Carl Sandburg: Crimson, prismacolor in altered book, 2009 by Sarah Atlee. Click image to view source.

It’s a cliche, but I’m honored just to be nominated. Some of my favoite blogs are also up for awards, like Debby Kaspari’s Drawing the Motmot and OVAC’s excellent blog. Vote by February 14!

The OVAC blog is featuring an ongoing interiew series with the artist from the current 24 Works on Paper show. Click here to read my thoughts on the process of creating romy.

24 Works on Paper is on display at Northern Oklahoma College in Tonkawa through October 14. The show will travel to venues around Oklahoma through August 2010. Click here for a full exhibition schedule.

The curious abbreviation NaBloPoMo refers to National Blog Posting Month, which began a couple of years ago as a call for bloggers to post something every day for a month. (It’s a spinoff of National Novel Writing Month.) Thanks to the efforts of people like Eden, NaBloPoMo is now celebrated every month of the year. There is a theme suggestion for each month, but blogging on the theme is always optional. It lives on as an exercise in developing the habit of regular blog posting.

I jumped on board NaBloPoMo for the month of July. It was a good time for me, as I had finished up work for my current solo show (Back to Normal at the Gaylord-Pickens Museum, through September 19). I always have more ideas than I have time to write about (or paint about), so I had a stack of blog topics saved up. I diligently released one post a day for three weeks. Then I stopped.

During those three weeks, I noticed my blogging behavior adapt like a small fish put into a bigger pond. The more blogging I did, the more topics I found worthy of blogging about. I could do it all day, every day. It was a rewarding experience, though limiting in other ways (my time, a valuable resource, was depleted).

Around the fourth week of July, daily blogging lost its importance for me. I had three shows open, my car had been totaled, etc etc; my blog slipped down my list of priorities. My readership had increased during daily posting (mostly via Facebook), but not dramatically. So I let myself off the hook.

I’ll continue blogging, of course, but I don’t plan to hold myself to a stringent timetable. Quality, not quantity. It’s time for me to focus on being a painter, especially now that I have a new studio. Stay tuned.

Thank you, folks out in internetland, for reading this.

Flickr user Okinawa Soba has shared with us a vast archive of antique photographs, mostly of old Japan. If you have a couple of free hours, explore sets such as Geisha and Maiko, Religion in Old Japan, or Foot Binding in Old China.* (Caution — some of these photographs contain nudity or are otherwise NSFW. Flickr will give you the option of viewing these, or not.) These photos are licensed under Creative Commons.



An Early Meiji-era Geisha Hair Style, vintage photograph posted by Flickr user Okinawa Soba. Click image to view source.

Okinawa Soba himself is quite a character, as you’ll see from his humorous (though very informative) photo captions. (Many commenters provide additional information about the subjects photographed.) Read his full profile here.

Interestingly, there is a photo of Evelyn Nesbit (the “original supermodel” and inspiration for the Gibson Girl) posing as a geisha among this collection. OS thoughtfully provides a link to other Flickr images of Ms. Nesbit. We can see why she was such a big hit.

* If you’re interested in the history of footbinding in China, I recommend Splendid Slippers: A Thousand Years of an Erotic Tradition by Beverly Jackson.

See what else I’ve Found on Flickr.

This post is part of NaBloPoMo for July 2009.

Once again, I celebrate Flickr as a showcase for emerging and established artists alike, in all visual media. This wonderful painting by Tim Lowly (his website is here) is accompanied by a description written by Karen Halvorsen-Screck in 2002. You can read the full essay here, but this is my favorite part:

In Ekstasis, for instance, seems to reveal one of Temma’s fleeting expressions of happiness, or what appears to be happiness. I know that she is cortically blind, yet here I see her seeing something above and beyond me and my ken. In fact, she appears to be gazing at radiance, or releasing a radiance within. It is impossible to know for sure, and much of my response to In Ekstasis depends on my emotional perspective in the moment of looking.

I got the same feeling looking at this image, the feeling that I was seeing someone seeing something that I don’t see. It reminds me of that fundamental paradox of portraiture, that the inanimate image of the subject is a reflection of my own act of seeing.

Tim Lowly is represented by Koplin Del Rio Gallery in Culver City, California.

See what else I’ve Found on Flickr.

This post is part of NaBloPoMo for July 2009.

Via the SILA blog.

Today is the 23rd International Sketch Crawl Day! Go ye and make drawings in ye Books of Sketch. Browse the SketchCrawl Flickr pool here.

Hey, Okies: who wants to converge for the next Sketch Crawl, in more or less October? (The official date has not yet been released.) All we have to do is draw. Let’s talk about it.

This post is part of NaBloPoMo for July 2009.

via Right Some Good.

The Hi Fructose blog is featuring an exclusing interview with contemporary pop baroque painter Carrie Ann Baade. Reading Baade’s description of her working process, I found that she uses collage as a sketching method, just like I do! Quote:

The spark of the muse that could be called intuition is present when I make the collage for my work. I begin this process by covering the first floor of my house in photos and ripped out pages from books. After the floor is covered I walk around looking for images that fell on top of each other in an interesting manner…this is similar to reading tealeaves. Often I will have a question in mind while diving into the piles of picture images, such as, “What can I say about the horrors of dating in Tallahassee.” This process reminds me of reading tarot cards and getting an answer through the cards that can sometimes be uncannily accurate. Looking for the divine spark to speak to me through these images, I collect and adhere together with cellophane tape to paint later. I know something is really working if I involuntarily laugh aloud at the juxtaposition.

I feel the same intuitive connectivity when I’m making collage sketches. Sometimes the best compositions happen by accident, because I left two scraps in the same pile. I look over and realize, with a little rush of adrenaline, “Of course those go together!”

Ostrich, collage sketch, 2007 by Sarah Atlee. Click image to view source.

I like how Baade allows the collage aesthetic to show through in her finished paintings, without her images appearing slapped-together. She does an excellent job of creating integrated compostitions from a variety of sources. The world is a vast grab-bag of information, and our job as artists is to interpret, reinterpret, and dis-cover meaning through our medium. Although Baade has been told that “paint was an inadequate media to display the complexity of [her] ideas,” her intricate creations overflow with narrative and emotion. You can explore more of Carrie Ann Baade’s work here.

As I was reading this interview on the Hi Fructose blog, I felt an eerie similarity between Baade’s collage process and my own. This feeling was redoubled when I saw the previous blog post about the release of Isabel Samaras’ new monograph by Chronicle books. The gent on the cover bears an uncanny resemblance to this guy here. The similarity is a coincidence.

This post is part of NaBloPoMo for July 2009.

The Society of Illustrators of Los Angeles blog has posted a profile of me and my work. Click here to read it.
Thank you, SILA, for providing your members with an online gallery, and helping the public get to know us a little better.

Smorgasbord by Flickr user CharlesFred. Click image to visit on Flickr.

Say it with me, illustrators: “Photo references are good. Use them.” Using references is not copying, it is not cheating. Image references are tools. What’s an easy way to make sure you’re not trodding on another artist’s toes? Search within the Creative Commons.

What is Creative Commons? The Creative Commons license is a legal way for creators to easily share their content with the public. It is not a negation of copyright. There are different kinds of licenses depending on the type of content (music, images, literature, software, and so on) and how the creator wishes to share this material. I release my work under a Creative Commons license (there’s a link over in the left column of this page) because I believe that information and influence should (and do) flow freely among creators. The license does not prevent me from earning income from my art. I still own what I make. Creative Commons makes it easier for me to share it with others. You can read more about Creative Commons here.

Even with the Creative Commons license, copyright and usage is a slippery slope. When in doubt, contact the creator, ask permission, and give them credit.

The Flickr Creative Commons search is a fantastic tool for finding photo references for drawing, painting, illustration, or the medium of your choice. You need a Flickr account to use it – it’s easy to sign up. Click on the word “Search” in the upper right-hand corner, then click on “Advanced Search.” Enter your search terms and parameters, then scroll down to the bottom of the search form, where you will find the Creative Commons box. Click “Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content.” And go. You can also browse by license.

UPDATE: Here’s a tip from optimization expert Tim Ferriss. Do a Creative Commons search on Flickr, then sort the results by “Most Interesting.” You’ll get the best images first.

The Flickr Commons (sounds the same, but isn’t) is another bountiful image resource. Here are some goodies I found there.

My collaborative sketchbook pal Karo recently posted her favorite Flickr groups for gathering collage material. They are Collage Images, Vintage Illustration, and Mid-Century Illustrated. These groups collect and display images that are old enough to be public domain, or with no known copyright restrictions. Some of the images in the Collage pool are contemporary creations whose owners have provided them for use by others. The ownership of certain original ephemera objects (which are scanned and uploaded to Flickr) are sometimes in question, but this community of artists (usually) acts responsibly in investigating and attributing the sources of these images. Here is a discussion thread on that topic.

These are just a few of the tools artists can use to build their photo reference library. (Beware, your collection will grow when you’re not looking. Mine takes up a full filing cabinet.)

Related:
Figurative Collage set on Flickr
Great anatomical reference site
Winston Smith, collage artist
Lawrence Lessig, copyright reform guru