my "after Gerhard Richter" demo

A couple weekends ago, I went to my local Blick Art Store and got to do a few really fun demos, learning about artists like Alexander Calder, known creator of the mobile, and Wassily Kandinsky, credited with the first purely abstract paintings.

All incredible artists, but demo-wise, I had the most fun imitating Gehrard Richter (who is actually still alive!), a German artist whose known technique uses layers upon layers of paint squeegeed across a large surface. One of his paintings received the record price for a living artist at an art auction in 2012. I got to do mine on a much smaller, reasonably-sized canvas, using the store's demo tempera paints in red, yellow, blue and green:

Closer shots of  parts in detail.

As I squeegeed across, it was a lot of fun seeing what stayed underneath and what appeared above in the paint. Most other demos were done on paper, which also came out with some beautiful effects. There wasn't the luxury of spending hours to create a series of layers, but it was really interesting seeing how the initial paint slopped on to the canvas left a remnant pattern even when wiped across.

Best part about this demo was that it was fast, looked fantastic and practically fail-proof. Even the paint that got squeegeed off ended up looking kind of amazing.

Also, I went to Europe last summer in 2013, and one of my favorite cities was Cologne in Germany. They have a staggering cathedral called the Dom, and I didn't realize that it was Richter who was connected to one of the stained glass windows in the historic structure! The thing is huge and consists of hundreds of squares of colored glass randomly assorted together:

So if you'd like to try your hand at some modern abstract art and also give your home an interesting new piece to hang up, I kid you not, this may be the way to go.

Works by the actual master:

 

Huge squeegee contraption in use.

Cute man! Now if you happen to sit by him on a plane, you'll know what he looks like.

The other artists were plenty cool too, so I think I'll do follow-up posts sharing their work and my demos from them as well.

So, what do you think? Any hope of a future for me in modern art? ;)

Leave a comment below with your own modern/abstract art experiences, if you'd like to see the other demos or what you think of my little foray piece!

what sweetness is this?

The happies from almost a year ago,
back in October of last year!

Another piece of happy photo news!

Remember back in the day when my photo was featured on the Redbubble front page?

Well, a mini return has been made - I just received notice that my work has been featured in the most recent Redbubble blog post highlighting inspirational travel photography!

I'm really happy and honored to be included in such a beautiful collection of photos:



Guess something about the giraffe stuck. But I have been posting up new photography from my recent trip to Europe, so be sure to check my site for new photos. :)

olio fri #1: last chance to see van gogh at norton simon for free tonight

Today's March 1st, meaning free entrance to the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena from 6 to 9 pm tonight!

They give free admission the first Friday of every month, and I went last month to catch their Van Gogh spotlight. I missed the lectures, but I did get to see the 1889 self portrait on loan from the National Gallery of Art, Washington. The exhibit ends in a few days, on March 4th, so head over and see it while you can! There are Van Gogh spotlight tour talks available at 6 pm and 7 pm tonight as well.

There's plenty of other great art available at the museum as well. Cezanne, Degas, Monet, Manet... Here are some things I fell in love with, in addition to the Van Gogh I saw:

The featured portrait! Click to enlarge.

Museum explanation :) Click to enlarge.

Such beautiful penmanship!

Paul Cezanne, Tulips in a Vase, 1888-1890.

Cezanne again, Vase of Flowers, 1880-81.

Monet.

Degas, 1879. Such a fun portrait! And I love sketches. Though the lady wasn't as happy with it...

It's a beautiful Friday, do something fun this first weekend of March. Enjoy!

manic mon #1: complex's how to make it, 15 rules for success from creative industry insiders

swim to the sky, variation 4 ( blue )

And so the weekly segments begin! Yes?!

Man, I really hope it lasts beyond this first week.

Anyway, first thing I'm sharing for Manic Monday #1 is some inspirational collections by life/style mag, Complex. They have a wonderful little series entitled "How to Make It." I know, the title is a very tagliney and a little dubious, but the snippets are worth flipping through.

Each post is a short list of tips/advice garnered from people established in a certain creative area. I first stumbled on the one for freelance photographers clicking through "Portfolio Review: Photographer Steven Taylor's Shares His Favorite Music Portraits."

They're all great and contain words of wisdom that could easily pertain to other fields. The one I found really helpful and want to share today is "How to Make It: 15 Rules for Success from Creative Industry Insiders."

Some things for me to remember were:

1. Maxime Buchi's, "Know yourself. The most successful are never the most gifted, but those who know best how to exploit their gifts."
2. Frank Chimero's, "Explore other fields, and import their insights into your practice. Read a book on astronomy, look at conceptual art, appreciate the vernacular. Insight comes from the outside,"which relates to Kathy Grayson's, "Art that is charged with lived experience is the kind of art that changes lives."
3. Colleen Nika's, "You need to think long-term — how can you create opportunities now that will evolve with you, and serve you well 10 years from now? This isn't a privileged viewpoint, it's survivalism for grownups."
4. Bobby Solomon's, "I've done this nearly every day for five years, and it's allowed me to meet so many interesting people along the way. It even helped me get me my last two jobs. Put yourself, and your work, out there every day, and you'll start meeting some amazing people."

Out of all of them, I think I like Kathy Grayson's rule the best.

Rule: Make art about life, not art about art.

It's more on the guiding light side than the business sav, but it's something I've pondered and want to remember. Finding creative community is vital, but also dangerously insular, like all specialized fields and much of grown-up living.

More How to Make It's from Complex:
10 Rules for Success from Freelance Photographers
10 Rules for Success from Freelance Writers
10 Rules for Success from Street Artists
10 Rules for Success from Freelance Illustrators

tomorrow night! van gogh open house at the norton simon

For those of you in the Pasadena area, there's a great event going on tomorrow night at the Norton Simon Museum.

The museum currently has Van Gogh's 1889 self portrait on loan from the National Gallery of Art, and I suppose in honor of that is having an open house spotlighting the Dutch painter.

I just got off the phone with a lady from the museum and the three talks will be at 6:30, 7:15 and 8:00. Each one is to be 30 minutes long and involves different material. The first covers before Van Gogh up to Van Gogh, and the last covers Van Gogh and after, into contemporary. Both of those take place in the gallery, which has limited occupancy and so requires the prior sign-up. The middle lecture, focusin ong Van Gogh, is in the auditorium.

Also, the Norton Simon actually offers free admission every first Friday of the month, from 6 to 9 pm. Great news for those of us who can't make it tomorrow, and those of us in general! More details on admission fees and hours available here.

From the official online flyer:

Portrait of a Peasant (Patience Escalier), August 1888
Vincent van Gogh
Dutch, 1853-1890
Oil on canvas
25-1/4 x 21-1/2 in. (64.1 x 54.6 cm)
Norton Simon Art Foundation

Open House

 

Van Gogh Night

Date: Friday, February 01, 2013
Time: 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm
Speakers: Carol Togneri and Staff Educator
Type: Open House

Join us for an evening looking at one of the world’s most recognizable artists. Three talks explore Van Gogh’s influences, work and impact. The evening begins with an overview of art from Manet to Van Gogh, followed by Chief Curator Carol Togneri’s introduction to Van Gogh’s works in the Norton Simon Museum collections and the loan from the National Gallery of Art. The evening ends with a discussion that examines Van Gogh’s influence on expressionism and the art of the 20th century. Offered concurrently with the gallery talks are art-making activities for artists of all ages to create original works.

Special Exhibition Galleries | Admission to the Museum and all programs are free. | Space for the first and final talks is limited to 25 participants. Please sign up at the Information Desk no later than 15 minutes prior to each session.

{ illustrator } artist #oftheday: teagan white

I found this lady when I was browsing through Society6, the online art producer/distributor that houses a lot of great illustrators. Every piece of hers that happened to float up in the recommended images would catch my eye, so I quickly became familiar with the name Teagan White. Her style is sweet and understated, with an almost manga sensibility; she's got a thoughtfully cute side, like in Things Squirrels Probably Shouldn't Be Eating, but also a darker bent that comes out in her typography work, like in Only Skin.

Here's the bio from her official website:

Teagan White is a freelance designer & illustrator from Chicago, currently living and working in St Paul, Minnesota, where she recently earned her BFA in Illustration from the Minneapolis College of Art & Design. Her body of work encompasses intricate renderings of flora and fauna, playful depictions of cute anthropomorphic critters, illustrative typography, and everything in between. The subtleties of nature and reciprocal relationships between organisms are her primary inspirations, and her work typically incorporates flat, limited color, decorative arrangements of organic forms, and obsessive detail. 

Her clients have included Nike, Wired Magazine, Anthropologie, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Target, and many small businesses, independent musicians, and individuals. 

Teagan lives in the woods across the street from train tracks and a fox den, and spends her tiny amounts of free time taking photos, exploring forests, rivers, lakes, fields, and swamps, picking wildflowers, and collecting animal bones.

And here are some prints from her Society 6 shop I especially like:

FISHER FOX

THE NORTH SHORE

THE LAST ACORN OF AUTUMN

ANIMAL'S TEA PARTY

ABC BOOK - C

To know more about her, you can visit her website's Info page or check out one or some of her many links { Tumblr / Facebook / Twitter / Etsy / DeviantArt / Instagram }. You can buy her art on Society6.

photo #oftheday: national geographic winners 2012

Have you checked out the winners from National Geographic's 2012 Photo Contest yet? The Grand-Prize Winner is definitely an incredible image, so be sure to click through and view in full size.

There are plenty of incredible shots, and here are my favorites:

Grand-Prize Winner: "The Explosion!" by Ashley Vincent

Honorable Mention, People: "Captive" by Wendell Phillips

Viewers' Choice for People: "Expedition Amundsen" by Kai-Otto Melau

Honorable Mention, Nature: "Predation" by Fransisca Harlijanto

art #oftheday: nieve y deshielo

Snow and Thaw (Nieve y deshielo), c. 1900, by Darío de Regoyos y Valdés (1857-1913)
Via Glasstire.com. Photos by Dimitris Skliris.

artist #oftheday: alberto macone

"dicembre" by Alberto Macone, born 1971

Came across an image on Pinterest and looked it up using Google Image Search (that little gray camera ico on the right side of the search bar). The original pin went to a Tumblr link; the artwork being so whimsical yet rather somber gave it such an interesting play of mood that I wanted to find a more direct link.

My search brought me to ArtOdyssey, which contained a short profile on the artist and a number of his lovely images in larger resolution.

Turns out the artist is Alberto Macone, a man actually working as an assistant professor in the Medicine and Pharmacy Department at La Sapienza University in Rome, Italy. He was actually born in NY though, so he possibly still retains U.S. citizenship? Anyway, I think it's wonderful that he's gone from having a biochemistry degree to exploring this other visual side in children's illustration, still doing both.

Macone has his own blogspot blog operating as his official site, which you can visit here. I located his official website through the snippet information in this online auction for Drawing Dreams Foundation (which, I'm guessing, is where ArtOdyssey got the info from).

Here is some more of his work - I really like the one with the man in the tie, "altrove," too:

   

   

   

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My site Disclaimer & Discloure. Click through links for glorious full-size. Why do I only post image thumbnails of images that aren't mine? Read up on copyright and the unlikely but unfortunate odds of getting sued.

I've Been "Found" and Featured on RedBubble!!!

Okay, so I'm kind of toward the bottom, practically in October 17th territory. Still jubilant!!!
via RedBubble.com

 

Yes, I've been "found" and featured on the RedBubble front page!

Or rather, my giraffe has.

My original photo, Stiff Sentinel ( Giraffe in Profile ) © emiliewho 2012

BUT I'M SO EXCITED AND FLATTERED AND A BUNCH OF OTHER HAPPY FEELINGS. 

Really, when I found out at 3 a.m. last night, all these e-feelings just bubbled up and rose inside me and I basically rolled around on my bed, unable to contain myself. Ecstatic. Elated. No shortage of rolling!!!

(And yes, 3 a.m. This is what my body does when it does not have boundaries! I should feel a little more chagrined, but right now I'm rationalizing with the fact that I got to see the RedBubble e-mail about being featured as soon as it was sent to me. So timely.)

I was SO surprised and SO thankful, because in reality I've done very little marketing or connecting on RedBubble, which I've read is as much a community site as it is a selling site. I've really just been spending my time working on trying to get enough things up - going through my thousands of images, selecting the best ones, going through those again, and then all the minute editing and readying. The whole process takes me a really long time, which is why I only have twelve or so things up in my RB shop! I still don't even have a profile user icon up yet!

So I've no idea how my picture got to the higher RB powers that be, but I'm super gratified and thankful. What a feeling! It's amazing to have one's creative work given a little "official" nod. I was actually getting a bit discouraged about my photo art, but now I feel like all the hours I've put in have been acknowledged. Thank you God, and thank you interested RB staff viewer!

Btw, for those who don't know, RedBubble is a free, online site where anyone can make an account and sell their artwork. It's a "Print on Demand" site, which means you upload your image files, and they take care of the rest, all the production and distribution. They sell a bunch of things, from T-shirts and stickers to iPhone cases and calendars; most of my work is available as cards, prints and posters. To get details on what exactly you're buying (what's the paper, the ink, the quality? etc.), you can just click on the little, encircled question mark that appears in gray with text like "Posters Info," right below the big, red "Add to Cart" button.

I've only got things up in my Tanzania collection, but I'm working on images from Asia and America too. To see more of my work or purchase something, please visit my RedBubble Shop (the shop shows a random assortment of items, but you can click on any image to see all the product options available for that specific image): 

My stuff on RB, currently only the "Out of Africa" Collection.

 My personal favorite out of the photographs that are currently up is probably this one:

Won't Back Down ( Baby Zebra in the Wilderness )  © emiliewho 2012

Upcoming

If you've read this, thank you for taking a look and sharing this happy moment with me!

Other than putting up photographic work on RedBubble, I also plan on putting up art illustrations on Society6. And I plan on doing a post explaining what I've found out so far for other people interested in sharing and selling their artwork, so you can look out for that as well. :)

I DRAW!