Mother's Day Art Show for ALS Research
Hello, everyone!
I wanted to share that I'll be participating in a new gallery show at a local gallery to celebrate Mother's Day and support funding for research for Lou Gehrigs Disease (ALS).
Richard Stravitz Gallery in Virginia Beach, VA will be featuring a collection of fine art, jewelry, and quilts from local artists (including me) to celebrate the beauty and spirit of moms everywhere for their "Hopes and Dreams for a Cure" event beginning May 4 and running through June 1. The exhibit and sale is open daily. The Hopes and Dreams quilts are donated by women across the country to raise money for a cure for ALS.
If you're in the area, please stop by to appreciate the art. Even if you're not able to visit, consider donating money to fight this debilitating disease and fund research to find a cure! To donate online, just go to http://www.alsa.org/donate. Your gift will help The ALS Association support research to find a cure for ALS and provide much-needed services to patients and their families. By becoming a part of The ALS Association family and making your gift today, you will help sustain hope in thousands of people affected by ALS. You can even donate unused gift cards! Together, we really can make a difference.
Below are my pieces that will be included in this exhibit.
Italian Girl
The Shawl
Pleated Teapot with Lemon
Caribbean Beauty
Blue and White Creamer Jar with Plums
Reclining with Book
Daydream
Azaleas and Strawberries
Wistful
Dark Vase with Roses
Yellow Roses
Silver Bowl with Apples
Love Office Supplies? Well, You'll Love These Works of Art!
My daughter is one of those people who used to love shopping for school supplies. In her time as an elementary school teacher, she loved the unsharpened pencils, the unmarked folders, the desk supplies all in a row. (She's a little on the organized side.) Well, you can imagine how she felt when she saw these amazing works of art created out of or inspired by ordinary office supplies. Do you love your highlighter? Your Post-It notes and colored pencils? Well, take a gander at these!
Click here to see more amazing works of art!
3D Printing - It's Not Science Fiction Anymore
Wow. That's all I could say when I discovered the revolutionary development of 3D printing that is nothing short of magic. If you've never encountered this advancement, it is exactly as it sounds. It's a printer that prints not two-dimensional things like ink on a piece of paper, but three-dimensional objects with moving parts, customizable colors, and sturdy materials that are actually useful. I'm telling you: WOW.
Click here to see great videos of just how this works and to discover the 3D PEN! (That's right - a pen!)
How The Iceberg Got Its Stripes
This is an amazing series of photographs showing icebergs that aren’t your traditional “white ice.” Actually, as you get more experienced with drawing and painting, and you begin delving into color media, whether it’s water color, oils, acrylic, or another color medium, you’ll start to realize that most things don’t have just a single color. Clouds are almost never pure white or gray, the ocean is never just “blue,” and ice brings all kinds of colors and values to the table.
Enjoy!
Click here to read the article and see more ASTOUNDING photographs!
Drawing Faces
Drawing faces is one of the most popular topics among artists who are committed to learning and honing their craft. It makes sense: eyes are the windows to the soul and faces communicate so much of that soul. Every subtle shift in mood and emotion can be translated through facial expressions. Body language is important, too, but so much can be shared through the face alone that it's understandable that it's such a compelling subject of study with artists.
It's interesting - and a little funny nowadays - to consider how faces in art have changed over the centuries and millennia. Humans have tried almost since their beginning to capture what they see - with varying success - in the people around them. We are social creatures and it's that intrinsically social nature that drives us to try to communicate our world.
- A cave painting believed to be the earliest known portrait, from Angoulême, France, c 25000BC. Photograph: AP
Check out this photograph of a cave painting in Angoulême, France, circa 25,000 BC, which archaeologists believe is the oldest known portrait.
It doesn't look like much, to be honest, which is an amazing testament to just how far we've come in our ability to capture a likeness.
Comment on or Share this Article →Facial Proportions in Drawing Anime and Manga Faces
As I discussed in my blog post about drawing cartoons, drawing anime and manga draws on a variety of traditional drawing skills although those techniques are tweaked and exaggerated in cartoons, anime, and manga artwork. But it's an extremely popular topic in art and drawing.
Take facial proportions. Drawing anime and manga faces is a huge interest to many artists. While you can learn a few very specific guidelines for one particular angle and one particular type of face, that's going to limit you to that angle and that type of face. You want to learn how to SEE like an artist so no matter what angle, what face shape, what gender, you'll be able to draw from your solid drawing foundation.
Take the anime facial proportions diagram below.
You can see a variety of different face shapes and genders, which is terrific. You can also see the guidelines for the proportions of each face (meaning the distances between various features). That's good if you just want to draw these particular faces.
However, what many developing artists find is that (1) they don't understand what the lines really mean and therefore don't know how to place them where they need to be for individual faces, each of which is unique and requires just a bit of tweaking, and (2) how to apply these lines when faces are turned at different angles. After all, watch any anime cartoon, strip, or graphic novel, and you'll see faces turned in all kinds of angles. How do those artists maintain the specific features and likenesses so that as the faces turn, you still know which character you're looking at?
Find out what's missing from this diagram.
Comment on or Share this Article →Drawing Cartoons ? It Uses Solid Drawing Skills
Drawing cartoons is a fun way to spend an afternoon and can even be parlayed into a career with a lot of practice, some great opportunities, and solid networking skills. But what a lot of people don’t realize is just how many solid drawing skills figure into a great cartoon. Take the picture below for example, found on how-to-draw-funny-cartoons.com.
You’ve probably seen similar step-by-step procedurals with other cartoon figures. Identifying basic shapes is crucial to getting the overall subject right. The only thing that makes it “cartoony” instead of realistic is the stylized, simplified lines and shapes. The shapes are just not refined the way they would if you were trying to draw a realistic dog, as shown below in this excerpt from my Basic Shapes lesson.
Guidelines on Choosing Online Drawing Instruction
While you can get a lot of great tips and tricks out of a book or in-person course, it's often hard to do that. A book is pretty static, with a limited number of pictures you can use to guide you, and an in-person course can be expensive, inconvenient, and STILL not give you what you're looking for.
I recommend searching for reputable, solid drawing courses online. It can be convenient, cost-efficient, and pretty effective. And good drawing skills are an essential foundation for good painting if you're interested in going that route. There are quite a lot of them out there. Some guidelines for choosing good ones as opposed to fluff:
Read my guidelines here.
Comment on or Share this Article →An Essay on Paul Prud'hon
This is an excellent, insightful article about the renowned artist, Paul Prud'hon, who often enjoyed presenting seemingly conflicting or unrelated ideas together in his work. Even the most structured, academically correct drawing can have a delicacy and power you wouldn't expect.
"Seated Nude Woman" by Paul Prud'hon
Original article:
Paul Prud'hon - The Master
by Courtney Jordan
There is something inherently contradictory about [Paul Prud'hon's] drawings. They are simultaneously sensual and academic, powerfully physical but cerebral and still as well. But most contradictory of all is that this 18th-century master's drawing techniques still have many things to teach us hundreds of years later . . .
Read the full Artist Daily article about Paul Prud'hon here.
Comment on or Share this Article →Amazing Body Art Car Is A Crashing Success
This is truly amazing. This art installation is made of 17 PEOPLE! My muscles are aching just looking at it, but what an accomplishment! Have you ever seen anything like this? Do you think you could ever hold these positions?
I immediately think of questions: Who volunteers for this type of thing? How long did it take artist Emma Hack to paint all these bodies? How were all the bodies supported during the painting? All these questions and more are answered in the Yahoo article.
Read the full Yahoo article about Emma Hack here with more images of this spectacular art installation!
