Bob Ross and the art community

Late bloomers don't realize they're good at something until they're about fifty. It's not that they start late; It's that they simply aren't much good until late in their careers.

Young Cézanne had rare endowments, but he couldn't draw. Cézanne required decades of practicing before he could master his ability.

Prodigies like Picasso, who created a masterpiece at age twenty, tend to be "conceptual" in the sense that they start with a clear idea of where they want to go, and then accomplish it. Picasso once said that he could hardly understand the importance given to the word 'research.'

But late bloomers tend to work the other way around. Their goals are imprecise and their procedure experimental. They build their skills gradually throughout their careers, improving slowly over long periods.

An artist lives and breathes art. The clothes, the home decoration, the hairstyle, even the words that artists speak are their own creation, deliberate and intentional.

A true artist is a living work of art.

An authentic artist is diverse in his art forms, with a lot of interests.

There are several ways to express oneself and a true artist recognizes that.

It occurs when we are presented with something that we don't immediately recognize. It creates a degree of cognitive dissonance that may be frustrating or even unpleasant.

For example, seeing a vague shape in the corner of a room that might be a cat or a bag. A second look is needed to satisfy our curiosity.

Complementary colors lie opposite one another on the spectrum. For example, red complements blue, yellow complements violet.

When complementary colors are placed in close proximity, it is apt to cause conflict and disturb the eyes. Used subtly, it can make our eyes dance to a discordant tune.

Literal language is functional, and is a utility, serving the purpose of communication, while poetry captures the beauty, the essence of an object, doing away with the descriptions and linear definitions.

The creative nature of consciousness can be described by the analogy of a canvas. Our consciousness is a blank canvas initially and as we gain education, experiences and perform actions, we paint this canvas, slowly adding details, and the final work of art is the story of our lives.

Our expression of creativity is born out of the interactions and experiences we keep having. The canvas that we paint can be cohesive and whole or can be broken and messy.

There are some creative and artistic people who are genuinely authentic in anything they do. They are having a secret inside them, a fragrance that comes with completeness and realism. These people have, through hardships, suffering, and reconciliation, have discovered a core inside them, a certain light that is brightly shining.

This quality shines through in the writings and works of genuine artists. Maybe their poetry, which is seemingly so profound, isn’t poetry at all, but pure truths that they have simply expressed honestly.

Start by asking: How long do such projects usually last?

If you’re coding a new feature for your company’s app, look at how long it took your team to build and release a similar feature in the past. If you’re writing a 4,000-word blog-post, review your data showing how many hours/days it took you to write a similar piece previously. Then, base your estimates off of that data.

While we tend to be optimistic about our own abilities to complete tasks quickly, we’re much more pragmatic when it comes to figuring out how long it will take someone else to complete a task.

Dr. Seuss discovered while writing his book "Green Eggs and Ham" the power of setting constraints.

Setting limits for yourself (time, money, words, etc.) often leads to better results than if you keep your options open.

1. Limitations inspire you to find creative solutions. If you have a one-year-old child that requires all your time, you have to find creative ways to get some exercise.
2. Constraints force you to get something done. Without constraints, we would postpone our tasks, sometimes indefinitely.

That is why professionals set a schedule for their production while amateurs wait for the perfect moment.

• Haruki Murakami was born in 1949 in Kyoto, and instead of moving into a corporate career, he opened a jazz club in Tokyo.
• A few years later, at a baseball stadium, it occurred to him that he could write a novel. That led to Hear the Wind Sing (1979), which won him a new writers' prize.
• He was more like a  black sheep in the Japanese literary world, partly because his books were too American-like.
• Regardless of his critics, his commercial success continued to grow, hitting a high point in 1987 with Norwegian Wood, which sold 3,5m copies within a year of publication.

Haruki Murakami began to perfect the daily writing routine for which he is now as famous as for any single novel. He rises at 4 am to write for five or six hours, producing ten pages a day before a run of about six miles, and maybe a swim.

He believes that he has to be strong physically in order to write strong things.

Her character development throughout the seasons unfolds within a dynamic that probes fundamental questions of politics and leadership. 

Machiavelli examined the same questions in the 16th century in his treatise, The Prince.  Daenerys may be a version of the redeemer  he talk about in his treaty.

First instruction to maintain power and preserve order: The prince does not have free range to conduct evil, but must strive for goodness as the primary measure of actions.

Daenerys gives conquered soldiers a choice: "Bend the knee and join me. Together, we will leave the world a better place than we found it. Or refuse and die."

We are just not so aware of it, because much of the creative exchange happens quietly to the side, and does not become part of our modern history.

There is the case of Emily Dickinson. But looking closer, it becomes clear that she was immensely interested in people and wrote hundreds of poems for particular people, and sending them to them.

The big idea is that genius partnerships are stories of dialogue. As Warren Buffett said about Charlie Munger: "Charlie does the talking, I just move my lips."