Archive for 2012

Here is an idea to help you see things differently..artistically speaking.
This iis one of my favorites..

Select a photograph, black and white. notice the darkest areas and the lightest areas first. See if you can distingush the shape of the darkest area, as if they were continents. Take a photo copy of the image, alter it to just the two, darkest and lightest. Take out all of the grey. Now draw the largest of the darkest shapes on a ...

Looking through archeology books, my story telling thoughts imagine the people who made the beautifully painted attica pottery in ancient Greece. Isnt it amazing how very long a piece of fired clay can last..telling of its life in so many ways after being excavated.
Even some silks, wools and woven flax have survived for many hindreds of years.

Have you ever made a sand sculpture? or watched perhaps on television, the creation of a sand mandala painting ...

Facing the critic

Anyone that has ever found themselves in the company of others, has at one time or another faced a critic.
As an exhibiting artist I have also found myself in the presence of someone who has either set themselves up as a verbal “thumbs direction” to my artistic fate, or prehaps someone has hired them to ride the coat tails of those that do..create. It takes grace and wit to stay in the presence of these people. Some ...

Recently I purchased some multi-colored card stock 3″x 3″. I find that I can be charged up about working with a theme for a while using that size. If I am working with a Chinese brush art style the smaller sheets give me a chance to “pracice and perfect”. Its particularly delicious to work with light ink on a dark paper.
I love to create little portraits on this size. Its just so much more wonderful to ...

I just returned from a reviving trip to Sedona Arizona. The clean cut sky line of mountains against the heavens provided my unceasing imagination to take flight upon the forms as giant noble standing figures. As a student of art history, I could see the Asseriyan profiles of powerful leaders. Mermaids and Native Americans. One very stricking image of Ghanesha, the elephant god of India. He was seated in a throne with elaborate bejeweled ornaments around him. Bunnies everywhere in ...

We live in environments that allow for so much incoming

While shopping at the market I hear music that reaches into my subconscious, popping up a picture into my consciousness from the last time Id heard it. Layer upon layer, like a collage of sound sight and smell, feelings tastes, all merge within the artist to evoke an expression. something bubbles up, percolates in our souls until we have to bring it out.
My new students have remarked in ...

ENERGY IS NOT INVISIBLE

In general, most artists are sensitive people. We sense things, use hunches, read signs, listen to inner promptings, and we are intuitve.

March has come in with a whole new kind of fast moving energy. I find myself looking at the world whirl by while I take 5 and settle into a more peaceful countenance for the process of studio time.

Creativity is a delicate matter. We can’t crank it out like cupcakes. It needs to come from ...

You are an Artist… if you need to make art!

We stand on the hill tops, overlooking the masses, observing and dreaming on canvas and walls.

We sit with the workers and sketch their authentic faces in fields and factories.

Photographers are waiting for the moment when light stands in awesome contrast.

Art may begin with a stick in the sand at the ...

It is especially important for an illustrator to get to know the author… so this blog is for book authors and writers.

Instead of thinking your writing will provide all the information an artist could need to illustrate your book, consider offering something personal about you.

Your writing, of course, is the core of the project. However a very important second ...