Creating any type of artwork you must have a desire to be…….any one thing; an artist painter, an artist drawer,  crafters, a photographer and so on. The desire really can’t be given to you from a teacher to say, a teacher or an artist can inspire and motivate  you.  The artistic desire must come from within yourself first. There are no magic graphite pencils nor brushes to avoid hard work to achieve a successful gratifying piece of artwork.  Always go to class prepared and ready to work and learn valuable tools to improve your skills. Practice drawing exercises, learn the value scales, practice drawing and rendering spheres then other shapes. Keep a positive attitude and do not give up, eventually your efforts will start to pay off in great results.

I can teach you on the basis you have artwork to work from. How much effort you apply to learning is how much more I can teach you new skills. Do not work from or have the practice of looking at other artist artwork/pictures to copy. You may be inspired by another artist, just take from their work an idea and recreate the idea to make it your own. Take your own pictures and work from those. It’s good work ethic and good respect standards amongst fellow artist.

Life goes so quickly and nobody is promised tomorrow. Enjoy your life the best you can in any given moment. Every moment or group of moments are a season and shall pass.

Time never stays the same for anyone.

Enjoy your life and produce art from emotion. I suggest doing something that you enjoy and like spending time doing and start there. There are seasons of life that change continually and we can not do one blessed thing to change that. So instead of going against the tide……. try to swim with the waves [events and everyday life]. Believe me I understand about stress in life; from major health issues and not knowing I would make it through the illness. I raised three kids that all live at home yet! I understand. The point is if there is no desire to create or time is a huge issue then decide if art is what you want to do. If so, use the time you have to either store-up reference photos or sketches for future use. The time will come before you know it. When we are going through situations the time passes what seems to be slow and the situations just seem to take forever to pass. Then when we look back and reflect on the seasons or passed situations we ask ourself where did the time go? The time just simply went so fast and we over reacted when we should have embraced all the moments good or bad.

I am trying to understand and questioning life I suppose in my art, especially my photography. I have been challenging myself in a series of self portraits which have been forcing me not only to push past ordinary portraiture, but compositions with the lighting telling my story. Trying to find what my life means to me now and pictures to portray my life to this point in time. It has not been an easy journey to arrive here, what I am seeing in my photography. I guess I would say soul searching for meaning and direction.

When there seems to be no direction in your artwork photograph yourself in film. You need a hard copy to look at in a group, not a click on the computer. You can hold art and the impact will be greater vs. digital work where there is no hard copy or proof of creation. Hit the wrong button and your artwork is gone. In film you have negatives as proof of hard-working creativity. Shoot at least three rolls of yourself; keep two rolls for onetime usage in one or two environments and then another roll for shooting at random. The first two rolls will force you to look at yourself past the normal composition and force you to see what you want to portray. It may take ten rolls before you start to see what you are looking for, but a few will speak to you. There you will see new direction in your artwork.

I hope to enter a few shows once I have this series somewhat mastered. I’d post but there are too many people copy and pasting my artwork. I don’t have the time to inject my name in bold letters across the pictures. I’d really would like to post so then you could see what I am stating…..Before we get to the promise land we all must go through first. As artist we use all moments to produce our work.