Happy Thanksgiving

Hope you are all enjoying your Thanksgiving holiday!  As far as art has been going, aside from commissions, I have been doing alot more surfing, reading and imagining than doing lately.  Somewhat enjoyable and stimulating, but also sometimes feeling bloated, like eating too much choclate candy at one sitting.  Looking at 3-D as well as 2-D media -- may blog about that later.  Feeling a need to do something looser and just for fun.

I have developed a  want for more studio space, my basement is a wreck of storage, that has been bothering me anyway -- planning to really work on that this winter, but more motivated to have more space for art making (space to do other media without having to back up all my colored pencil stuff in order to have room), framing (have to use kitchen island now, with no room for storage of materials) and for storage and display.  Not that I can't create without all this, but I am feeling motivated to move toward making it a reality for the longterm at this point.

I did buy myself some early Christmas present art books, two by Claudia Nice and one by Carla Sonheim.

Again hope you are having a great holiday, see you later!  Angela

Mentors and Guides - Introduction

The internet has revoloutionized the ability of visual artists to connect and share ideas. Before the internet it was generally difficult to make contact with a variety of artistic ideas without living in a large city with a large thriving artistic community and art education system. It was also expensive to constantly buy books with color prints and to subscribe to an array of artistic journals in order to keep one's hunger for art and art education fed. One of the greatest sites for meeting artists and for looking at and sharing visual art and artistic ideas is http://www.wetcanvas.com -- "a cyper living for artists" website. This site has interactive forums and articles by medium as well as by interests such as "miniature art", "decorative art", "abstract art", "the business of art", etc. This site is free to all, but does accept donations.

I have learned about mediums I had not yet tried there. An artist can get critiques of their work on wet canvas. I can go there for artistic advice on just about any question I encounter. I have met artists who I have seen grow from starting out to internationally famous by reading posts there. Many established artists take time to share on wet canvas. One can make friends by posting regularly to chat groups in the various forums.

I have met or been led to mentors and guides to follow by reading and participating on WetCanvas.com.

In a future series of posts I will focus on the mentors and guides and what I have learned from them. Most of these mentors and guides are authors of blogs I follow as listed in this blog.