A Sail of Glass

 

Over the weekend my mom and I attended the Glass Art Society Conference in Corning, New York at the Corning Museum of Glass. If you've never had the chance to go and you enjoy glass even a tiny bit, put it on your to-do list. If you think you'll be back, ask for an Admission Only membership. It doesn't cost any more and will let you in for free the rest of the year! This image is one I took of a piece that was part of a one-night art installation on the bridge between town and the museum.

6 x 6 x 2009

 

A local gallery has a fundraiser every year where local artists and those who want to be donate a 6" x 6" piece of art. They sell them for $20 each to keep the gallery afloat for the next year. It's an inclusive, fun, community event. Above is my piece: Quiet Like Bananas Are Quiet.

I thought about taking it into the computer - and may still - to make it all polished and flashy, but I wanted someone to buy a piece of art that was actually touched by the artist during creation. That's what makes paintings so much better than prints of course. Have you ever seen an actual van Gogh? The texture is amazing!

Maira Kalman: And the Pursuit of Happiness

Sometimes I come across something wonderful and horrible and amazing. Today it was this New York Times blog post written and illustrated by Maira Kalman. I love her art, her words and her sentiments like, "Don't we need both the warriors and artists on this planet?" and "Everyone is beautiful. Everyone makes you proud. Everyone breaks your heart." Okay, I liked every word and brush stroke.

Eat, Sleep, Draw

This shoe is probably the best sketch I've done. I hadn't sat down to just draw in a long time and signed up for a class so I would have to. So conditioned am I as a graphic designer, I tend to crave that deadline. The teacher set up this still life with a spotlight and we drew in the dimness. Who wore it? Where did they go? How many public restrooms had the shoe hurried into? Did that shoe get to dance? I wondered these things, and I loved drawing this shoe.

Everyone learns to draw. Then most of us stop. I sometimes forget what a pleasure it is to look, really look, at a leaf, a person, a dream and transcribe it to paper. The process is as magical as a photograph appearing in a bath of darkroom chemicals - maybe more so because the subject is not captured by technology, but by a being.

Synapses fire off to make the finger hold the pencil, jog the line, darken a shadow, while the eyes record what they see to create an image filtered through thought. Click here to see the magic.

Better

When you are around someone who is bettering themselves in some way, education, fitness, etc., it is hard not to get inspired. Or at least feel inadequate or lazy or both for not doing something to move toward your goals. My husband has acquired a couple Microsoft certifications and is taking a course twice a week to learn C# (sharp not pound, apparently) and .net programming, things I cannot hope to ever understand. I've run a few marathons so I'm crushing him on the fitness (though he's not unfit as I've wrangled him into some 5Ks), but it's time to work a body part I've been neglecting.

I've been a graphic designer for over a decade, but as with most professions, there is always something new to learn - and thank goodness. A month ago I downloaded a 10-week Photoshop webinar and am finally nibbling away at the one-hour classes with accompanying one-hour Q and A. For perspective, I now have to admit a guilty pleasure: I loved school. I loved college. Being in a class is one of my favorite things. I was really disappointed I couldn't take this Photoshop course when it was offered live and was really worried it would be dry and feel less interactive. Maybe that's why I put it off for a while. It turns out that it's wonderful.

The instructor, Jason Hoppe, is excellent; he is concise, entertaining and dispenses so much knowledge about Photoshop it could fill an Egyptian pyramid. As someone who uses the CS3 version of this program, I'm in an excellent spot to soak up more efficient ways to do the things I know, learn some new techniques, see how things work in CS4 (the version used in this course) and get a refresher on skills I learned once but don't have the opportunity to do often. It's like taking toothpaste to tarnished silver; try it - it will shine like new.

As a lover of learning, my second favorite thing is sharing what I've learned. I often e-mail my coworkers tips and tricks. Some they already know and some they don't, but I figure if we all get faster, we have more time for the fun part - being creative! There are so many things I've picked up from this course, such as holding the option key (alt on the PC) while clicking on the eyeball icon on one layer will turn all the other layers off for instant before and after comparison. Fab-u-lous!

This course is still available here. Download all 10 weeks for $65 or just the weeks you want for $15 each. CreativeTechs, a Seattle-based professional Mac support company, is who produces this course and others. Visit their blog for all kinds of useful Mac/design-related information. You can also follow them on Twitter: @creativetechs. Am I in some way affiliated with CreativeTechs? No. I just want you to get better.