This week’s tip is a two-fer since you didn’t get a proper tip last week.  One of the things I have been focusing on during my 5 minute nude series has been foreshortening.  If you’re not familiar, foreshortening is how things look when they are sticking straight out at the viewer.  Imagine the finger pointing in the old Uncle Sam recruiting posters.  Two things make foreshortening difficult when working from a photograph. The first is that photographs flatten the image.  Especially with digital cameras, photographs look for a common light element and will blunt the shadows and highlights of a foreshortened object, just barely blurring things that are not on the plane of focus.  This can be corrected to an extent by using a long range lens when taking the photo, and most pros do.

The other problem is your mind.  You expect to see certain shapes when looking at an arm, leg, nose… You are programmed to recognize these things and will easily see the patterns even when they are not there.  You’ll have a tendency to draw the thigh muscle, for instance, even when it is actually obscured by a knee cap.  You can disrupt these patterns by turning the photograph and your drawing upside down.  Not only will this help you to draw what is actually there, but it will give you a chance to check the balance of your composition as well.  However, compositional balance is a topic for a future tip.

Hello Peoples!

People are beginning to come to the studio on a regular basis now and I LOVE it!  I’ll be honest with you, for a few weeks I was having a bit of a pity party.  No one at the show, no one watching the videos, and no one coming to the studio.  I even considered putting it up for sale.  Then I remembered my purpose.  I’m freakin’ making MY art MY way and trying to encourage others to do the same thing.  About then, @wanderingwidget sends me an e-mail letting me know she intends to post to Radio Free Monday about me (Read that here).  That’s when I realized it’s working.  That’s enough to keep it going!  And now, I have people coming into the studio again.  :)

I finally got to clean up the audio on the interview with Virginia Savage from last week’s Midnight At Oasis.  I posted the video to You Tube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlpmgHsFUOs

This time of year we are ALL severely limited on fundage so we may be building with used pallets.  If you would like to help with that, you can go to artisticbiker.com and look for the DONATE button on the right side column and donate what you can.  If you can’t do that, please share this newsletter with everyone you know to help get the word out.  That helps more than you know.  Or better yet, Click Here to Join! artisticbiker.com/membership and help promote the arts in rural Oklahoma.

If you have any announcements you would like made in the newsletter or tweeted about incessantly, drop me a line and I’ll toot your horn for ya.  ;)  There were no announcements this week.

I’m going to keep the same password for a while so the password is: arting

The Classroom site is http://www.ustream.tv/channel/oasisgalleryok

Drawing Class: The Day Job has got me in Houston this week so no new classes this week.

Painting Class: Painting class is on hold until the wife and I can come up with a solid lesson plan I can be proud of.  Look for it to return sometime in February.

The past classes are moving into the Pay-per-view side of ustream and on artisticbiker.com as well. $2 lets you view them online at Ustream, $5 lets you download them at artisticbiker.com, and a $10/month membership gets you unlimited downloads from the site.

Click Here to Join! artisticbiker.com/membership

Share this with everyone you know!

Thank you

PACKING TAPE! OMG, packing tape can be used for SO many things in your journal and your art.  Beyond the obvious of adhering things to your work or for masking, you can use it for simple transfers and for resist areas when you’re painting.  I’ve been using it to lift pencil, pastel and watercolor off of some of my recent works.  THEN, I got a bunch of pastel dust on a light colored shirt.  What happens when you wipe that off? EXACTLY! You just rub it in.  So I reaches for me handily-dandily ol’ packing tape and sure enough: Lifted The Dust Off My Shirt!  Packing tape made it so that my wife didn’t kill me. :)

Hello Peoples!

We had a GREAT Midnight At Oasis art party Friday night.  There were snacks and tunes and everyone arting and having a BLAST!  All told there were nine of us that showed up.  I didn’t have the wherewithal to photograph everyone’s work before they leave.  I won’t make that mistake again because there truly were some beautiful and fun things produced that night.  Also had a nice chat with Virginia, an art therapist, who wanted to talk about how art keeps us sane in a frenetic world.  I recorded that and intend to release it as a podcast later this week.  In the mean time, you can watch the recording here:

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/19751988

One thing the Midnight gathering definitely required me do is CLEAN UP!  I spent most of the week trying to get supplies put away and cobwebs swept away.  I did manage to get all of the sheet rock mud done on the display panels in the gallery.  I should be able to sand and primer them this week.  Then we’ll slap a couple coats of paint on the entire room and call it DONE!

This time of year we are ALL severely limited on fundage so we may be building with used pallets.  If you would like to help with that, you can go to artisticbiker.com and look for the DONATE button on the right side column and donate what you can.  If you can’t do that, please share this newsletter with everyone you know to help get the word out.  That helps more than you know.  Or better yet, Click Here to Join! artisticbiker.com/membership and help promote the arts in rural Oklahoma.

If you have any announcements you would like made in the newsletter or tweeted about incessantly, drop me a line and I’ll toot your horn for ya.  ;)  There were no announcements this week.

This week’s password: arting

The Classroom site is http://www.ustream.tv/channel/oasisgalleryok

Drawing Class: Practical application: Still Life – Tuesday night 6pm central.  This week, I’ll compose and sketch a still life.  I’ll tell you all the things I consider when choosing subjects and viewing angles.

Painting Class: Painting class is on hold until the wife and I can come up with a solid lesson plan I can be proud of.  Look for it to return sometime in February.

The past classes are moving into the Pay-per-view side of ustream and on artisticbiker.com as well. $2 lets you view them online at Ustream, $5 lets you download them at artisticbiker.com, and a $10/month membership gets you unlimited downloads from the site.

Click Here to Join! artisticbiker.com/membership

Share this with everyone you know!

Thank you

Overcoming white page syndrome.  White page syndrome is when you open a journal or canvas and stare at the blank page, afraid to mess it up.  You think that very first mark you make will be there forever and you spend WAY too much time stressing over how to start.  This is where many artists will start with a tonal underpainting.  You can watch video after video online of artists roughly painting the canvas one color.  Aside from setting the temperature and tone of the painting, and covering up any white areas that might be missed later in the details, this gives the artist something more than a blank page to start with.  Try splashing a bit of paint on your pages randomly.  I often splash a bit of coffee on mine.