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ImRachelBradley

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I realised it would be a great idea to roundup all the free content I have across various platforms for those who only follow me on one/some of them. I really love getting to make resources to help artists, and I hope you find something new here!


Reference Images

I'm best known for the reference photos I create. You can check out my full library on Gumroad, which I believe contains about 20,000 images at this point, and nearly 60 different packs!


But if you were looking for a place to get started, I have a few free packs! Click here to check those out.


My personal favourite is the Free Reference Bundle, which contains 105 images from my first 40+ reference packs. This gets you a tonne of variety and will cover everything from posing to lighting, costumed to anatomy, portrait to full body.


You're also very welcome to use any of the photos I post to my Instagram as reference! I'll often share reference images there, but some people even draw personal photos I share, and that's awesome too!

Titlecard-Free Bundle

You can also check out my reference images (more limited selection, but potentially more convenient for you) in the following places:


Newsletter

Nl

I'm a massive stickler for longer-format, thoughtful, quality content and feel a lot of nostalgia for the earlier days of the internet and the online art community.


As part of that, I have a thriving mailing list that I share a weekly newsletter with! Every Thursday, my subscribers get direct to their inbox:


  • Updates on new launches (artwork, videos, reference packs etc)

  • Useful resources I’ve found

  • Showcasing my followers’ art

  • Journal prompts/coaching questions


13,000 artists are already subscribed, and I'd love it if you joined us!


You can sign up for free by clicking here.


PS. As well as my free newsletter, I also create a premium newsletter, which goes out to a much smaller and more intimate community. Every week, I pour hours into providing you valuable content and a more in-depth insight to what I'm up to behind the scenes. The premium newsletter includes:


Weekly reference image

  • A full resolution image from my archives every week

  • Accompanying study notes where I dissect important aspects of the image to help you push your work further

Inspiration

  • Worldbuilding inspiration: a deep-dive into all kinds of fascinating facts, historical events and personal anecdotes to help you push your ideas further

  • Images of visual interest to get you inspired

  • Thoughts/advice/observations/quotes to get you motivated

Personal Updates

  • A behind the scenes look at what the week held for me, both in my work and my personal life.

  • Studies, WIPS, thoughts, events and/or anything else that was important/influential to me.

  • Exclusive updates that I don't share with social media.

Discount

  • A subscriber-only discount for any item in my Gumroad store


You can join my premium newsletter for only $5 a month on either Substack or Patreon!


Creators Chat

Noah and I create a free video/podcast series called Creators Chat. It’s an unscripted, casual, candid show in which we discuss topics highly relevant to artists and often rarely spoken about. We like to cover a broad range of subjects, such as finding more success in our careers, nurturing our mental health and insights into recent developments in the art world. Where to Watch: YouTube

Where to Listen: Spotify iTunes Stitcher Soundcloud

Articles

As I mentioned above, I LOVE long-format content, and I often put out free articles on my website. Here are some of my favourites:

Articles

Videos

I share videos over on my YouTube channel! These are my favourites:

That's all for now! I hope you find something in here you enjoy. I've been loving being back here so far- thank you to everyone who's gone out of their way to make me feel welcome!

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-From time to time, I'll repost articles published on my website for you folks here. I hope you find them enjoyable, helpful and encouraging!-

I don’t know that I have ever encountered an artist who has never agonised about originality.

At some point (and for many of us, still) we’ve all wanted to find an iconic style, to stand out, to be heralded as someone worth noting. And of course we do—because it’s those who’ve stood out before us that have inspired and motivated us in our own journeys. Visionaries inspire generations and legends inspire centuries—heck, even millennia—of budding artists. It’s very difficult to fall in love with art and NOT dream about our art reaching people that way, too.

Whether it’s the success and recognition that you crave (absolutely no judgement—anyone who labels monetary success of artists as “selling out” is gatekeeping and probably insecure about their own journey… ANYWAY) or a more humble sense of security and belonging, a sure-fire way to stand out as an artist is to be seen as original, to produce something we haven’t seen before. In a world obsessed with ‘first’s, ‘greatest’s and ‘best’s, it doesn’t feel like enough to replicate what has been done before. We feel like we have to be original.

Well… I think that original might be overrated.

Or, put more accurately, we tend to think about originality in a way that holds us back from being able to attain it. However, that makes for a less impactful (read: click-baity) title, so I stand by my original statement.

According to Merriam Webster, “original” has many definitions, but the one most relevant to us is “not secondary, derivative, or imitative—an original composition”, and I would say this is approximately the definition that most of us hold. It is something entirely new. It is not influenced by or a product of or an ode to anything else.

That said, I firmly disagree that your work has to fit this description to be impactful for two main reasons: it’s impossible. And even if it wasn’t, it’s ineffective.

Impossible

We cannot create in a vacuum. Everything we do is influenced. Our voices, our opinions, our goals, our music preference, the clothes we wear—ALL of it came from somewhere. Even if you do something deliberately to be different, you’re still letting the norm influence your behaviour (inverse proportionality is still a form of proportionality). So, put simply, you really can’t make art that is entirely original from anything that’s ever been made.

Ineffective

We may think it is originality that makes iconic artists stand out, but that is an over-simplification. In fact, when things are too new, too different, we have a really hard time connecting with them.

If you strip us back to our animal instincts, we learn that what is familiar is safe and we come to trust it and seek it out. With repeat exposure, we learn faces of the members of the tribe, food that is good for us, that sort of thing. However, something new and original presents a potential threat. A face we do not recognise might be hostile, an animal we haven’t seen before a predator, a strange coloured berry poisonous, and we avoid it. It’s in much the same way that, as we are reading a sentence, we expect it to end in a certain triceratops.

See what happened there? As you stumbled upon something new, unexpected, it felt weird and jarring.

The tendency to prefer that which we are familiar with is known as the mere-exposure effect, or the familiarity principle. While it’s true that new things intrigue and excite us, on a very primitive level, we cannot connect with things that are too new. In advertising, studies found that “original” adverts were more effective when they included elements of familiarity, too. Those familiar elements required less processing than the original elements and gave our brains context by which to process and memorise the original.

So, in summary, original is good, but not in isolation. Familiarity is a vital and often overlooked part of forming a connection with new media. Just as familiarity without originality is boring, originality without familiarity is alien.

Reimagining Originality

So, what is it that we are seeing when someone’s art, seemingly original, stands out to us?

It is familiarity with just enough originality to make it exciting. It is originality with just enough familiarity to make it appealing.

What’s really happening is a very clever balancing act of old and new (and, as I mentioned before, entirely new isn’t really possible, but it might be the first time that those particular influences have been combined).

Originality can be achieved by combining our interests and influences (which might be mainstream and far from original), in ways that they have never been before.

Our society has a preoccupation with hyper-specialisation, but it’s from diversifying our interests and recruiting expertise from beyond the scope of our field that true innovation happens. This is why we so often hear from influential figures that they never felt they fit in, people thought they were mad or they didn’t do particularly well in school.

Instead of tunneling deeper into your art and hoping that originality happens to you, try instead to think with a wider scope. What areas of interest do you have that other artists don’t seem to share? What do you love visually outside of art? What guilty pleasures exist outside of your artistic interests? Bringing those things into your art will not only make your work original, it will also give people who are viewing your art something they might be able to relate to, something familiar. The more we recruit these seemingly random facets of our unique lived experience into our work, the more original we will seem, but without losing touch with familiarity altogether.

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I have totally neglected this website. With the exception of the rare times once every few months when I remember to upload something, I never open up deviantART anymore. When I was a teenager, I couldn't imagine my life without it, but since becoming a professional, I slowly neglected this account and abandoned the community I'd come to cherish here.


It wasn't until receiving a Daily Deviation a couple of days back that I was reminded of just how amazing this community could be. Despite having gone further with my art than I ever could have hoped for, I realised how incredible it felt to receive recognition and praise for work I'd submitted here, right back where I started. There are so many incredibly kind and passionate people here and I've been missing a real opportunity for connection. DeviantART will always hold a special place in my heart.


So I'm hoping you lovely folks will take me back ;_; I'll share more regularly and be more engaged with the community. I will check in more than once every few months to do more than scroll guiltily through neglected correspondence.


SO ,for now, I'd love to know about you: my wonderful followers! Who have I been missing an opportunity to connect with here?

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My First DD!

1 min read
Wow.

Teenage me would have a breakdown.

(Who am I kidding? Adult me had a breakdown)

Thanks you guys for your endless support and encouragement. You're all awesome. <3

To Fall For An Angel by ImRachelBradley


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Noah and I have begun a series called Creators Chat! We candidly discuss issues of art and business in a casual, light-hearted setting.

We're addressing common fears, doubts and questions that hold artists back and offering our (very different) points of view on things. It's full of honesty about our own struggles and I hope it'll encourage and you and demystify the journey. You also get to see us in all our goofy, unedited glory, which is its own form of entertainment. :lol:

We'll be releasing these fairly often. Hope you enjoy!






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Featured

Resources for you! by ImRachelBradley, journal

I have a confession. by ImRachelBradley, journal

My First DD! by ImRachelBradley, journal

Creators Chat #1 With Noah Bradley by ImRachelBradley, journal

I Married Noah Bradley ^_^ by ImRachelBradley, journal