help other creatives that doesn't stress me out too much. That doesn't involve scheduling live calls, which can be really hard when you have an international audience because we're in different time zones.
Yeah, I am an, I am an introvert. am quite shy in some ways and being on live calls has always scared the crap out of me. So I've just made the conclusion in the past that coaching is just not for me, even though I have things to share. But then I've seen other coaches and consultants offer this thing called voice mode coaching, where they're, they're still, you're still talking with the person. You're sharing your voice and but you do it in an asynchronous way. So you're just sending voice messages back and forth whenever it suits your schedule. So you can do other things on the side. You can do your regular routine or your family life or whatever it is. And you can fit your coaching around that both for me as a coach and for the people that I coach. And it has really unlocked a new joy for me in coaching because it works with my personality, works with my schedule, I can do all of my other things too. And it's a lot less stressful and anxiety inducing. So that's been really fun too.
Overcoming Social Anxiety Through Video
Eli: I love that. And again, it just speaks to there are so many different ways to do whatever it is you want to do. You can find a way that works with your personality, even if you are introverted, even if you are socially anxious, you can still do coaching, can still do YouTube, you can still do all of these things.
Louise: Yeah, you can be on video because there's editing, and scripting, you can you can write your whole script, down to the to the word. And you can edit however you want to. And that has always become a bit too much in the in the opposite direction for me is to the point where I'm now trying to move away from that. I'm trying to actually learn how to speak more freely. But it was such an important part of why I could get started at all, because I wouldn't have considered myself a video person at all. I had actively moved away from video before, when the whole video boom and social media happened, I was just completely anti, no, I'm not going to do that. I'm a writer. And so it was quite a big leap for me to start a YouTube channel and a huge learning process.
Yeah, there's scripting, there's editing and you can do it by yourself. And yeah, we have so much freedom to find our own process and way of expressing ourselves.
Eli: what was that process like for you? What was it that prompted you to, cause I know something that we've talked about a little bit is, this kind of social anxiety and being very, very introverted. What was it that sort of prompted you to push yourself out of your comfort zone and dive in?
Louise: I think it just came down to. You know, I was aware that I had this fear and I knew it was holding me back from doing what I wanted to do. And so I guess it was this realisation that, okay, I can either allow this thing to hold me back and keep me small and not really get anywhere with my life, or I can just rebel against it and then do it anyway. And I had read so much about fear and anxiety at that point. And so I knew that it was entirely possible to just ignore those thoughts in your head and those fears.
And so that's what I decided to do. decided to just, and I had followed so many other YouTubers that I've talked about this process as well. And that you can, you can write your scripts, you can edit, there's no pressure. don't overwhelm yourself in the beginning, ease into it. Learn this new way of expressing yourself as art form, because it is an art form with video. And I had no idea how to edit or do anything. So it was a learning process, but I approached it in this really experimental and humbled way. I know my first videos are not going to be good. know I'm not going to look confident on camera or anything, but I'm willing to get past that. I'm willing to, yeah, I guess just look silly, you know, that's what it comes down to with art and, and everything just willing to look silly and own that. Yeah, I'm out here doing this. I know I'm not perfect and I'm going to make mistakes, but at least I'm doing it. And that feeling is so exciting and energising for me. That's challenging yourself and creating a new version of yourself in some way.
Eli: love that. There's a fantastic RuPaul quote that that makes me think of where he says, your fear of looking stupid is holding you back. It comes into my head every time I want to do something new. And I'm like, Oh, no, I'm not sure. I'm like, No, you have to get through stupid to get to the other side.
Louise: Yeah. And what's the worst thing that can happen? That's such a great question. What do I think is gonna happen? Am I going to die? Are people going to come to my home and then threaten me? No, nothing's gonna happen. You just move past it and you learn from it. So it's not that bad as we make it up to be in our heads. And the feeling when you have done something that previously scared you and held you back, it's such an amazing feeling of doing it anyway and coming out on the other side, regardless of what the result was of the thing.
Eli: Yeah, there's nothing there's nothing like it for building your confidence, doing stuff that scares you, pushing the edges of your comfort zone. It's the only way to build your confidence. I think people often wait oh, I'll do that when I'm more confident. But it's actually the doing of the scary thing that makes the confidence appear.
Louise: Absolutely. Yeah, there's no way around it.
Building Confidence Through Challenges
Eli: What's that what's that experience been like for you? Have you found yourself much more feeling more capable, feeling more able to kind of tackle challenging things now that you've started on that journey?
Louise: Oh, for sure. Yeah, I'm I'm not the same person at all that I was those years ago, because it builds on top of the confidence that I have gained through building my YouTube channel. It translates into other parts of my business as well, coaching, for example, and creating courses. I built my YouTube channel before and I used that to learn how to speak on camera, how to get my equipment working, getting good audio and video quality and editing all of those things I could then take to branch into creating courses. And then I could take that experience and I had a podcast experiment for a while as well, or I have a dormant podcast that I still might want to get back to at some point. But it was just such a, that was a very huge leap outside of my comfort zone, speaking just freely without a script, which I had been doing before that. having to carry the whole episode by myself, because I felt too scared to interview other people. That was just, no, I'm not doing that. That's way too scary. So there was a lot of, there was too much discomfort too soon with the podcast for me back then when I started it. Now when I've done more YouTubing and more, when I've been a guest on more podcasts, Now I feel much more able to tackle that again. So it's about gradually upping the difficulty.
That's sort of the gaming aspect, the game design perspective that I always have with everything that you can't make this huge leap because you're just going to fail and you're going to feel discouraged and it's going to feel like too much too soon. But if you just gradually ease yourself into something difficult, one little challenge at a time. And with my YouTube videos, just improving one little aspect at a time and not everything at once. You know, I wasn't on camera in my first videos. didn't have voiceovers in my first videos. So that has been key. Just easing myself into difficult things and learning from them and just gradually upping my confidence. Because the more you do things that are uncomfortable, the more you learn that, I actually could do this or That felt hard. wonder why it felt hard. What can I do to improve next time? And yeah, it's the only way to actually build your confidence and get better is to do the things that scare you. that feel really difficult until they don't feel difficult anymore.
Eli: I love the gamification aspect that you bring to it. Do you feel like that's something, I mean, you said it's a way that you, a lens that you look at the world through. Do you think that's kind of stood you in good stead for for doing all of this creative stuff in public?
Louise: Yeah, definitely. I mean, games are addictive for a reason. They're designed that way. They're designed to ease the player into difficult things and to go from being very small and incompetent in the beginning of a game to at the end of a game feeling like larger than life, feeling like you could take on anything and that... That's the whole journey that it's the hero's journey. It's the same reason why we love stories. It's that whole path going from small and scared and not ready for things to feeling really competent and experienced and taking on really difficult things, especially together with other people like you do in many games.
Yeah, definitely had that in that at the back of my head throughout my entire career. And it's helped a lot.
Eli: That's really cool. You just cast yourself as the hero in your own game and you know how brilliant protagonist energy I think is what people the term people use nowadays main character energy being the protagonist in your own life, as opposed to being the NPC in your life, just a non-player character and standing on the sidelines, keeping yourself small, not growing.
Louise: Yeah, it's a main character energy for sure.
Eli: love that, that's so funny.
Creative Process and Daily Practice
Eli: So I want to switch gears a little bit. I want to talk about your painting. I want to talk about what your creative process actually looks like these days. So you mentioned that you like to work in collections, you go through periods where you're not really in the mood for painting. What's your sort of day-to-day creative practice? you big sprints where you paint a lot and you're feeling really inspired and it all just comes out of you and then nothing? Do you have a sketchbook practice? How are you interacting with your artwork?
Louise: I try to have a daily practice. It's a goal I'm still working towards. I do have that at some point I do have that and especially in the beginning, when I learned art, when I was on sick leave, I definitely had a daily practice. I made art every single day for hours and hours and it was just so amazing. And then ironically, as I made art my job, I just had less and less time to actually make art. And whenever I made art, I felt the need to film it and present it in a certain way and narrate it. So it's been a challenge to keep a part of my art art practice just for me and not film it and maybe not even share it. So I tried to have a sketchbook practice and I am easing myself into that more at the moment.
But otherwise I think I'm more of a sprint person. whenever I have, I have a document of lots of ideas of paintings, but mostly collections that I want to paint, mostly different kinds of birds. And I try to release a few of those collections a year whenever I feel like it makes sense and I feel inspired. And then I am pretty, I can be pretty intense and especially with watercolours, since it dries so fast, I usually paint several paintings side by side, at the same time to not get impatient and try to end overworking my paintings, which I easily do when I work on just one watercolour, I usually just fiddle it to death. But yeah, so I can have days where I make three or four or five paintings depending on the size. And then might go a week and not paint anything. And then the next weekend, I paint another batch. And so I can usually produce a collection or a body of work in a fairly short amount of time by working with these natural bursts of inspiration and energy. So that's kind of what works the best for me.
From Idea to Collection
Eli: how do you how do you kind of get from the idea to the finished collection? Do you Are you choosing, I mean, I know that you did one whole collection on corvids and you did one whole collection like horned animals. How do you know when it's a collection or when it's just a single idea, one painting?
Louise: I don't know that and I feel increasingly that I have this tendency to push myself into some kind of result beforehand before I even know how many paintings I actually have in me for that particular theme. So for example, right now I've been painting seabirds and archipelago themed gulls and egrets and those kinds of birds, which is an idea that I've had for a long while. And I've just envisioned it very clearly in my head, these blue skies and these white birds and, it's going to be amazing. It's kind of like this and that. And I want to paint all of these birds. It's going to be X amount of paintings. And now I've really struggled with painting these, these paintings. It's been really difficult. I've been in the middle of a move, moving to an apartment.
And there's been a lot of chaos in my life and it's turned out to be very difficult to paint as well. with watercolour, painting a really light, bright subject against a darker background is so hard. I haven't been able to get these smooth washes in the background. So I've really struggled and I've only been able to make five paintings that I feel are good, good enough, and not this whole big 15 painting collection that I envisioned. And I just had to accept that fact and, okay, these are the paintings that came out of this. And I'm not going to force myself to keep going when I'm not feeling it. I can always come back to it in the future, but yeah, I try to allow for a bit more spontaneity and maybe not plan as much, but just go with my initial excitement and see how far that energy takes me.
Eli: Yeah, I always think painting is a co-creation experience. you might have all the ideas in the world, you might come to an idea or a collection or whatever with the best of intentions. But if the paintings aren't interested in you as much as you're interested in them, then it's just not gonna gel.
Louise: Yeah, that's a great way to look at it. Yeah. And I felt that with watercolour since I, I first fell in love with it, that it almost feels like a spirit, some kind of God or goddess, something outside of me that that needs to be on board and that wants to do its own thing. And you can't really control it all the way. And whenever you do try to control it too much, you just you lose the magic of the medium. So I have I have this really love and hate relationship with watercolour. That, you know, especially when I try to when I have this too clear of a goal and mind or vision of what I want, what I want things to look like, and I can't really get there with my hand. I get really frustrated and I blame it all on watercolour. It's your fault. You make this so hard. There's no undo button. I only get one shot and it's not fair. I don't like your watercolour. And then I go to something like acrylics or oils or charcoal where I can, you know, I can be in control. can get it to exactly where I want it to go. And then there's just no energy. There's no magic. So getting in my way, having my way and getting to exactly what I envision in my head is usually not a recipe for good art or a recipe for arts that I enjoy. But it's more that I feel with watercolour that I don't have control. have to release control. have to be open to whatever watercolour wants to do and what watercolour can surprise me. And when I can manage to stay in that zone of co-creation that you mentioned, that's usually when I, when I get finished painting that I feel has some life to it that has a little part of that spirit in it. The spirit of watercolour. And it feels like a gift that I received Oh, how nice it turned out. I had no idea. I didn't do this all on my own. had help from something, you know?
Eli: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I love that feeling. I love that some paintings just sort of fall out of the end of the brush, you're like, Oh, that was what I had in mind, but I like it.
Louise: Yeah, those are the best ones.
Eli: Yeah. And others you can labor over and labor over and labor over. And it's just even when you're done. It's like this is not. It's a dead thing. It's a dead thing.
Louise: Yeah, it can be it can be technically good. And it can be whatever you envisioned. And yeah, it's a good painting. Next, you don't feel anything when you look at it.
Eli: Yeah, no, the magic is and I think our job as artists is just trying to create the circumstances and the environment where the magic can happen. That's with our our mindset, with our, you know, whatever studio environment we're working with, even if that's just a corner of the kitchen table, it's always okay, I'm going to set the scene for the for the possibility of magic happening. Yeah. And then try and let go of everything else.
Louise: And that's, yeah, it's always been the best work happens. Yes. In that way, it's been think I wrote that somewhere that the water colour has been like a teacher to me, because it has taught me this, releasing control, because I have such I'm such a control freak, I'm such a perfectionist. And I can't be that with watercolour. So that's the constant lesson that I get from watercolours, no, you have to let go. You don't get to decide everything. And when you don't try to control everything, that's when the magic happens. And that's kind of translated into other things in my life as well, with writing and videos and yeah, trying to be online, be in social media, not trying to be so uptight with everything.
Eli: Yeah, and I think it's really difficult, especially when you're putting stuff out on the internet and you have no control over how your paintings or your words or anything that you have created is gonna land with somebody else, because they're bringing their whole baggage and personality and preferences and their humanness to it. And they're gonna come at it with a completely different take than the one that you intended. And that is always I don't know. I didn't know this part of me that always wants to sort of over explain a little bit, but being able to hold that back and just let things land. I think it's as much a part of the process as the actual creating of an image or a piece of writing or a video or whatever itself.
Louise: Yeah, yeah, becomes something else. It gets a life on its own once it's out of your head and your mind. And that's also a process of letting go. I had this vision, it's based on this or that memory or intention or whatever. But ultimately, the person who ends up, for example, buying the artwork, they might have a completely different association or relationship with it. I think that's really cool and fascinating.
Eli: Yeah, yeah, me too. And it's always interesting. I think the more the more specific you get, there are some things that I've put out there, this is so personal and so weird, no one else is going to get this. And then somebody will come to it with something completely different, but it still has that emotional resonance.
Louise: Yeah.
Eli: And it's fascinating to see wow, this is so different, but it has that, that connectivity in it. It's like electricity.
Louise: Yeah, yeah, yeah, completely agree. Yeah, yeah.
Work Schedule and Routine
Eli: So when you've got your art going on. You've got your business going on. You've got all of these different sort of elements. How do you fit that into sort of the average, the average work week? What is your what do your weeks look like? What do your days look like? Are you good at routine? Or are you thriving in chaos?
Louise: Well, I am a control freak, as I mentioned. So I definitely don't thrive in chaos. It's pretty much the opposite. Yeah, it's a weekly, weekly and monthly and regular challenge to keep myself focused. But Discipline has never been an issue for me. More probably the other way around. need to, I need to relax more. Yeah. I always plan meticulously what I'm going to do and the goals that I'm working on and I'm trying to batch them up or think in cycles. what am I going to do the next few months perhaps, or what, what do I want to do this week so that I can be more focused in my weeks and my days. Yeah, other than that, I don't think I have any particular routine. I said, I want to have a daily art routine and I probably should. And it's one of the things that I'm working on right now that I really want to spend some time each day working on my art because I want to get my art. I feel like I'm at a threshold right now or some kind of plateau where I... I want to get to the next level. have things to learn and things that are holding me back in my art practice that I want to get past. And so I know I need to practice a lot more. It's the only way I need to just make a whole bunch of paintings, little paintings to get past that and to develop my technique and my voice and get my art to where I want it to go. Right now I'm coaching a client this whole week and we're having so much fun. That takes up the majority of my days right now. And the next week, my goal is to start working on a new class, a new art class, sketching class. So that's going to be my focus then. And then I have a few exhibitions coming up this summer that I'm working towards. So I should probably paint a lot more, make finished paintings. Yeah, that's kind of what my... my life and work looks like right now. And it's probably going to look completely different come autumn or winter. I like variety.
Eli: Yeah. And again, this is one of the beautiful sort of side effects of having a creative life and a creative business which has these kind of seasons. There's always a different project to be working on. There's always I don't know. I love that, that no one week looks the same as any other week. There's always something different, something exciting, something new to be getting your teeth stuck into.
Louise: Yeah. And there is a format for everyone. some people probably need that structure and single minded focus and they can design their business and life that way. But if you're like me and you, we crave variety. can design it that way. once again, it's that freedom that you have.
Eli: Yeah, yeah, freedom. Amazing.
Final Advice
Eli: So, Louise, this has been absolutely lovely. There's one final question that I ask everybody who comes on the podcast, which is what advice would you give to anyone who is thinking about making their creativity into their full-time gig?
Louise: Well, I said at the beginning, I don't really feel like I should give people too much advice, but if there's one thing, it would probably be that be prepared for it to change your relationship with your art, because there are different ways of getting motivated to do something. There's the intrinsic motivation of something, which is usually the case with art or sports or something physical. We want to do the activity just for the pleasure of the activity and not for the final result. And then there are extrinsic motivators, which is getting a salary or getting some kind of raise or some kind of results. And when you make something that used to be an intrinsically motivated activity, when you make it into a job or a career, there's going to be some kind of clash there. It's going to be a culture clash and conflict and your relationship with your craft is going to change probably in negative ways that you need to be aware of and mitigate in some ways. It's a completely different thing to paint for pleasure and therapy as opposed to painting to sell, especially if you are really pursuing that type of art career where you're selling your paintings.
And it can be really stressful and it can make you resent your work if you're not too careful. And also when you mix business and capitalism and money stress into the equation, it's going to put a lot of pressure on your art. And I think a lot of people are not really prepared for, for that pressure. And if you're not careful, it can just kill your joy for your craft. So I would be really careful with that and make sure that I don't put too much pressure on my art too soon to become an income source, but to be gentle and to have backups on the side and to maybe have other types of work that don't drain your creative energy so that you can spend your time and taking your time to build your creative business. yeah, that would be my... my main advice without getting too much into the weeds.
Eli: No, love that. It's such an important consideration for people.
Louise: Definitely. And don't put yourself in a box too soon. Because that's another thing I see with with artists in particular that when you're at the beginning of your journey, you're desperate to find your style, your niche and build your brand and you almost want to box yourself in. But then The more experienced you get, the more you want to get out of that box. That's almost, it's so ironic. I think people should really cherish that initial, that initial stage of their journey where they don't have to be boxed in, where they can try anything and change and evolve. And of course artists always evolve. They try, they have. Different mediums they work in, they explore different subjects. It's a part of the creative life and the artist's life to not be limited to just one thing. But I think as a beginner, when you don't have this huge audience or you don't have expectations on yourself, you don't have people associating you with anything in particular, you are free to explore and try and stumble upon things that you had no idea you were going to really love. So to remain more open in the beginning I think is a good thing as well.
Eli: Yeah absolutely.
Contact Information
Eli: Louise where can people find you if they want to come and find out more about you, if they're interested in your art, your coaching, your courses, where can they find you?
Louise: Well my website is louisestigell.com and I'm sure you're going to have those links on the show notes. that's the best place to look at my art and see all the things that I do, my various offerings. And for people who want to stay in touch with me, it's my newsletter. And that's currently residing on Substack and it's called The Calm Creative, just like my YouTube channel. So yeah, my newsletter and my YouTube channel.
Eli: And they're both wonderful. You are such a beautiful writer and your video. That's where I discovered you on YouTube and yeah, really, really lovely, calm, wise insights, beautiful.
Louise: Thank you so much.
Eli: Thank you so much for coming on the pod today. It's been such a pleasure talking to you.
Louise: Thank you so much. so glad we could make this happen finally. Thank you.
Outro
Eli: A huge, huge thank you to Louise for joining me in the studio today. She has just the loveliest, most calm energy. I just feel so much more chilled out after speaking to her. Don't forget, if you want to find out more about Louise and get access to all of her links, everything we've talked about in today's episode, then make sure you come over to Zuzu's Haus of Cats.com. That's house spelled, H-A-U-S, forward slash podcast. And that's where you will find the show notes from today's episode. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you next time. Bye bye.