Episode 70

Gratitude List for the Artist

As 2020 comes to an end I am reflecting as an artist all that I have learned. I cannot throw the baby out with the bath water by complain about what went wrong this year. I think a lot of stuff still went right because of the situation 2020 put me in.

As an artist, we have a job to give perspective to others. If we mope and bitch all day, we are only letting the world win. Taking time to make a conscience effort to the the existential view of the world is our duty.

I hope everyone is safe an has the ability to gain a new perspective on life as we end 2020.

Bastards of Art Host: Matt Hodel

Matt Hodel is the owner of Ragtime Tattoo and Lillian Press in St. Louis Missouri. Working as a self-employed artist since 1995, he left his fine arts degree for a path in the low brow art world. He apprenticed for tattooing in the 90's at Iron Age Studios. From there he has traveled the globe working as an artist.
Today Matt splits his time between St. Louis and the Ozark Mountains. He enjoys Risograph Printing, landscape painting, and digital painting. Matt brings these podcasts to you the listener in hopes to inspire and motivate.

For other projects vist: Matt Hodel Design

Episode 69

Interview with EDM Artist Alex Bochel

Sometimes the only way to follow your dreams is to jump in with both feet. Alex Bochel is an EDM artist from Washington DC that left his computer science degree behind to pursue his passion in music. In Alex’s words , “There was no backup plan.”

It takes a different skill set to be the product. There are no guarantees so staying motivated and energetic requires a balance of time management, humility and confidence. In this episode of the Bastards of Art, Alex shares how he developed these traits but more importantly he shares with us how he is still learning.

I was extremely impressed with the vision and energy Alex has acquired. Listen to this episode and find out for yourself.

Find Alex Bochel at:

https://www.alexbochelmusic.com/

https://soundbetter.com/profiles/220033-alex-bochel

And every social media platform @alexbochelmusic

Bastards of Art Host: Matt Hodel

Matt Hodel is the owner of Ragtime Tattoo and Lillian Press in St. Louis Missouri. Working as a self-employed artist since 1995, he left his fine arts degree for a path in the low brow art world. He apprenticed for tattooing in the 90's at Iron Age Studios. From there he has traveled the globe working as an artist.
Today Matt splits his time between St. Louis and the Ozark Mountains. He enjoys Risograph Printing, landscape painting, and digital painting. Matt brings these podcasts to you the listener in hopes to inspire and motivate.

For other projects vist: Matt Hodel Design

EDM Artist Alex Bochel

I offer a variety of services for clients such as production, mixing, mastering, and marketing. I specialize in Pop and EDM and have great results in both Facebook ads and playlist marketing.

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Episode 68

How to navigate a Toxic work Environment

I received a test message from a listener. He asked me to do an episode on the unhealthy work environment that tattoo shops can have. Here is his text:

“Here’s an idea for a topic:
How to navigate toxic work environment in a tattoo shop. Egos, drugs, booze, general bad attitudes in tatt shops”

There was a point in time where tattooing was a small niche tribe. The culture ran by its own rules and policed itself. I do not accept this as a legitimate excuse to allow an unhealthy environment to exsist. The edgy-ness of tattooing has dulled and with that the gruff attitudes have lost their purpose.

Tattooing is a very mainstream business. Artist are citing their professionalism as a selling points to clients Often they themselves do not reflect the healthy values needed in todays workplace. Working in a shop that is still fueled with machismo rather than creativity and professionalism often leads to toxic environments.

My answer to the text is simple. Become the best version of yourself. By doing this you will attract other like-minded people. You will never be able to change other people’s attitudes or temperaments, nut you have 100% control over yours.

Change always starts with you.

-Matt Hodel

Bastards of Art Host: Matt Hodel

Matt Hodel is the owner of Ragtime Tattoo and Lillian Press in St. Louis Missouri. Working as a self-employed artist since 1995, he left his fine arts degree for a path in the low brow art world. He apprenticed for tattooing in the 90's at Iron Age Studios. From there he has traveled the globe working as an artist.
Today Matt splits his time between St. Louis and the Ozark Mountains. He enjoys Risograph Printing, landscape painting, and digital painting. Matt brings these podcasts to you the listener in hopes to inspire and motivate.

For other projects vist: Matt Hodel Design

Episode 67

Steps to a Creative Workflow

There is nothing worse than being inspired to art but not being able to art. I can not count how many times I would see something on YouTube that would make me want to draw. I happed to often and it was so frustrating. I was so stoked to create something but after I set up my drawing table, nothing. Nothing happened. I just stared at my page.

I still do this.

The difference is, now when it happens, I have a plan of attack. I have a workflow that I can fall back on to help me get going and reach my art moment of ZEN. I chase the artist high. It is what I live for. My advice to those that get stumped is to set up a few steps to bring you into art mode.

Preparation

This is the part that will pay off in the long run but feels like work in the beginning. Take a minute to make a guide of what you are trying to say. Visually or literally. Make some small sketches, do not commit to anything and try to make a quick blueprint for your ideas to attach themselves to.

Incubation

We have our conscious and our sub-conscious minds that we live with. If you do the preparation phase, you are allowing your two worlds to collaborate on an idea. Therefore, the preparation phase is important. While you are in the incubation phase, ideas will loosely fly around your brain. You are slowly finding the chord that ties it all together.

Illumination

The “AH-HA” moment. You are now focused. You know how to get to your goals and the only thing left to do, is to do it. This step is when your artist high kicks in. Time slows down and you obtain tunnel vision. This is why we art.

Implementation

This is your reward for following a path. You are no longer lost. The words spill onto the page, your fingers move quickly on the piano and your brushes have a mind of their own. Congratulations you are making art.
Let your voice be heard.

Matt Hodel

Bastards of Art Host: Matt Hodel

Matt Hodel is the owner of Ragtime Tattoo and Lillian Press in St. Louis Missouri. Working as a self-employed artist since 1995, he left his fine arts degree for a path in the low brow art world. He apprenticed for tattooing in the 90's at Iron Age Studios. From there he has traveled the globe working as an artist.
Today Matt splits his time between St. Louis and the Ozark Mountains. He enjoys Risograph Printing, landscape painting, and digital painting. Matt brings these podcasts to you the listener in hopes to inspire and motivate.

For other projects vist: Matt Hodel Design

Episode 66

Know your Client Churn

You have spent so much time and effort into getting clients. Now it is time to keep them. It takes more time energy and money to build a client base than it does to retain those clients that are already doing business with you.

Customer churn is one of the most important metrics for a growing business to evaluate. It is a number that can give your company the hard truth about its customer retention.

In this podcast I use the tattoo career as my model to discuss the churn of clientele. You can relate this concept to any business that involves people and that is almost all of them.

Customer churn is the percentage of customers that stopped using your company's product or service during a certain time frame. You can calculate churn rate by dividing the number of customers you lost during that time period -- say a quarter -- by the number of customers you had at the beginning of that time period.

There are a few things you want to avoid if you want to improve your client retention. This podcast will help you understand how to work smarter and more efficiently so you can spend more time doing art.

-Matt Hodel

Read More at NGDATA. Here is a great article from Molly Galetto.

What is Customer Churn?

Bastards of Art Host: Matt Hodel

Matt Hodel is the owner of Ragtime Tattoo and Lillian Press in St. Louis Missouri. Working as a self-employed artist since 1995, he left his fine arts degree for a path in the low brow art world. He apprenticed for tattooing in the 90's at Iron Age Studios. From there he has traveled the globe working as an artist.
Today Matt splits his time between St. Louis and the Ozark Mountains. He enjoys Risograph Printing, landscape painting, and digital painting. Matt brings these podcasts to you the listener in hopes to inspire and motivate.

For other projects vist: Matt Hodel Design

Episode 65

Tattoo Education

Most fields that require a license to operate also require some form of continuous education. The benefit to this is not only for the practitioner’s sake but it raises the industry standards as well.

In the tattoo industry, formal education is frowned upon. From time to time a tattoo school will open with the intent to take an artist from no previous experience to licensed tattooist but I am not concerned with these monkey factories. What I am referring to is the abyss that looms over an artist after his first years of practicing.

For the most part, it is up to the individual to be responsible for bettering themselves. The problem lies in not know what needing improvement and what resources are available to them. For those who entered tattooing by apprenticing in a street shop, the lines are blurred to what comes after the formative years of their career. If you are wanting to continue to specialize in your field there is not a lot of programs for continuous education.

Matt Hodel

Bastards of Art Host: Matt Hodel

Matt Hodel is the owner of Ragtime Tattoo and Lillian Press in St. Louis Missouri. Working as a self-employed artist since 1995, he left his fine arts degree for a path in the low brow art world. He apprenticed for tattooing in the 90's at Iron Age Studios. From there he has traveled the globe working as an artist.
Today Matt splits his time between St. Louis and the Ozark Mountains. He enjoys Risograph Printing, landscape painting, and digital painting. Matt brings these podcasts to you the listener in hopes to inspire and motivate.

For other projects vist: Matt Hodel Design

Episode 64

I Quit.

I Quit Drinking and my Art got Better

A decade ago I made the change to quit drinking. The act of drinking had become a way of life for so long that I do not remember too many things that didn’t involve having beers. When I was 35, I woke up and quit.

A lot of stuff got better. The craziest part was how focused my mind got. I was no longer a ball of nerves. I had lost that feeling of being on edge. It wasn’t over night, but I had a glimpse in those early days of what I was capable of. That lead me out of the drinking stage in my life to the art stage of my life.

I had always done art. I had always done art and felt like a big phony. The first months and even years I still felt very vulnerable. I want to say that with time things got better. That is not the case. With experience things got better. That is a much more accurate statement. The more action I put into place, the better everything got.

Today I am much more productive. Today I am much more focused. I can say that I accomplished more in one year being sober than 10 years drinking. My art feels right. I can learn new ideas and techniques. I am not afraid to explore outside my comfort zone.
I felt like I needed to put this in a podcast. I am shy talking about it because I do not want others to feel uncomfortable. I do not care what others do to get their inspiration. I just know that what worked for them, did not work for me.

Bastards of Art Host: Matt Hodel

Matt Hodel is the owner of Ragtime Tattoo and Lillian Press in St. Louis Missouri. Working as a self-employed artist since 1995, he left his fine arts degree for a path in the low brow art world. He apprenticed for tattooing in the 90's at Iron Age Studios. From there he has traveled the globe working as an artist.
Today Matt splits his time between St. Louis and the Ozark Mountains. He enjoys Risograph Printing, landscape painting, and digital painting. Matt brings these podcasts to you the listener in hopes to inspire and motivate.

For other projects vist: Matt Hodel Design

Music by www.alexbochelmusic.com

Episode 63

There is a fine line between a foot in the door and a foot in the ass. Making the leap to self-employment has some hidden obstacles that will arise. Those who are not ready to grow will fail. The number one enemy people face when they go out on their own is themselves.
These five traits will never be mastered and are constantly evolving. You should be prepared to continuously work on yourself and understanding how the following applies to you and your life as an independent artist.

Five Traits You Will Need for Success

Time Management

This might be the most difficult skill to learn. Even if it is foreign to most artists, it can be achieved. This is a skill that is slowly learned and consistently improved. The great news is it starts by simply learning one word: NO. When you can streamline your workflow and cut the fat from your schedule, you will have your first victory in time management.

Understanding Internet Content

We all know Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and whatever app came last week. These are tools of the internet. They are not THE internet. You should be learning how to create content and how to host that content. This could be a blog, online store, YouTube channel or podcast. Then you market your online content with the tools of the internet. The goal is to be free of third-party apps and be able to manage your own content. Then be able to drive traffic your webpage and online stores.

Financial Responsibility

I think the biggest take from this statement is to understand that when you are producing you are an entity. That entity makes money. You will need to fund this entity so it can keep making things to produce. It is only after the entity gets paid and is self-sufficient, that you get to take a draw or paycheck for yourself.
You need to nurture the entity that makes money and only take a draw of a part of that money.
The entity grosses money then it pays its expenses and builds a cash reserve. What the entity nets is what you get to take a draw from. Do not bleed your entity dry.

Patience

This is a big one. You already know not everything is going to go your way. The successful entrepreneur knows how to keep the moving parts moving. This is the biggest secret to managing a business. This is what holds people back. Your job is to make sure everyone has what they need to get their job done. Even if it is not your job, your job is to make sure everyone has what they need to get their job done.
Trust in Yourself

Imposter theory is real. Most artist have been plagued with feeling like a phony. This happens when your self-worth does not meet your current project. It could be hanging your art alongside of really talented artist, or it might happen when you are wanting to express your opinion but you are feeling like your not the person who should be offering advice.
You should fake it until you make it.

-Matt Hodel

Bastards of Art Host: Matt Hodel

Matt Hodel is the owner of Ragtime Tattoo and Lillian Press in St. Louis Missouri. Working as a self-employed artist since 1995, he left his fine arts degree for a path in the low brow art world. He apprenticed for tattooing in the 90's at Iron Age Studios. From there he has traveled the globe working as an artist.
Today Matt splits his time between St. Louis and the Ozark Mountains. He enjoys Risograph Printing, landscape painting, and digital painting. Matt brings these podcasts to you the listener in hopes to inspire and motivate.

For other projects vist: Matt Hodel Design

Bastards of Art | Episode 62

Good Artist Borrow and Great Artist Steal.

How and when to use reference.

No one starts off their art career being the most original and profound artist on the planet. It just doesn't work that way.  While you are learning your craft it is crucial to observe how those who came before you problem solved.  In fact since we are always learning its even more crucial to become comfortable using reference to enhance your career.

Matt Hodel talks about the how, when and why of stealing from artist who came before you like a pro.

Click here for more information about Matt Hodel

Bastards of Art | Episode 61

Darwin Vs Einstein

The creative person is one of two different creative types:

Charles Darwin was a great experimental innovator, who spent decades accumulating evidence on evolution and its mechanisms, and made his greatest contributions late in his career.

Albert Einstein was a great conceptual innovator, who made discoveries through highly abstract reasoning, and made his greatest contributions early in his career.

In this episode of Bastards of Art, Matt Hodel discusses the creative side of ourselves and how to get in touch with it.

Bastards of Art | Episode 60

I have five ideas to get you out of your comfort zone.  There is a whole world of art out there and you not need to stick to the safe areas.  So for a minute, ignore your Instagram and consider doing something different today.

1. Make a fake company.

• Create a motto and a start a design line
• Create shirts
• Make flyers
• Make logo

2. Start a new social network platform.

• Behance
• Deviant art
• Doodle addict
• Ello
• Pintrest
• art station
• Tumblr

3. Try to make you favorite art with different mediums.

• Break away from your comfort zone.
• Feel out new techniques
• Buy new stuff

4. Visit a print shop

• woodcut
• engraving
• etching
• litho
• screen printing
• mono type

5. Make a web page.

• Try WordPress
• Use your voice
• Let people know who you are.

My Name is Matt Hodel and I have been making art for a living since 1995. If you enjoyed my podcast, please visit my web page.