Zed A. Shaw, Painter

65 yo artist probably doesn't need to have a job in art, so just enjoying it as a post-retirement hobby is enough, so the marketing focuses more on better art, and a little on sales. 65 yo artist is also most likely behind the curve and running out of time, so secret tricks work

In the supplement market they're usually using models who just do steroids, and then claim the powder is what makes them that huge. The target market is basically people who don't know these dudes are juicing like mad to look like that, and also, people who are professionals.

The coding bootcamps are aimed squarely at people who did what they were told and got a 120k degree is psychology or abstract expressionist painting and now realize they can't do a damn thing to pay that back, so they're desperate to buy their way into a profession that pays.

So when they market the videos, they're shooting for people who mostly *want* to be hobbyists, would love to sell but don't expect it, are retired, and just feel they missed out on secret tricks of the masters. The marketing pitches them all the secrets in 2 hours, and it works.

I'm not in that demographic, and I'm a nerd hacker type, so I look at this and go "pfft. nothing's magic." Then I go look up the artist and if I like the art, I get the video just because I like watching people paint. I think maybe 2-3 videos were packed with useful things, but

90% of the time, what the painter *says* is completely different from what they *do*. They are completely lacking in self-awareness so you mostly have to ignore what they say and just watch them work and take notes or follow along. Guitarists are like this too.

I had a teacher who would quite literally yell at people not to "blend". In classical realism "blending" or "smudging" is a huge NO, so we had to struggle using a brush to put down color and merge the edges without blending them with a softer brush. Turns out...

This teacher did that shit all the time. She never demonstrated in class when she painted, but she sold videos. In class you'd miss her quickly blending an edge because she was quick about it, but in the video...GOTCHA! In the video like 50% of her brush work was blending.

Then I got videos from other famous painters and they all blended like mad, and about 50% of them would rant about blending, which I didn't understand because it's obvious old masters blended the fuck out of their paintings--aka "licking".