Do you listen to podcasts about creative work, learning, and teaching? You might enjoy the shows I make with Jerzy Drozd at Lean Into Art.

What's Lean Into Art?

Lean Into Art started about 10 years ago when Jerzy asked me to help him build and launch an online art center. Along the way the project became a collaborative partnership and we launched the show and workshops store in late Summer of 2011.

Ever since it's been a place to learn and share the experience of making visual art and all the surrounding concerns of lifestyle and business of being an artist in business. It's a place of personal and professional development for visual storytellers and teaching artists. We offer podcasts, a Patreon and Creative Accountability Lab, Discord community, books, and workshops. How all that works has evolved a lot over the years, that's a whole separate article.

Exploring theory and practice, while avoiding prescriptiveness

We do our best to share useful ideas and techniques without being prescriptive. To accomplish that we make sure to explore both practice and theory of each topic. We could be talking about hosting events for your art community, visual composition of a comic page, or specific tools in Clip Studio Paint. With any of our topics we find open questions, perspective on the theory, and practical examples of putting the topic to use. explore theory and how we think about each topic.

You'll find as of today 354 episodes of the main show Lean Into Art and 156 episodes for the bonus patron-only show Extra Lean. I mentioned 2 Minute Practice in a few blog posts recently, that's another LIA show. We have a premise that one way to level up in your art is to teach and to continue growing as a teacher it's important to keep learning.

In a nutshell we are gentle bros. We're here to participate in, serve, and grow a community of everyone practicing and growing in their own path and time. We encourage creative growth that works for where you are. We don't tolerate toxicity and by being wholehearted creatures we tend to ward off folks who want to be toxic. I wonder if one factor contributing to that is how most every show ends with me saying "... and remember, Leaners aren't wieners! Thanks for listening!". More likely It's the thoughtful creators who've joined the community through the Discord and Patreon.

Do give the show a listen or watch

We stream every other week on Thursdays at 11AM Central US time to our Twitch and YouTube channels.

Jump in any time, what kind of creative skill, feeling, or topic is on your mind? You might find it on the LIA search page.

A few other places to start with the show:

• Creating Clarity or Inspiring Awe
• Listening With Notetaking to Understand and Facilitate Groups
• Make Your Own Time Tracker
• Advocacy as Part of Your Creative Business
• Quick Flatting in Clip Studio Paint
• Where in the Blank is the Time to Create
• Setting Up Projects for Whittling

Continuing to evolve

This year we've started the Monthly Lab and two new show formats: Creative Work Conversations and Mini Workshops. Each builds on stuff we've been doing but are working to improve. There's more going on behind the scenes too. We're working on new ways to produce the show. And even bigger news we've been quietly teasing for some time. New stuff in development. Bigger than a supercut of us dancing to the DragonBall or DBZ intro theme songs. Which happens and is another reason to get into Lean Into Art.