Strathmore Workshop 2 and a Little Inspiration

Page from Workshop 1 showing progression
of page through weeks 1, 2, 3, and 4

 

Workshop 2

The second Strathmore Visual Journal workshop started this month. It's "Start Where You Are" with instructor Linda Blinn. Rather than work on a single page, this workshop focuses on a variety of techniques you can use in your journal. I'll show you later what I've done so far. I got a bit of a late start. That's the nice thing about these workshops. You don't have to start on the first week if you're busy with something else. Just to wrap up Workshop 1, I thought I would show you how the pages progressed during the workshop.  Click the pictures to embiggen.

Another page from Workshop 1 showing
progression of page through weeks 1-4.

 

A Little Inspiration

I'm a selfhelp-aholic. I always buying self-help books and downloading eBooks and audio files, more than I can read. Sometime last summer I downloaded an interview with Steven Pressfield on Lateral Action. I've forgotten how I found out about it. It sat on my computer until the other day when I was looking for something to listen to driving to work. Steven Pressfield writes military novels but for most artists he's probably better known for his book, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles. It was a wonderful interview. He talks about resistance to doing the things you want to do and how to overcome it, as well as some of his own experiences. It was a lively and inspiring interview, with just a bit of woo-woo. I ended up listening to it a couple of times.

I'm off to work on Workshop 2.

SF: Drawing a Blank

This week's topic for Friday February 16th: Drawing a blank!

It's one of the most feared events in the life of an artist. Sometimes it can take a long time to overcome this sudden stop of the creative juices. What do you do? How do you act and react? How do you get back to splashing around in all colours? Do you fight it or work with it?

There was a time when I didn't do much art for several years. I'm not sure why; a number of reasons most likely. I had a very hard time getting back into a creative routine. After all, what if I had lost my creative inspiration and skill? Art supplies are expensive. What if I just end up wasting them all? So I started back slowly with some inexpensive art supplies for children, an inexpensive sketchbook, some colored paper, some pictures cut out from magazines, and some other collected items. With some collages and quick sketches, I slowly got into my creative routine again.

Even though I'm past that major hurdle, I still have times when I don't have any ideas. During those times, I'll try to get outside and maybe go for a walk. I'll drive a different route to work and back. There's lots of inspiration at thrift stores, dollar stores, galleries, museums, and artist web sites. It also helps me to look at the work of artists who use different media than I use. Last but not least, I get a lot of inspiration from the ideas and sketches in my sketchbooks. My sketchbooks contain not only sketches but also ideas, techniques, pasted in pictures of things I like, abstract drawings, and thoughts. I can usually find a subject to start working on. Before I know it, the creative juices are flowing again.

See more Studio Friday here.