Browsing: Letters
0
‘Overwhelmed by images’
Dear Artist, Yesterday, Nancy Bell Scott of Old Orchard Beach, Maine wrote, “Lately my brain has been overwhelmed by the many thousands (millions?) of images online. An evening can be spent wandering around cyberspace and enjoying it immensely. But very…
0
The Timid Test System
Dear Artist, We’ve talked a few times about audacity, which is a totally good thing unless you don’t know what you’re doing. Think of a surgeon giving someone an artificial hip with a load of audacity and no knowledge. It…
0
How to prevent choking
Dear Artist, “Choking” is when you know how to do something, do it often, and then, inexplicably and royally, you screw up. A golfer, for example, going for a three-foot putt, overshoots by seventeen feet, or, worse, gives the ball…
0
Pricing a reproduction run
Dear Artist, Yesterday, Susan Delaney of Red Deer, Alberta, Canada wrote, “I’m in the process of following up a commission with an order from the original customer for up to 200 reproductions of a painting, to be sold as a…
0
Disposable art
Dear Artist, Yesterday, Jill Bukovnik of Invermere, B.C., wrote, “I’ve had five solo shows at our local art centre with lots of sales. The curator has always given me a large room and comments how well my work goes. So…
0
Shamanic artists in our midst
Dear Artist, In The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art, David Lewis-Williams tells us that cave art may have had more to do with early religions and shamanism than objects of the hunt or demonstrations of…
0
Tips on paying natural models
Dear Artist, Yesterday, Marilyn Hartley wrote, “This year I realized that country music is darn good! I took my drawing pad to a Pennsylvania tavern, blended in with the crowd, and, asking first, began to draw the musicians. People came…
0
Individual mentoring
Dear Artist, On Saturday I visited privately with 24 painters. My friend Sinisa Mirkov controlled the timing of the 15-minute sessions. I looked at originals, jpegs, slides and prints. For eight hours I felt like a doctor with a sore…
0
Six exercises in magic
Dear Artist, Artists need to be constantly on the prowl for ways to make their work more visually exciting. Art needs magic bullets beyond mere subject matter. Fact is, perfectly dull subjects can be made more interesting with a little…