Pop Goes the Artist!

I recently decided to participate in the 101 Things In 1001 Days project. I’m doing this for a variety of reasons, including my love for list-making and the feeling that the upcoming changes in my life will go more easily if I take a more pro-active approach to other areas of my life. Not all of these things are about art, so I’m just going to post the art-related ones here. I’ll come back to this post periodically to cross off items I’ve accomplished and link to posts about them as I write them.

So without further ado, here are the items from the section “arts, with a side order of crafts.”

1. Do Illustration Friday for at least two months. Post the results here.
2. Sell a painting.
3. Open an Etsy shop.
4. Finish the quilt I started three years ago. I’m three-quarters of the way done already.
5. Paint a self-portrait.
6. Take a life drawing class.
7. Take (and post) a photo daily for a month.
8. Give all handmade gifts for Christmas or birthdays one year. (Made by me or by someone else.)
9. Fill a sketchbook, cover to cover.
10. Paint in public.
11. Enter a juried art competition.
12. Try oil painting.
13. Participate in a print exchange.
14. Crochet an afghan.
15. Finally do that track scrapbook I’ve been meaning to do since the day I graduated.
16. Buy a big sketchbook (at least 18×24″) and use it.

My 1001 days end on Saturday, December 11, 2010. By that time I’ll be out of college, employed, and who knows what else. We’ll see how many of these things (and the other 85) I’ve finished by then. No matter how well or badly I do, though, someone wins: item #101 is “donate $1 to charity for everything I don’t complete on this list.” Just the right sort of motivation!

I’ve been having some problems renewing my domain name, problems which the company I got it from are still trying to figure out, so things may (but probably won’t) be weird around here at some point, until they figure it out.  I’m not really sure; the tech support person was sort of vague on things, and by that point in the conversation (which I conducted outside, on my cell phone) I was just really cold and wanted to go inside.  Anyway, just wanted to give a heads-up.

Sketches coming tomorrow.

I know, I know… the lolcat thing is so 2007. But I still find them hilarious, and hey! this one’s art-themed.

moar funny pictures

I haven’t been posting about my own art lately because I haven’t been doing much lately.  I’ve been sketching, but even though I’m at home, I don’t have access to most of my art supplies (and my workspace) while our basement is being finished.  (Excuses, excuses… I know.)  However, the work should be done by Friday (fingers crossed!), so I’m very eager to set up my easel and start painting again.  I’d like to finish the last Lucy painting as well as a still life I started at the end of the summer.

I also have a block printing project planned.  I don’t do much block printing (it is so. much. work.), but every so often the fit takes me and I crank out a couple Christmas cards or something.  This time I’d like to do bookplates.  I’m accumulating quite a collection of nice hardcover books, so I’m going to design and print some bookplates and then hand-color them with watercolor.  I think that will look nicer and be easier than a multi-color block print.  I’ll post a sketch once I settle on a design.

I’m also finally trying out Daniel Smith for supplies.  I’ve heard good things about their printmaking inks (and they have to be better than Speedball’s), so I ordered a tube of oil-based black ink, a piece of linoleum, and a tube of acrylic paint, because I needed that anyway.  I’ll post reviews of the paint and the ink once I try them.

Tomorrow, I’ll post once of my recent charcoal sketches.

Many people are aware of Vincent van Gogh’s extensive correspondence with his brother Theo, but he also corresponded with a number of artists, including Paul Gauguin and a younger artist named Emile Bernard, for whom he became something of a mentor.

I was not aware of these letters, which also included sketches of his works in progress, until I read an article about them in this month’s Smithsonian magazine. (The article can be found here, and does not require registration to read, although I don’t know how long it will remain available.) Emile Bernard was a relatively unimportant artist, but van Gogh’s advice-filled letters to him reveal a lot about van Gogh’s methods of working, opinions on working from life vs. reality, and color theory. Here’s a sample:

I follow no system of brushwork at all, I hit the canvas with irregular strokes, which I leave as they are, impastos, uncovered spots of canvas—corners here and there left inevitably unfinished—reworkings, roughnesses…. Anyway, my dear pal, no trompe l’oeil in any case…

I’ve always been attracted to van Gogh’s work, partially because of the dynamism he finds in landscapes (which I talked about once here) and partially because of his brilliant use of colors. This article quotes him as saying “I could hardly give a damn about the veracity of the color” and that’s almost something I want to write on an index card and tape above my easel. Color has so much emotional and visual power, it almost seems a pity to limit oneself to strict realism.

Anyway, it’s a very interesting article and includes a number of pictures of his sketches, letters, and finished paintings of his and Bernard’s. Worth a read.

(Smithsonian frequently has fantastic art history articles. In particular, I enjoyed (but forgot to blog about) this July article about Edward Hopper, another favorite artist of mine, and his lonely, evocative, quintessentially American paintings.)