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Chris: If an aspiring artist or a pre-professional artist, we’re interested in perhaps learning a bit more about color, directly from you Sarah. Where might they go to acquire said knowledge?
Sarah: Well, I am so excited that you asked me to help mentor Magic Box students which I will be doing come this fall and there’s going to be auditions and we’ll review portfolios and we’ll hand pick a really dedicated bunch and what is it weekly meetings? We’ll kind of go through your assignments and talk about color and stories, and anime and cartoons and everything that you love. And we’re really just going to explore how to push your art to the next level because doing Oatley Academy and one of the reasons I have maintained such a great friendship with you is I see eye to eye with everything that you teach which is do great work, be great to work with, and knowing the fundamentals. And I’ll really be focusing on the fundamental assignments, so it’s going to be really exciting.
Chris: I’m just buzzing with excitement, it’s going to be fantastic. We invented the Magic Box as a response to what our subscribers wanted. That’s what they wanted, they wanted a self-guided option, they wanted digital painting. I built the Magic Box and then the next wave of hey, I want this was, we want the mentor-guided, the instructor led version of Magic Box. And so I called Sarah Marino! Obviously, I’m a huge fan of your art, but it’s one thing to be a great painter, it’s another thing to be able to really articulate and critique why you’re actually giving the advice that you’re giving, it’s not just some random intangible impossible to follow note and so over the last year as I started to try to build an actual school, not just hey it’s my website and I have some tutorials for sale, but actually build a for real school at the OA Academy, I’ve been reaching out to friends who can not only…they’re not only good artists, but they can actually affect change, significant change in the lives of the students, and they can really guide a student to a result, to a measurable improvement. And I’ve seen you do that over and over and over again with people at CTN, just right there in person and watching the connections happen in the mind of the student listening to you, and it’s just like oh man, it’s time. It is time friends.
Sarah: Aww, well thank you. I’m excited. My ability to critique portfolios and then also in turn put it into my own work comes from just the fact that the artist community is so helpful in giving feedback. Like I was saying before, you can’t create art in a bubble. You have to be aware of the other people in the industry and what they’re doing and what works and what doesn’t, and what the people they were looking at. More knowledge is only going to make you better and for me, I definitely am always on the pursuit of just more feedback or I love checking in, in my art director’s office. When I turn something in, I’m just really excited to be like hey, what did you think? What can I do? I love hearing what I can change or what he liked, what he didn’t like. This is really the only way you’re going to get better is to put your work in front of people and get feedback, whether it’s good or bad. And you have to be willing and open to receive it, I’m hoping that’s what people get out of my classes, just being able to see what they’ve got is a really good foundation and how we can turn it up to the next level.
Chris: Where can the artcast listener’s find you online?
Sarah: My actual website for my portfolio’s is SarahMarino.com. My name is spelled with an ‘h,’ and I’m also on Twitter @SarahMarino. I’m on Tumblr as SarahMarino.tumblr.com and on Instagram, I’m SarahKMarino on Instagram because some other Sarah Marino took that from me. I know! My perfect system. But those are the main online areas I use to show my work and I love Twitter so it’s probably the easiest way to get a hold of me, send me a little @ and I love to answer questions too. So if you have a bigger question that I can’t do on Twitter, definitely go to my Tumblr, I love answering asks so you can definitely reach me on there. And yeah….
Chris: And we will link to all of those sites in the blog post associated with this podcast episode. Sarah, thank you so much, great as expected and I’m looking forward to our Q&A, that’s going to be fun.
Sarah: Me too! I’m looking forward to everyone’s questions because this is the kind of stuff that when I get home from work that I get really excited about because the (inaudible) community is just so wonderful and the people are what make it so thank you!
Chris: We’re going to begin accepting applications for Sarah’s first Magic Box mentor session within the next few weeks. If you’re interested please visit ChrisOatley.com/MagicBoxMentor and sign up to be notified via email as soon as auditions open. Sarah’s mentorship session as well as the others we have planned for the future are being offered to Magic Box students only. If you’re interested in the Magic Box or you’re unfamiliar with the Magic Box, you can go to ChrisOatley.com/MagicBox to learn more.
As with all of our live classes, Painting Drama which is our course on composition, Films On Paper which is our course on visual storytelling, space is extremely limited. So you’ll want to jump on it right away. The last time we offered Painting Drama this past spring, we had to close auditions within just two days because we were inundated with applications. And in just a couple weeks, Sarah and I are going to be doing a live Q&A event for Magic Box students only. This is for all Magic Box students, you do not have to be in Sarah’s mentorship group in order to attend. This is for everyone in the Magic Box. So keep an eye on your email inbox for the announcement. You might want to check your spam folder and make sure that you are receiving emails from the Oatley Academy. And yeah, it’s going to be super fun hanging out with Sarah and answering your questions. We’re going to have screen sharing setup so we can do draw overs and demos and that kind of thing, but we’ll be answering questions about anything that you need to ask us. Really any question of any kind, not just digital painting but portfolio questions, career questions, website questions, story questions, personal project questions, anything that you need help with. We’re really just going to try and get to as many questions as we can in the amount of time. It will probably be a couple of hours. So one more time, ChrisOatley.com/MagicBox to learn more about and enroll in the Magic Box. ChrisOatley.com/MagicBoxMentor to learn more about Sarah’s mentorship program.
Whew! Okay, now it’s time for the breakthrough.
Today’s breakthrough story comes from Jim Messling. Jim writes, “Hey Chris! I have some exiting news!” There’s lot of explanation points here. “I am a third month Magic Box student learning a ton, thank you! I listen to all of your podcasts, and I just did it. I created my own project and launched it on Kickstarter this past Friday and today it is a Staff Pick.” Wow! That’s awesome Jim! You’re bound to get some attention from that. “The premise or inspiration is what if the wind and the willows were set as a sci-fi adventure series? Your fancy animal painting homework is helping to up my skills.” Well that’s encouraging. The comic book series is called Into the Void and you can find the link to Jim’s website as well as his Kickstarter campaign at ChrisOatley.com/Sarah-Marino-P2 as in part 2. Again that’s ChrisOatley.com/Sarah-Marino-P2. Congratulations Jim, that is really awesome. I’m delighted to hear that the artcast played a roll in inspiring you to take the leap of faith that is obviously and literally paying off now. And I’m encouraged to hear that the Magic Box has helped to equip you for that. Thank you so much for writing.
If you my dear listener, have a breakthrough story that you would like to share on the podcast, please go to ChrisOatley.com/Breakthrough. You can upload your story via audio, you can call in and leave your breakthrough story on the listener line at 818-588-OATS or you can just submit it via email and all of the necessary details are available there at the link. And you don’t have to be a student, you don’t have to be student at the Oatley Academy. If the Artcast or the blog or some interaction that you had with an Oatley Academy teacher or another student at a convention, if we’ve done anything to make a difference to help you achieve some sort of creative or business breakthrough in your life, we would love to hear about it. I know the other listeners would love to hear about it because those stories are super, super encouraging to everyone involved and everyone affected. So again, ChrisOatley.com/Breakthrough.
