My Rock – My Mom
Sarah Drawing a Picture, ink on paper by Emmy Ezzell, circa 1984. Click here to see more drawings from this session.
My Mom was the first person who knew I was an artist, and who never ever told me I couldn’t be one.
There are thousands of things she has done along the way to make sure I followed my dreams – too many to list here. The most important thing she does, by far, is love me.
Thank you, Mom. You make it possible.
5 Reasons to Love James Jean Online
Waiting. Acrylic and Pastel on Cradled Wood Panels, 34 x 34″, 2010 by James Jean. Click image to view source.
You’ve probably seen James Jean’s work around the Internets. Maybe you love it like I do. He seems to draw and paint the other people breathe. It’s delicious, mysterious, pleasing and disturbing at once.
I’ve never seen Jean’s work in person. It occurred to me to ask myself why, other than the quality of the work itself, do I enjoy looking at it online?
Because James Jean has an excellent website.
Coco Chanel famously said that when a woman dresses shabbily, people notice her dress, but when she dresses well, people notice the woman. I looked at Jean’s drawings and paintings for several years before I noticed how well he presents it online. Here are some reasons why:
Less is more.
It’s a cliche that independent artists often combat, but Jean lets his work speak for itself. His site design is absolutely spotless. No explanations, no exclamations. Just the art, loud and clear.
Big, beautiful photos
He doesn’t make us squint to see the work. The photos aren’t fuzzy, washed-out, or imbalanced. The Reclamare scarf is a good example.
Up close and personal
If we can’t see the work in person, we can at least pretend. I wish more artists offered close-up details of their work like this.
Figure studies
Because artists never stop learning or practicing, especially when it comes to the figure.
Sketchbooks
Two of my favorites: Ottoman, Mole D-2
I’d like to thank the artist for putting all this work where we can see it. Keep it up.
Conspicuously Absent – Composing a Still Life
Landlocked: Still Life with Sushi, acrylic on canvas, 8 x 8 inches, 2011 by Sarah Atlee. Some rights reserved.
Composition is about choices
When composing an image, the artists chooses where each element is placed in order to produce certain effects. The desired effect could be motion, tension, calm, strength, quiet, noise, and so on.
Lately I’m revisiting Richard Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park paintings and studying his compositions. I’m wild about the way he pushes those divisions of space almost to the edges of the canvas in a conscious step away from the traditional Western pyramid. As my former painting teacher Martin Facey (himself a student of Diebenkorn’s) would say, the middle of this painting is full of “nothing,” as in no thing.
Painting no thing
In exploring still life painting, I find that composition is queen. A solid composition is complemented, not overshadowed, by color and paint handling. I enjoy playing on the notion that the most important business of a painting happens in the middle.
For Landlocked, above, I wanted to try pushing all the action to the first half of the hour, so to speak. I frequently employ the circle-within-a-square layout, and I like how the oddish placement of the sushi plays against the static underpinnings of the image.
My original photos of these leftovers included a teacup with soy sauce in it, a very dark element dominating the upper left quadrant of the composition. I decided against including it in the painting, choosing instead to fill that half of the plate with no thing. I also changed the color of the plate from green to a more neutral grey to turn its personality down a few notches, letting the sushi pop (better than putting it in the frying pan, no?).
Landlocked was created for the annual Small Works exhibit at JRB Art Gallery at the Elms. See more of my still life paintings in the Images section of the site.
Found on Flickr: Visual Diaries
The Visual Diaries are tools I create to capture my aesthetic for a particular moment. They’re collections of my favorite Flickr images each month or so. See all of them here.
Hemphill-Co-safe-passage, by Flickr user Stateart1. Click image to view on Flickr.
This is from my October Visual Diary, The Finding Place. Hemphill County, Texas, is where my mother’s family has lived for the past several generations.
See what else I’ve found on Flickr.
Feeling Stumped?
Here are some tools that can help spur your creativity. Don’t try to execute every idea all at once — pick a link at random and follow it.
The Brainstormer (Read a history of The Brainsormer here.)
Directors Bureau Idea Generator
Michael Nobbs‘ 75 ways to Draw More and Draw Your Life
A methodology for creating new ideas (written by professional illustrator Nate Williams)
An extensive list of ideation tools
Keith Haring knew that anything worth drawing once was worth drawing a hundred times.
I like to go to movies and draw in the dark. And I love love love blind gesture drawing.
Join the BookMooch Journal Project (or just browse their blog or their Flickr pool) or 1001 Journals
Participate in the quarterly Worldwide Sketch Crawl Day.
Illustration Friday suggests a new topic once a week!
Following are some idea-generation links oriented toward writers, but they could just as easily apply to image-makers.
No one cares what you had for lunch.
Idea Generator Blog Writing Prompts
Googobs of Creative Writing Prompts
Now rock out with your socks out.
Related Posts
How (and Why) to Title Your Work (Includes some prompts to help you create interesting titles.)
Project Idea: Object Sketchbook
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