Learn from the Best
Who are you studying?
Everybody has heros. We all emulate other people. The up-and-coming basketball player may model his game after Michael Jordan, Lebron James, Kobe Bryant.
When it comes to oil painting, we too need to learn from the best.
Let me ask you a few questions:
From an art standpoint, who is your hero?
Who are you studying?
Who are you reading about?
What were their successes?
What were their failures?
What can you learn from the way they lived their lives?
What do you admire about them?
What characteristics in them do you want to avoid? Nobody’s perfect.
Here’s a list of my historical art heroes:
Rembrandt, Norman Rockwell, Jan VerMeer — those are the big three
Here are some contempory artists whose work I love:
Robert Bateman, G. Harvey, Alan Maley, David Leffel
But don’t stop with just artists.
Are there people from other walks of life that you admire?
Here’s a list of a few people outside of the art world that have influenced me:
Zig Ziglar — great motivational speaker
Adrian Rogers — one of the finest preachers I’ve every heard
Dan Miller — career coach best known for his 48days website
Yaro Starak — blogging guru
Gideon Shalwick — computer and blogging guru
Dave Ramsey — financial wizard - has helped thousands of people get out of debt
And these are just a few!
Be Teachable
My main point in this section is that we’ve all got to be teachable. I thought debt and credit cards were a way of life until someone introduced me to Dave Ramsey.
But believe it or not, after 30 years of teaching, I still have students come to my classes who really don’t want to learn. Why? Because they already know it all. Or so they think.
AND I’ve had students who’ve stayed with me for years who began to stagnate. They USED TO BE teachable, but are not any longer.
Being teachable requires humility. It’s admitting you don’t know it all. It’s realizing that you don’t have all the answers, and in fact, don’t often know the questions!
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