COMMERCIAL ART – “Art created for commercial purposes” Getting inspired and being highly-motivated in your commercial art is an “art” unto itself. Inspiration and motivation are the primary components needed, followed by your God-given talent, skill, and experience, to complete a successful commercial art project. Unbeknownst to you, your new client has, for a number of […]
DERWENT WATERCOLOR PENCILS …SIMPLY AWESOME ! For some reason I tend to compare the cost of most every purchase to the cost of a tool. If my wife, Sandy, talks me into a new set of curtains and a bed spread, I may be smiling and saying,”yes of course”, but I am really thinking ,”Yikes! […]
When an artist accepts a commission or works as a commercial artist, everything shifts into high gear – BIG TIME! For over 20 years, I have designed and built props, sets and miniatures for movies and print commercials. As my super-talented friend and assistant’ Aaron Dytyniak, would say, “Once you utter these words to the client, […]
I recently posted a meme that read “my teacher thought I was smarter than I was, so I was.” I am not very competitive, by nature. Growing up, I was the tallest kid in the entire grade school, and really never had to prove myself on the playground. In sports, I was always pretty good […]
PASTELS I love pastels as a medium. Pastels produce rich, saturated, and often painterly results – so buttery that you risk getting color on the tip of your nose as you peer in close and wonder, “What medium is this?” Pastels can also produce dry, sketchy, monochrome drawings, such as sepia tone DaVinci style, most […]
SERENDIPITY … an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident. Artists can’t help but listen to that beckoning within; often wooing us away from family, friends and business simply to sit at an art table or computer screen, stand at an easel, or wrestle with some three dimensional medium. Like the lyrics in the song […]
The word “inspire” is, for me, best defined as “to breathe life into”. You can certainly tell in all of the arts and some of the crafts if inspiration is lacking. Singers, Musicians, Actors, Speakers, Artists, Authors and even Teachers … When they are just going thru the motions and lacking inspiration it is obvious […]
I had been searching for an easy, clean and inexpensive way to do wire sculpture. I first tried brazing. This is the state of the art technique requiring a torch and acetylene and oxygen tanks. I bought a small outfit and played around with it for a while and realized that besides150 burns on my […]
Above: Detail from “Caire” by Tim O’Keefe” “Contour” is taken from a French word meaning “outline” or “to go around”. In art “contour” usually has two meanings. The use I am least familiar with is to just block in the main shapes avoiding details. To me a better word for this is “gesture”. Gesturing is […]
For better or for worse art instruction is often a close contact event. Usually for me the adult art students are sitting at art tables and I am standing behind them. When I need to take pencil or brush in hand I lean forward over their shoulder or sit close to them so that their […]