Topics We Explored:
- Why it’s so important to forgive yourself and to start over every single day, as a teacher and as a student
- How you can choose one goal in a certain area of your life in order to focus, tune in, and find peace
- Why anxiety and pressure do not have to be a part of the creative process, and in fact may hinder your creativity
- What a project cagematch is and why clearing your brain of all the projects you could do can help you accomplish the goals that are actually attainable
- Why creative constraints and deadlines may be helpful for pushing you into places you’ve never been, and help you get unstuck
“Art, or any other creative work, doesn’t have to be painful. It’s okay if it’s fun.” – Jessica Abel (Tweet this)
Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
- Jessica Abel
- Growing Gills by Jessica Abel
- La Perdida by Jessica Abel
- Out on the Wire by Jessica Abel
- How to Referee Your Project Cagematch (and Unveil Your Values and Priorities)
- Leap First by Seth Godin
- The Impressionists
- Matt Madden
- La Disparition by Georges Perec
- The Creative Compass Minicourse
About Jessica Abel:
Cartoonist, author, and educator Jessica Abel is the author of the graphic novel La Perdida (winner of the the 2002 “Best New Series” Harvey Award), Trish Trash: Rollergirl of Mars, as well as two collections of stories from her omnibus comic book Artbabe. She and her husband, the cartoonist Matt Madden, were series editors for The Best American Comics from 2007 to 2013. Together they’ve authored two textbooks about making comics, Drawing Words & Writing Pictures and Mastering Comics. Her book (and podcast), Out on the Wire,is about how the best radio producers in the world use story to keep us listening.
Jessica is the chair of the illustration program at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Both within and without PAFA, Jessica helps creative people with big ideas to get past procrastination and anxiety, and get on with the business of making their potentially transcendent, game-changing creative work real in the world.
Jessica lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with her husband and their two children.
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