10 tips for daily (or other) painters

My 2012 Daily Painting Began with "7 hippos marching"

When one of my colleagues at the LinkedIn Daily Painters and Collectors Network suggested that everyone encourage a Daily Painter, I cheered and made this list which is good for all creative folks and for anyone with a project that is just out of reach:

1. Paint every day if you can. Sometimes, you can't. Don't fret.
2. If you can't complete an entire painting in a day, don't fret. Leonardo didn't finish the chapel in one day, either.
3. If you can't get to your paints everyday, think about something that you would like to try. Write it down or you will forget it. Keep the list in a handy place or you will lose it, or, in a fit of super-cleaning, you will send it out with recycling.
4. When you get back to your studio (or, in my case, a table in my living room), look at the list. Some of the ideas are genius. Some are not. Laugh if you must.
5. If you have lots of work in progress, hang the pieces up or you will forget them. I have too many mostly-done works on an easel. I need another easel.
6. If you can't paint everyday, sketch something. Pick up your pencil. It is a magic tool, sometimes with a mind of its own. Let it lead you to a new place.
7. In creative brain-freeze land? Pick up an art book. Go to the library or to your favorite used bookstore, both of which have hundreds of art books waiting for you.  
8. Need to get out of the house or out of your comfort zone? Go and look at public sculpture. Like it? Don't like it? Either way, a response can get you out of your creativity brain-freeze. 
9. Go to a museum. Everyone there loves art, and these are your people. If you don't live near a museum, hundreds have put substantial collections on line. Bert Christensen has posted a helpful list. 
10. Can't paint because you have no space? Clean a closet. Apply these tests: (a) Do I need to keep this? (b) Do I need to keep this here? (c) I can get rid of it if it was given to me by someone to whom I no longer speak or who will never, ever visit. (d) I can get rid of it if I don't remember how I acquired it and I have never used it.

Personal note: I am in my second year of Daily Painting, and I post an image-a-day to Facebook. This is cross-posted to the small friends blog.

Stained Glass Cat: a creative conundrum

Stained Glass Cat

Stained Glass Cat will be a new small friend, but her roots are with the nanoscapes' Fractured Glass family. She has brought me to the brink with a creative conundrum: is she finished?

Because the Fractured Glass technique is in my comfort zone, I began work on her when I needed a break between identifying and painting new small friends and tackling new nanoscapes projects.

Now that all of her "glass bits" are finished and "grouted" with watercolor, she might be finished. But perhaps not. I might paint a "fractured glass" frame or add a horizontal line to anchor her. Or maybe not.

This eerie feeling -- hesitating before making a paint stroke -- may be as close as I ever get to what I imagine sculptors and gem cutters feel before making a critical cut. Will it work? Will it do what I want it to do? Will it do something better? Will it cause the entire enterprise to fall flat on its face?

Kitchen tools: a quick cure for blank canvas panic

Sushi Roosters

If you have run through your check list of artwork starters and blank canvas has induced inspiration-free panic, try looking at your kitchen tools for new beginning.

Full disclosure #1: I am a watercolorist who always travels with paints and paper. Even before the coffee, I am the early-rising house guest who will rifle through my host’s kitchen drawer for inspiration. I always find it.

Full disclosure #2: I know that there are purists who decry tracing as any sort of art activity, but in my constant search for interesting shapes and patterns, I will take my inspiration where I find it.

Potato Masher 1

Potato Masher 4

Kitchen tools come in wonderful shapes and all sorts of sizes. Use them to get past your empty-paper panic. 

Tomato Forks

Sterling Silver Cake Servers

I made the first potato masher painting at my sister Elaine's house, and I now have a world-class collection  which has inspired four Potato Masher paintings. Part of the engrossing challenge of these shapes is working out the connections between each ring and link, a theme that connects them to all of the nanoscapes' rings and links, which are hanging at FrameWorks Gallery in Saint Paul, MN until September 3, 2011.

Forest of Fondue Forks

The Sushi Roosters, which were tricky to trace and to paint, make me smile.  The cake servers were part of my 50th birthday celebration, and the Fondue Fork Forest forks belong to my cousin Theda. The Tomato Fork is my own.

While I make no claim to dictionary uniqueness -- someone else must do this, too -- I suspect that there are not many painters of Fondue Fork Forests, Tomato Forks, and Sterling Silver Cake Servers.

If kitchen tools don't inspire you, find a friend with a woodshop or wander around a hardware store. Great shapes are everywhere. 

The 31 Pumpkins of October: Three, Four and Five (and creative control)

With many parts of our lives outside of our personal control, I have long recommended that everyone have something to do "by hand"  that can be picked up and put down at will. These activities give you some control because you can select and discard colors, sizes, and other elements.  Many are portable (knitting, stitching, beading) and some require infrastructure (gardening, glass or metal work with torches). One of the few activities that falls out of this category is carving fresh vegetables. While it is "portable," you cannot take your carving implements through airline security, and a half-carved potato has a distinct and very unpleasant shelf life.

Pumpkin #5

Pumpkin #3

Pumpkin #4