The Mindful Artist
When I first switched over from oils to acrylics years ago – I was always trying to get away from the “plastic-y” look they had.
Then I discovered the array of gels and pastes that could take the standard paint texture from creamy to stiff to sandy to matte.
The two I show you in this video are still in my all-time favorites list.
Hope you enjoy it and let me know your thoughts! Have you used these before? What are your favorite acrylic gels? Any techniques you’d like to share?
In this feature, each month artists share one thing that excites them creatively.
One key piece to support healthy, productive creativity is stimulating inputs. What kinds of things stimulate the creative centers of the brain? What kind of inputs stimulate us visually? Emotionally? Spiritually? Mentally? Physically?
I’d really like to know, what’s one thing that fills your creative cup? Share with us in the comment section below.
Being creative is not something I have to work at, it is a gift I feel I was born with fully developed. I believe everyone is a creator. Every experience in life for me turns out to have a creative component, from becoming invisible in a bad part of town to arranging flowers for the kitchen table. Artistic creativity, in my own perception, is one of allowing myself to be guided by a higher energy than my ego, of getting out of the way and letting go of forcing to a place of opening up to the creative process.
An example, this morning, as I was sorting through some imperfect computer photo prints, rippping up the ones that were seconds, thinking “this is a shame that I would waste this lovely color” Just because it did not come out right. ( ink had run out and so I replaced the ink and ran it through again, which caused a blurring)- Anyways, something quietly suggested that I might try cutting up the prints and see what comes out. One image had yielded a painting previously that I am still working on and now I could see 3 new images. I developed the images with some ink further, to bring them out and made a note as to what they meant. As I looked at these little images together, they formed a kind of chronology or story.
I mounted these images together in a line using contact cement on heavy white paper and wrote in pencil the meaning of each little image, then placed in a frame.
This I did before breakfast.
Then I photographed the image, posted to my blog and cooked up pasta and eggs Breakfast.
Juhli Caldwell
http://juhlicaldwell.blogspot.
It makes me feel good to resolve problem of space and color. Seeing other artists work is also inspiring.
Avi Zamir
http://www.flickr.com/photos/
I’ve got nothing against Ron Howard, really. Opie was a cute kid. But, forgive me, so far I can’t stand anything directed by the man. I find his style sappy and emotionally overwrought.
OK. That’s about as critical and mean-spirited as you will hear me get publicly. I even struggled with using the word hate in my title. In truth, I don’t hate anyone but I’m trying to make a point here.
I picked Ron Howard because I know he can take it and I know he’s probably a really wonderful and totally sincere guy who could care less what I think. And he has touched millions of lives with his work over decades of service as an actor, writer, director and, producer.
In fact, I’m certain many of you LOVE Ron Howard. (And if I insulted you with my opening paragraph, I apologize.)
I know many of you love mushrooms, too.
Can’t stand ‘em myself.
What I am trying to stay here is taste is purely subjective.
And that’s all it is. Taste.
Feel free to ignore the people who will try to tell you their taste is the taste. The correct taste. (Ahem – art teachers, professors and critics.)
As you send your work out into the world, some people will LOVE it.
Some will hate it.
Some will say “Meh.”
That doesn’t mean your work is good.
Or bad.
Or even Meh.
It’s just your work. It’s the work you do.
So when everyone is patting you on the back and giving you shows and buying your work it doesn’t necessarily mean you are brilliant.
And if NO one is paying attention and you continually get rejected neither does it mean your are an idiot who should give up and go do something else.
It means nothing.
It’s just ego stuff.
Because you love this thing so much – creating, making, innovating, birthing new projects.
To continually evolve and pull ideas from deep within.
To craft and hone and love them.
Your work is a gift of love to the universe and to yourself. (You are, after all, an integral part of the universe.)
Keep on, friend.
In this feature, each month artists share one thing that excites them creatively.
One key piece to support healthy, productive creativity is stimulating inputs. What kinds of things stimulate the creative centers of the brain? What kind of inputs stimulate us visually? Emotionally? Spiritually? Mentally? Physically?
I’d really like to know, what’s one thing that fills your creative cup? Share with us in the comment section below.
What inspires me?
Throughout my career as a painter, I have explored the relationship of the self to the spirit. Recently I’ve used images of dried roses to reflect on ideas related to beauty, loss, and the passage of time. There are some lines in a 1980s song by Leonard Cohen and Jennifer Warnes, Song of Bernadette, that I think capture the part of the human spirit that inspires me most:
We’ve been around, we fall, we fly
We mostly fall, we mostly run
And every now and then we try
To mend the damage that we’ve done
Loss, beauty, time, and in a very small way, transcendence. So human.
Laureen Marchand
Website:www.grasslandsgallery.com
Whenever I enter my studio, I am immediately drawn to the window. I never know what awaits there. Will it be a family of deer strolling through the pines as fresh winter snow blankets the landscape? Perhaps, a raccoon will stare at me with curiosity from behind the glass, wondering about my activities, as flowers bloom all around. The other day, I saw a tiny toad trying to take shelter from the rain.
My backyard is such a muse. I can’t get enough of its gifts. Thanks to the studio window, I am able to watch the most delightful and inspirational nature show to never be broadcast on television.My art is all the better for this amazing opportunity.
Vas Littlecrow
Website: http://vaslittlecrow.com/
In this feature, each month artists share one thing that excites them creatively.
One key piece to support healthy, productive creativity is stimulating inputs. What kinds of things stimulate the creative centers of the brain? What kind of inputs stimulate us visually? Emotionally? Spiritually? Mentally? Physically?
I’d really like to know, what’s one thing that fills your creative cup? Share with us in the comment section below.
What inspires me?
I am inspired these days by animals. Birds occupied a lot of my time last year. Horses seem to be up at the moment. And I am working in pastels, so my work is becoming more and more painterly, a look I like a lot. Don’t like to get too tight or prissy. Also work hard to give the animals their own aspect and not project any coyness onto them. I’ll leave that to the greeting card folks.
Jonnie Chrystal
Blog: http://cowwoman.blogspot.com
I am inspired by the places we visit. Volcanic stone used in mosaics in Azores. Detail in ancient structres in Scotland. Advertising signs in Dublin. Chain mail and armor detail in the Tower of London. Man hole covers, doorways, and wandering the streets in Honfleur, France.
Sioux George
In this feature, each month artists share one thing that excites them creatively.
One key piece to support healthy, productive creativity is stimulating inputs. What kinds of things stimulate the creative centers of the brain? What kind of inputs stimulate us visually? Emotionally? Spiritually? Mentally? Physically?
I’d really like to know, what’s one thing that fills your creative cup?
If you’d like to be part of this feature, send an email to info@staging.themindfulartist.com. Include a sentence or two about one of your key inspirations. Please include some photos – either to illustrate your inspiration, to share your artwork with us. We especially love pictures of YOU! We want to feature YOU and your work so please send a link to your blog or website or flicker page.
What inspires me?
Lately, I’ve been inspired by African-American male presenting lesbians. Before I explain what that means, I’ll give a little insight on who I am.
For a long, long time I hid my sexuality for the usual reasons (shame, fear, internal turmoil, etc) Though I’m over that, I’ve never put my sexuality into my work and so I’ve started drawing and painting African-American lesbians.
I love everything about gender-bending women who present themselves as more male than female to the public. They are my inspiration and I hope to honor the many things that they are, visually.
CandacePryor aka ARTacrobat, Raleigh, NC
Website: http://www.wix.com/artacrobat/candace#!home|mainPage
Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/ARTacrobat
One of the things that inspires me is old found papers I gather when I travel to other countries. My use of them in my art is not about sentimentality for the past; rather these ephemera evoke for me a feeling of the passage of time. I often use them with encaustic which provides both protection and a luminous veiled quality.
I am pleased that my work will be featured in an E-book, Encaustic and Paper: Twenty International Artists which will be published this year.
This is a photo of me in my studio with some old papers and French Notebook, one of my works in the background.
Ann Holsberry, Watsonville, CA
Website: http://www.annholsberry.com