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The Illustrators Journal

The Illustrators Journal

Tag Archives: Obama

Give Up? No Way!!

25 Saturday Mar 2017

Posted by Illustrators Journal in CATCH-ALL, EDITORIAL

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artwork, illustrators journal, levinland, Maya Angelou, Obama, perseverance, Sisyphus, Thomas Carlyle



per·se·ver·ance

ˌpərsəˈvirəns/

noun

  1. steadfastness in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success.
    “his perseverance with the technique illustrates his single-mindedness”
    synonyms: persistence, tenacity, determination, staying power, indefatigability, steadfastness, purposefulness;

    The word for the day is Perseverance. Who said this would be easy? It’s not. I’ve talked to enough successful illustrators and artists to know they too have their trials and tribulations.

    What they do have that you may not is the will to continue despite all odds. They know that success, however you see it, is obtained by contsnace and vigil work habits. No matter what the outcome. If you have a goal and you focus and work towards that goal you will get there.

    Here are some great quotes from successful people who know what it’s like to persevere

    Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles, discouragements and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak.

    Thomas Carlyle

    You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.

    Maya Angelou

    Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On! has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

    Calvin Coolidge

    Look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before.

    Jacob A. Riis

    It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.

    Albert Einstein

    I will persist until I succeed. Always will I take another step. If that is of no avail I will take another, and yet another. In truth, one step at a time is not too difficult. I know that small attempts, repeated, will complete any undertaking.

    Og Mandino

    Making your mark on the world is hard. If it were easy, everybody would do it. But it’s not. It takes patience, it takes commitment, and it comes with plenty of failure along the way. The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won’t. It’s whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere.

    Barack Obama

    When you get into a tight place, and everything goes against you till it seems as if you couldn’t hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that’s just the place and time that the tide’ll turn.

    Harriet Beecher Stowe

To Tweet or…

19 Thursday Sep 2013

Posted by Illustrators Journal in CATCH-ALL

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artist as brand, columbine, digital media, illustrator, innovation, levinland, lon levin, marijuana, mcDonald's, nude, Obama, technology, tweets, twitter


171_1232010_Tweet the DoctorOur still-primitive social skills haven’t adjusted to modern technology. Information ubiquity, amplification and preservation have cursed our social interactions. As a result, our conversational indiscretions can’t be hidden. “Oh, that? I was just mumbling!” Instead, our mistakes are etched in digital granite. And no platform presents greater problems than Twitter. In fact, of Mashable.com’s eleven greatest social media disasters of 2012, nine involved wayward Tweeting, each of which are summarized here in less than 140 characters:
1. With McdStories, “McDonald’s paid to promote a trend that showered the company in bad publicity.” #oops
2. Snickers paid celebrities in the UK to tweet pictures of themselves eating Snickers bars. Not allowed. #illegal.
3. American Rifleman posted a pro-gun tweet as the mass shooting in Aurora CO was unfolding. #dumb #whatweretheythinking
4. CelebBoutique posted a promotional Tweet using #Aurora to exploit a trending topic, without knowing why it was trending. #insensitive #stupid
5. A Microsoft employee criticized conservative pundit Ann Coulter from Microsoft’s Twitter account, not from his own. #oops
6. A KitchenAid employee made a disparaging Tweet about Obama’s grandmother. #firethisidiot
7. A Stubhub employee used the f-word in a company Tweet. #firethisidiot
8. American Apparel offered discounts to ‘bored customers’ during Hurricane Sandy. #insensitive #stupid
9. At the height of Hurricane Sandy, the Gap encouraged people to do online shopping. #idiotic
“Somewhere, somehow, somebody will Tweet something stupid.”—a corollary to Murphy’s Law for the digerati. The ol’ slip of the tongue, seen by 13,797 followers, viral, searchable, and archived forever for millions more!

Where’s Noah?

02 Tuesday Apr 2013

Posted by Illustrators Journal in CATCH-ALL

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cartoon, cartoonist, cartoons, George Bush, illustrator, illustrators journal, innovation, Iraq, lon levin, Obama, Saddam Hussein, United States


WHERE'S NOAH?
Here’s a nice metaphor for life…. you set sail on a journey and you are missing your leader. This of course can apply to all walks of life. It also can apply to yourself. Off you go on a journey to accomplish something and you haven’t got a plan or a goal other than to survive. Once you’re out there on the seas of life you realize what the hell am I doing? (This makes me think of the United States under the George Bush regime. Remember Iraq, Saddam Hussein, weapons of mass destruction??) We all need to be a better captains of our own ships. We’ve all been there. The take away is think before you act, choose wisely. Are you listening Mr. Obama?

You Want To Be A Leader?…Then Step Up…

17 Saturday Nov 2012

Posted by Illustrators Journal in EDITORIAL

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artist as brand, illustrators journal, innovation, levinland, Levinland studio, Lincoln, lon levin, Obama, presidential campaign


Photography by Lon Levin

After the last year or so of presidential campaigning I wondered how some of the candidates believe they can lead the greatest nation on earth. So few of them have the necessary qualities to be a leader. Based on the numbers alone half our nation doesn’t believe or support Obama’s leadership, although clearly he has the highest level of maturity in the recent race for the presidency. But what does it really take? Here is an article I found that gives great insight.

10 Leadership Lessons from the IBM Executive School

August Turak, Contributor

“But failure was not an option for Mobley, and after many a dark night of the soul he hit upon the answer that turned IBM into the fastest growing and most admired corporation in the world…”

In 1955 IBM’s legendary CEO, Tom Watson Jr., gave my mentor, Louis R. Mobley, a blank check and carte blanche to create The IBM Executive School. Fresh from successfully implementing IBM’s first supervisor and middle management training programs, Mobley confidently set about churning out executives as well.

The first thing he did, in conjunction with GE and DuPont, was hire the Educational Testing Service (ETS), the same company that still does the SATs, to identify the skills that make great leaders great. Once these intellectual skills were identified, Mobley and his colleagues at GE and DuPont assumed that spitting out executives would simply mean “training to the test.”

Can Creativity Be Taught?
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Leadership Secrets from a Navy SEAL
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5 Ways that Steve Jobs, Steve Denning, and Peggy Noonan are Dead Wrong
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ETS dutifully rounded up a bunch of proven leaders and tested them every which way from Sunday looking for their common skills. The results were astounding and more than a little disturbing. As Mobley put it, “No matter what bell shaped curve we drew, successful leaders fell on the extreme edges. The only thing they seemed to have in common was having nothing in common. ETS was so frustrated that they offered us our money back.”

But failure wasn’t an option for Mobley, and after many a dark night of the soul he finally hit upon the answer. Unlike supervisors and middle managers, what successful executives shared were not skills and knowledge but values and attitudes. And over time Mobley identified the values and attitudes that great leaders share.

1) Great Leaders Thrive on Ambiguity. While most of us like black and white decisions, successful leaders are comfortable with what Mobley called, “shades of gray.” Great leaders are able to hold apparent contradictions in tension. They use the tension these paradoxes produce to come up with innovative ideas.

2) Great Leaders Love Blank Sheets of Paper. Supervisors and middle managers use a framework of policies and procedures to guide them to the proper decision. They want a plan that reduces their job to filling in the blanks or what Mobley called “following the bouncing ball.” By contrast, leaders create the blanks that managers fill in. Like some business Einstein intent on reinventing the universe, every great leader relishes the opportunity to “think things through” from scratch.

3) Great Leaders are Secure People. Successful executives thrive on differences of opinion. They surround themselves with the best people they can find: people strong enough to hold a contrary opinion and argue vociferously for it. Great leaders crave challenges, and this means hiring the most challenging people they can find with no regard for whether today’s challenger might be tomorrow’s rival.

4) Great Leaders Want Options. Long before it became fashionable, Mobley was a huge proponent of diversity. However his definition meant a diversity of opinion rather than the kind we usually associate with political correctness. Mobley’s great leader constantly demands diverse options from his team, and uses these options to produce creative decisions.

5) Great Leaders are Tough Enough to Face Facts. At heart Mobley was a spiritual man who valued the Truth for the Truth’s sake. Successful executives face facts, and this means being open to the truth even when it is not what we want to hear. One of the most successful executives I know offers cash rewards to anyone in his company who can prove him wrong. Great leaders have a nose for B.S and abhor it.

6) Great Leaders Stick Their Necks Out. It is a natural human trait to fear being evaluated. We crave wiggle room so we can deflect blame and get off the hook when things go wrong. In business what is often passed off as a collaborative effort is actually just an attempt to avoid individual accountability. Great leaders want to be measured and evaluated. They continually look for ways to measure things that may seem immeasurable, and they cheerfully accept the blame when they are wrong or fail to deliver. The old adage that success has a 1000 fathers while failure is an orphan does not apply to great leadership.

7) Great Leaders Believe in Themselves. While great leaders crave advice, options, and strong colleagues, they all share a profound belief in themselves and their judgment. Mobley described great leaders as “people stubbornly following their star who don’t know how to quit.” Holding this stubbornness in tension with a willingness to be wrong is perhaps the greatest trick that every great leader must perform.

8) Great Leaders are Deep Thinkers. Managers get things done. Executives must decide on the things worth doing in the first place. Though very difficult to quantify, great leaders are deep thinkers. They constantly dive below surface “facts” searching for new ways to knit those facts together. Great leaders are generalists not specialists driven by an omnivorous curiosity. They know that the answers they are seeking will probably emerge from outside business and from disciplines that may seem utterly unrelated.

9) Great Leaders are Ruthlessly Honest with Themselves. Self-knowledge is perhaps the most critical trait that all great leaders share. Leaders question assumptions and disrupt complacency by relentlessly asking the question: “What is the business of the business?” This exercise develops and refines the organization’s mission and purpose, and it is little more than the age old question “Who am I?” applied collectively. If you are not clear about the purpose of your own life how can you provide a sense of organizational purpose for others?

10) Great Leaders are Passionate. They may be loudly charismatic or quietly intense, but all great leaders care deeply about what they are doing and why they are doing it. Perhaps most importantly they care about people. Every business is a people business, and passionately caring about people whether they are employees, customers, vendors or stockholders is an essential leadership value.

Once Mobley compiled his list, he was faced with another even more difficult problem: How do you instill values and transform attitudes? He discovered that unlike supervisors and middle managers, executives shared another trait: They were constitutionally untrainable and reacted with hostility to any effort to “brainwash” them with “training.” Worse, Mobley discovered that values and attitudes are not only impervious to typical training techniques, but hectoring people to change often had the unintended consequence of hardening existing attitudes instead.

As the result some deep thinking of his own, Mobley eventually realized that what was needed was “a revolution in consciousness” rather than the kind of step by step curriculum that leads to a single “right answer.” Taking a leap of faith, he decided that the values and attitudes he was looking for could only be brought about as a side benefit or unintended consequence of what almost might be termed “spiritual work.” Rather than converging on a super set of skills, the IBM Executive School fostered the divergence that values uniqueness and individual authenticity.

The risk of failure was real, but if Mobley was going to produce people willing to stick out their necks he had to stick out his own first. He abandoned lectures and books in favor of games, simulations and other experiential techniques designed, not to “train,” but to “blow people’s minds.”

As for the personal accountability and measuring results, Mobley’s record speaks for itself. He ran the IBM Executive School from 1956-1966. It was his students that turned IBM into the fastest growing and most admired corporation in the world in the 1960s and 70s…

Mr. Roboto Campaigns For President

04 Tuesday Sep 2012

Posted by Illustrators Journal in EDITORIAL, SKETCH OF THE DAY

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herobuilders, illustrators journal, innovation, levinland, Levinland studio, lon levin, Mitt Romney, Obama, presidential campaign, sketching, this week in digital media on blogtalk radio


I was thinking about the Republican convention and now the thought of Mitt Romney (the Ken Doll Robot) and this image is what came out of it.

And I found this amusing tidbit from The Hill website
On its website’s masthead, Herobuilders declares itself “The Last American Toy Company.”

Emil Vicale’s (Innovator and product designer)  latest venture are large-jawed robotic heads of President Obama and Romney that can replace the heads on the classic Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots toy. The mechanical boxing game, originally introduced by Marx Toys in 1965, challenges players to clobber each other’s robot and force its head to pop up in defeat. The robots are now sold by Mattel.

“Politics is always a battle, but this toy levels the playing field. It allows you to beat up someone much bigger and more powerful than you, which you can’t do in the real world,” Vicale says.

Both the Romneybot and Obamabot heads are portrayed in their natural skin tones and not the corresponding Republican red and Democratic blue. Vicale said the prototype heads looked too creepy in primary colors, making Romney seem like the Devil and Obama an alien from the movie “Avatar.”

Although Romney has been widely parodied as a robot this presidential campaign, the metaphor is entirely coincidental for Vicale.

What I’ve Learned From Other Illustrators

12 Thursday Apr 2012

Posted by Illustrators Journal in EDITORIAL

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artist as brand, artists, digital media, digital painting, drawing, Greg Spalenka, innovation, levinland, modern art, nude sketch, Obama, Peter Sis, politicians, Romney, Roxie munro, Santorum, twitter


artwork by Peter Sis

I had the distinct pleasure of talking with Peter Sis on the phone yesterday after our radio interview on “This Week In Digital Media”. I was surprised by his openness and his willingness to share his thoughts with me. After all he has won The Robert F. Sibert Medal, Newberry Awards and Caldecott Honors. Shouldn’t he be more guarded and careful about who he talks to and why?

I have found that people like Peter and Roxie Munro, Greg Spalenka and others I’ve interviewed are open to discussing art, illustration and their views on life. This is a valuable lesson for artists. Some of us work in our studios or homes by ourselves and have no real interaction with humans for days on end. I spend most of my days on Skype with my partner Gregg. Not that we talk but just knowing he’s there helps me keep my sanity as I work away. I also have my two wonderful retrievers at my side when they’re not digging up the backyard. It’s a joy for me to connect with great people and great talents. I learn from them and I grow stronger. What I’m saying to you all is reach out and connect with other artists, not only in a social media way but in a personal way. If you admire an illustrator, call up or email and tell him/her. They will usually respond. Don’t let your fears stop you. Acknowledge that they exist and do it anyway. More often than not it will turn out positive and you’ll have made a new friend and colleague like I have with Peter, Roxie and Greg.

I posted this piece of art from Peter’s “Congregation of Birds” book. To me it symbolizes a lot of what I’m saying. “Fly together and we are one big beautiful bird”. That is at the core of the “Illustrators Journal’s mission. To bring artists together to share what we know with others and hopefully they will share back. Look, I used to be cynical about all this “touchy feely reach out stuff” but I’m born again in that sense. The more we share and know the better we all will be as artists and humans. It’s through our creativity and production that we enlighten and shine a light for others to see. (are you listening politicians?) So pick up the phone or email someone you don’t know who you want to connect with and see what happens. You just might be surprised.

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Editor’s Note

Visit www.levinlandstudio.com and see the portfolio of the editor Lon Levin

The Spring Issue '17 of the Illustrators Journal will be out in April with all new interviews with cartoonist Mark Stamaty, Fantasy artist and Society of Illustrator's Hall of Fame artists Kinuko Y Craft and some artwork from Millenial sensation MollyCrabtree.

The issue will focus on protest and the arts from Daumier to Ingram Pinn.

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