Twyla Tharp on Creativity and Success

Just a short post so I can sqeeze in some painting tonight. I found this video today and just had to pass it along. There's a lot of good advice packed into a little over three minutes. I have Twyla Tharp's book The Creative Habit and I love it. I keep going back and rereading sections. I like her ideas for inspiring creativity and her practical advice. In this video she discusses creativity, success and failure, and money. I particularly like the part where she talks about the goal of creativity to make money versus creativity because you want to create something. Well she says it better. Here's the video.

A Weedy Post

Henbit

Ink and colored pencil

I was feeling a bit uninspired so I sketched one of the weeds coming up in the yard not that the weather is warming up. I really need to do work in the yard. It's an annoying little weed but if you look closely, the tiny flowers are lovely. I think it's called Henbit. I've lost my painting mojo lately in favor of sketching. I feel it coming back though. I'm getting the urge to grab some brushes. Here's a couple of random things I picked up in my Internet travels the past few days.

Photography
One of my goals this year was to learn more about this fancy camera I got for Christmas so I can take better photos and reference photos. I've noticed that a number of people, including me, have questions about your legal rights as a photographer. Photojojo recently had an article on this, nicely distilled into 10 simple legal commandments for photography. The article also has links to more extensive information and information for those of you outside the US.

Influential Artists
Dani Draws has a list of 75 artists that influenced today's illustrators and web sites where you can find their work. Make sure you read through the comments for more artists.

If you find my painting mojo, send it back home.

Exercising Your Doodles

Before Christmas I bought Bert Dodson's book Keys to Drawing with Imagination. The first few exercises focus on doodles, or rather doing more with doodles. These are some of my examples from the first exercise. I like this book. Even the little doodles feel inspirational. While the book feels like it would be more useful for illustrators, I'm getting a lot of out it. I doodle as much as the next person, but some of these doodles are new to me. As I read through the exercises, I can see how many of these could evolve into paintings. I'm enjoying working through this book.

You won't find much in the way of actual drawing technique. The book does have a lot of good tips scattered in it. There are instructions for building your own light box. There are also many tips for combining and transforming your doodles and sketches into new drawings. The last part of the book focuses on artists and some of the themes they've chosen for their work. I think I'm going to get a lot out of this book.