Learn to Draw by Tracing
It feels a bit like cheating at first, when you trace a photo.
But then you begin to learn a bit more about line and shadow.
And then it feels really cool.
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Practical Ways to Live More Inspired Lives
by David
It feels a bit like cheating at first, when you trace a photo.
But then you begin to learn a bit more about line and shadow.
And then it feels really cool.
Reach your personal growth goals faster with The GrowthBase.
by David
Today’s drawing: learning the basic tools in black and white, to keep it simple. Using Adobe Fresco on an iPad Pro 12 in, with an Apple Pencil.
“Drawing better” has been a latent dream of mine for many years.
Why do I want to learn to draw better now, and not before?
Because I’m traveling soon on a trip where I’ll be making many stops along the way, hiking for 13 miles a day.
Drawing feels like a good way to capture the spirit of the journey.
I have about 40 days before the trip starts, so I want to use the time to practice and learn a few tricks.
Why Use an iPad Instead of Paper?
I’m not opposed to using paper, but the smallest iPad has several advantages.
First, it will give me greater flexibility while traveling. I’ve got weight restrictions, so the small form factor will be both pocket friendly and lightweight.
Second, while I’m not opposed to collecting real brushes and paint, sticking to one app and one digital pencil eliminates variables, while also giving me tons of options.
Third, the art App of choice is amazing! Adobe Fresco gives me , tons of tools, the flexibility of layers, and easy cloud backup and sync.
Learning is super important to me.
And there is no better way to learn than to give yourself a public project that puts on the pressure to ship the results.
You can follow my 40 day journey of learning to draw and paint at this link.
Drawing and painting? Photography? Music? Video? Audio? Podcasting? Fiction? Poetry? Prose? A novel? A Foreign Language?
I challenge you to give your Right Brain something to chew on and get those creative juicing flowing again! (Check out my podcast episode on the huge importance of using all 4 parts of our brain.
Reach your personal growth goals faster with The GrowthBase.
by David
This past week, I walked and recorded in the woods. I was thinking about Connection and the reasons why I want to do a regular nature-based project.
The new short-form podcast is called the Davo Show (where anything goes) but the new name of the sub series is “The Great Wild Word”. This makes the 8th nature based recording in the series.
I also posted a song of sorts and a story of how I’m now making “music” on a regular basis. These recordings are periodically going to live in the Davo Show podcast too. (Because anything goes.)
I’m also struggling with the separate parts of my Self and how I see this new project. In the name of being artistic, I wrote about how in poetry form.
Anything Goes in The Davo Show.
The intention?
Be the Artist.
Discover. Explore. Play. Share.
No words, just flow.
Record for 5 or so.
A light tweak (if any).
Post That Sucker to the Cloud Wranglers
Tweak the Text Template
Press it to the Word Machine
Broadcast far and wide.
Those seeds will fly and fall where they may.
Anything goes in the Davo Show.
But yet!
The Principal with his yardstick,
Measuring,
Wielding reasonable words.
Says wait a minute…
That’s not Right.
That’s not Straight.
Wait.
But No! Anything goes in the Davo Show.
Inspiration kudos this week goes to musician Dave Grohl’s new book and my painter friend Larry Caveney, prolific artist that he is.
Do You Have a Place Where Anything Goes?
Peace to you and yours!
-Dave
PS, this weekend, I’m recording at the beach! Where are you going?
by David
I’ve decided to become a “life coach” with influence from Tony Robbins, Martha Beck, Alexander John Shaia, Jill Bolte-Taylor, Joseph Campbell, and the Hero’s Journey Cycle.
Why does becoming a life coach make sense to me now?
Because people need it. The world and work are changing incredibly fast.
Pretty soon I’ll be calling myself a Life Coach who uses creative technologies to help people grow.
My tech interests will never go away. Nor will my interest in teaching. Coaching is a great combo for the really deep changes I have faced and see others facing everywhere.
Focusing intensely on your personal growth is the only way to truly grow quickly and with great purpose.
Here’s a short version of how I got here.
Check out why Otter.ai is my favorite transcription service ever.
Hey folks, my name is David Bourne. I live in the beautiful western North Carolina. It’s a summer day here, late August 2021.
It’s been quite a year of tumult, as you probably know, no matter where you are. And I am here today to talk about why I have decided to do life coach training, which is something I didn’t think I was going to do.
Several weeks ago, I first came across this coaching idea, and I thought, well, I’ll never do that. But as time went on, I changed my mind.
Because things started coming into alignment. And things started to make a lot of sense. And it helps to just have a little bit of background on what I’ve been doing.
For the past year and a half, just about every day, I’ve been writing about this idea that I just thought was a cool idea. I saw Tony Robbins present a video (back in 2013), he had this piece of paper, and it had four quadrants. So you take a piece of paper and you draw two lines, one in the middle and one in the vertical axis.
And he said, ‘You know, this is why some people succeed and other people’s don’t’ He called it the success cycle or something like that. And, you know, I thought it was pretty cool.
And then a few years later, I came across a book called Heart and Mind (edit – The Quadratos) by guy named Alexander John Shaia. And it was about this four-part idea. And it was about the four gospels of, of the Bible of the Christian faith.
He talked about how you could understand Christianity and a journey through those four parts. Oh, wow, that’s pretty cool. Then I realized, you know, that’s really the Hero’s Journey that Joseph Campbell started talking about in the 1950s when he wrote his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
And of course, that became quite interesting to a lot of people, filmmakers, in particular, like me. Storytellers, people who realized that there’s this thing called the Hero’s Journey. So many stories, so many myths talk about it.
And I’ve been fascinated by that. And Jungian psychology and depth psychology just had a kind of a, just a fascination with it never really studied that in earnest.
But a year ago, I started writing about this cycle, this four-part cycle, about a year and a half ago. (In the Spring of 2019, actually.)
And then (in the Spring of 20212) I came across this book (called The Way of Integrity) by a really energetic woman named Martha Beck. And sure enough, she started talking about Dante’s Inferno and how Dante uses this four-part cycle to talk about life and talk about how we move through life as human beings and understand ourselves and understand just the universe and, and how there was this, this deep connection to things.
And I thought, wow, this is really making a lot of sense.
And the next thing you know, another woman that I’ve been wondering about for years after I saw her amazing TED Talk, a woman named Jill Bolte-Taylor, I’ve been waiting for her to write another book and explain to us how we can just tap into this oneness that she found, as she had us, she had a stroke, she was a Harvard trained brain researcher working at Harvard, and she had a stroke, and realized this amazing connection with the world and understood our brain psychology so much better by having this visceral true life experience where she totally lost herself.
She just became this kind of infantile being without a self in a way it was, and but yet felt this connection to the universe.
(Her book Whole Brain Living is about how the human brain creates a sense of a four-part self.
And I thought all these things, they just, they all make sense. So it just started to sink in, is all I can say, this idea that, you know, this whole four-part journey thing that I’ve been wondering about for a year and a half, I think this really is, is saying to me that I want to take a more active part of this journey.
That’s one of the things the, the cycle the four-part cycle teaches us is, when you’re really fully active, that’s when you start. to really learn how to really change you really grow, you really can become a hero, where you can learn something new and bring that newness. into your community and, and really begin to make a difference in the world and I want to make a difference.
I want to have greater purpose, I want to have a more meaningful life. And doesn’t everybody want that? So I just realized that this has been calling me in all these things that I’ve just called interests, you know, for years.
And I started looking back on my life and, you know, some of the major events in my life that changed me and how I dealt with those events and started seeing the cycle in that. So all that to say, this is why I have decided to take this life coach training, just because it fits into where I am in my journey.
And it just seems like this is the next thing. So where’s that gonna lead? I don’t know. But it seems pretty exciting. And so, so I wanted to make a short video about it to document my day I signed up for this class today, it’s going to be starting in a month or so.
And then in nine months I’m going to be helping other folks go through this, you know, these ideas of stages and trying to figure out how do we know how to have more fulfilled interesting life of wholeness and connection.
And really, the reason I’m outside is because nature and the outdoors is so important to me. And I want to make that somehow a part of all this.
I’m not sure how yet, but just the wonder and all that I find in nature. That’s so powerful. And I want to extend that as I go forward.
So if you’ve made it so far through this, thanks for thanks for listening. And hopefully, we can connect and learn more from each other about this journey that we’re on together.
Again, I’m David Bourne. You can find me at David bourne.com out there on the web. I hope to see you out there. Cheers.
Transcribed by Otter.ai
by David
When I was a youth, I wanted to dance. But I was afraid to put myself out there on the dance floor.
I told myself, “Dancing is not fun. Dancing is not for me. Dancing is silly. Dancing is overrated. I do not want to dance.”
I wanted to be out there and to enjoy it. But I did not know how.
Not yet. I had to learn that part.
I was bored and blaming the whole world and everybody in it for being boring.
Boredom kills every moment.
But thankfully, I got lucky. I somehow came across a very simple idea that changed everything.
“There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.” — G.K. Chesterton, Heretics
Read Heretics by G.K. Chesterton Online at Scribd
Ouch.
That quote smacked my teenage angst right in the face.
I finally realized that I alone was the cause of my boredom.
Not the world. Not other people.
It took me a while, but eventually, this realization started playing itself out in my life. I began to take small steps towards the things that I wanted to do.
In short, I learned to dance.
The dance is a metaphor for anything we want to do but are not doing. We make excuses. We blame the world. We stay distracted by shiny objects.
Or worse, we blame our limited selves. We believe we are not good enough. We don’t measure up to what we want to create or be.
Bit by bit. Inch by inch.
Pretty soon you will be dancing and making up new moves.
For example, you can learn to take great photos by simply reaching into your pocket and taking pictures with your mobile phone. Find subjects that you are curious about.
But don’t take just one photo. Take twenty. Then study them. Share them with a safe friend and ask for constructive feedback.
Pretty soon you will be dancing with your photos.
What dance are you wanting to do today?
If you want your work and life to be amazing, you have to get out on that dance floor.
I’ll see you there!
I am a nature loving, creative technology-obsessed dad who wants to change the world. I coach independent business owners to tell better stories about themselves and their work. Change Your Story and You Change the World.