The Beginning ✺ Blog Post No. 1

The Beginning ✺ Blog Post No. 1


Welcome ✦

The beginning of this blog. The very first post. Yay! I am so glad you made it friend. With this blog, I plan to explore and highlight the reality of being an artist in this day and age. I want to cover everything from growing art social media platforms to art supplies I recommend to having a work and "personal creative time" life balance and everything in between. All the art stuffs. I am very excited that you decided to join me on this blogging journey!

Meet Frankii ✦

Who am I? And how did I become an artist?

My name is Frankii. Yes, Frankii with two "i's". I am a 22 year old artist based out of Michigan. The main medium that I work with is acrylic paint and my subject matter tends to be a little on the trippy side. If you were trying to describe my work to someone it can best be categorized as psychedelic pop surrealism, but I do not like to give it a label. It's just art. Art with a lot of mushrooms in it.

How did I get here?

Well, I came out of the womb already an artist. I was drawing with fat crayola markers on bright colored construction paper and painting canvases with acrylic paint on my parents coffee table since long before a toddler should've been allowed to do so. My dad is an artist, so creativity was always encouraged in my household. I was also raised as an only child and art quickly became my best friend very early on in life.

Realizing art is all I wanted to do pushed me into taking creating very seriously at a young age. I spent the majority of my days during high school focusing on art and decided to extend my journey and continue on to study illustration after high school. I ended up going to Grand Valley State University for one year of foundational art classes and then I dropped out. Maybe I will make a blog post about how I feel about art school - it's a hot take. 

Anyways, I ended up straying away from my art on a professional level for a few years (mostly due to art school burnout) to focus on YouTube where I was creating lifestyle and fashion content. Art during this period was solely a hobby for me on the back burner but recently I dove deeply back into creating as a career in full force. I truly believe that it is my life purpose, and I am so happy and grateful now that I am becoming the artist that I have always wanted to be. 

Is There Any Meaning Behind Your Work? ✦

I get asked this quite a lot and I can see why. My work is the type of work that you look at and think it is just neat for what it is. It doesn't look like the type of work that would have some sort of significant message lying behind it and to be honest, most of them do not. There is one overall arching theme though; and that is the exploration of my perception of "consciousness" through my work. I believe everything is either a form of consciousness or an extension of a form of consciousness. You see mushrooms in my work frequently and that is because of the different state of consciousness they put you in and the roles that they may have played in developing the current human consciousness. I am also known for depicting paintboxes within my work. This concept stemmed from the idea of A.I. (artificial intelligence) being a form of consciousness. There are a lot more things in my work that relate back to this idea, but those are just a few examples.

It is so fascinating to me that we (us humans) are just giant balls of water and cells and bones running around on this floating space blob and we have the means to communicate with each other and retain information. It's so beautiful. So yeah, buried in pretty much every one of my pieces is a tie back to this idea, but individually most do not showcase a specific meaning.

Drawing Inspiration From The World ✦

This is the first blog post on this blog. The very first one ever, so how are you supposed to know you're going to like the rest of the blog?

I wanted to include an example of the sort of content that I am planning on writing about. Today I got asked how I stay inspired so I figured that I would just make that the topic of discussion. 

"How do you stay inspired?".

It is a common question I feel that a lot of artists receive. I do not like the word stay in that sentence. It feels like you're making inspiration a place that you go and are forcing yourself to be, so when you need to draw from it, it is challenging and your ideas aren't flowing. 

I learned a long time ago that you can find inspiration in anything, and the best ideas that are delivered from the universe strike when you are least expecting them. With that realization, my brain went through a radical shift. 

"How do you stay inspired?". I keep my mind open. I am present and I am looking. Always. I think like an artist now. I view the world through the eyes of an artist because well, I am one. By doing that, by really embodying the mindset of an artist, I do not have to "stay" inspired. I just am.

Instead, word the question as: "How do you live an inspired life?”. 

My advice to you is this: 

Always be absorbing

Actively attempt to change the way you look at the world. You can withdraw inspiration from anything, anywhere. Look at the color pallet of the first table of folded shirts you see when you walk into a clothing store. Pull over on the side of the road to take a picture of that pretty sunset you're seeing on your way home from work. The weeds growing in your front yard might be annoying, but the shape of their leaves are interesting. Take a reference photo before you dump them into the yard waste. The landscape painting on the wall at your local breakfast restaurant that you’ve walked past a million times might bring you a new idea if you actually stop to really take in the brush strokes a second before you go sit down to order your biscuits and gravy. Thumb through the musty smelling childrens books on the shelf at goodwill and look at the illustrations that haven't seen the light of day in years. Look at the pattern of the carpet in the waiting room at the dentist office. Pay attention to all the wine labels at the grocery store. Its everywhere.
 

Always be recording

Every time you are delivered a new idea, write it down. I personally keep a notes app note of every idea that I get when I am out and about. This works for me because it is quick and easily accessible. I recommend, if you can, carrying around a sketchbook with you everywhere you go. This is more effective than just writing down your ideas because it allows you to communicate visually to your future self what your ideas were versus just writing them out. I have things on my list such as "cute milk carton", which I probably could have communicated to my future self better with a sketch. What the heck does cute milk carton mean? I guess we will never know. I actually want to make the switch to having a sketchbook as my main means of recording my seeds of inspiration.

When you discover a new idea, do not wait to document it either. Do you remember the thoughts you were having at the grocery store earlier? Yeah, me neither. Write it down or else you could be missing out later. 

 

Plant all of your seeds. Even the weird looking ones.

Imagine that someone came up to you and gave you a handful of random seeds. They tell you that some of them will turn into the biggest, most beautiful fruit trees in the world. They walk away and they don't tell you which ones. You look down and notice that they are all unique. Some look a little funky, some look completely normal. You would still take all the seeds and plant them to find out what they are, wouldn't you? You are expecting to find fruit trees but you might find that you are now the proud owner of a pumpkin patch, a bed of lettuce, and an avocado tree. None of which are the big beautiful fruit trees that you went in expecting to grow, but they are all unique in their own nature. Your idea seeds might germinate into some of the most surprising work if you begin to grow them and flesh them out but you will never know what they are if you just let them sit there. Go collect a sketchbook full of seeds. A good concept is just as important as your execution and this is how I come across mine.

Take all of your seeds that have been gifted to you from the universe and plant them. That is where you will be able to harvest the most unique body of work.

To answer the question of "How do you stay inspired?," I let it flow to me all the time whenever it needs to. I don't believe inspiration is something that you can force. Being inspired is a feeling. It is a spark in your brain. It is something that just happens to you. It is up to you to be aware of when it is happening to you, and it is also up to you whether you harness that inspiration and transform it into something new. 

Thank you for tuning in to my very first blog post. See you next week!

-Frankii 

 

 

 

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3 comments

I’m curious about your thoughts on art school. I myself have been thinking about taking classes but am unsure if it is necessary. Thoughts? Thanks! You make great art!

Zeb farkas

The seed bit really has me inspired. I’m always afraid I won’t like the outcome of an idea but how will I ever know if I don’t plant it? I really needed that. Thank you and I can’t wait for more posts! ✨

andrea

Thank you for this! I am an aspiring artist and I love your content. Please keep making these🤗🤍✨

Teisu

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