SIMMERING IDEAS

Many times I get ideas for a painting or perhaps a series of paintings. This has been going on for me and I have only just this past week begun to fully realize what I will do for my first major series of paintings. It has been an idea for me for the past 1 1/2 years to do paintings of downtown Orlando where I now work. However, this idea has only been simmering in the back of my brain for all this time because it was not ready to be born. I felt this was true and there was no guilt in not starting on my new idea right away! It did not seem appropriate to rush into such a project rashly without a lot of thought and some initial preparation.

Most of the work on any painting or drawing project is done before any paint or pencil touches canvas or paper. You must think through the process first to make sure it will have the best start possible. That is not to say that half-way through you may realize it is going in the wrong direction and not working at all. But that is a topic for another day. For now, the lesson is to realize that running into a situation without thinking first can get one into a lot of trouble. At first things may seem to be okay but watch constantly so you can make appropriate adjustments or corrections.

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HOW TO HAVE FUN - LEGALLY

I had a lot of fun last night. I met new friends, laughed a lot and talked about many interesting topics. We covered a lot of ground in about one hour while eating so this list is straight off the top of my head and in no particular order. I hope I included everything. Ed, Carol, Shari, Sy -- let me know if I forgot anything! Deep breath, here goes: family roots, where are you from?, the Incas, Nicaragua, Tennessee, Scotland, Lima, England, all over!, caricatures, Big Brother, Microsoft, Vista, Cosmos, Carl Sagan, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Apophis, 2012 or 2032?, warping space, event horizons, black holes!, the speed of light, Einstein, string theory, M theory, gravity, multiple universes, the Russian ballet and the way Sy makes turkey burgers -- very delicious with his own special way of adding flavoring!

Get Some Perspective

If you have noticed my only other two major blogs you see I only posted once per year for two years. Maybe I set a record -- should I call Guiness? So where have I been? Well, I started this blog and it was a lot harder to keep up than I thought. For one thing, I didn't feel I had anything to say. Since 2006 I have started teaching at JoAnn Fabric's and Michaels. I teach people how to paint and draw in acrylic, watercolor and pencil. Recently, a student took one of my drawing classes. She told me she had learned a life lesson from my class. Since then it has been boiling in my brain to share these lessons online. I knew I already had a blog set up at Blogspot. I was surprised to find Google had bought them. Fortunately, I already had a Google account so I just had to take some time to reconfigure my old blog account into my new one.

Anyway, back to my original thought... My student told me she had learned a life lesson from my drawing class. I asked her what it was because I was not aware that such a thing was possible -- from me anyway! She had been trying to draw a picture of a buddhist temple from a postcard by starting in one corner of the paper and drawing every single detail in that one area first then moving on across to the next section. But when she found the drawing was growing bigger than the paper and everything was getting out of proportion and perspective she crumpled up the drawing and threw it away in frustration. After taking my class she had learned that one must look at things with a wider perspective and not get stuck first in the details. I also gave her a tip about what to do when a drawing starts to get larger than the paper -- just tape more paper to the paper and keep on going!

I'm Back

I actually have two blogs now and at different websites. But this one was first and offers different features the other one does not. The other blog is at www.artwanted.com/bowdenartist. This site lists all my artwork and photography for sale and offers them as prints and on products! Very cool! But the RSS feed does not work for the blogs -- only new artwork that I post to my account. I am not sure how I am going to work this but we shall see over the coming months (if anybody even reads this at this point in time!) TX