Wood Preparation for Deadwood Sculpting - Tutorial

If there is one thing that is plentiful in this world its bits and pieces of deadwood. It is a great source of material for art that is cheap and relatively easy to find. My primary source is driftwood, but there are many more. 

I often talk about the the later phases of building deadwood sculptures, but I don't often talk about preparation. Preparation is the most time consuming part of deadwood sculpting. The steps are numerous depending on the type of wood and the desiccation of that wood.

Cathedral of My Dreams - The Sanctity of the Artists Studio (UPDATED 08-30-16)

My studio is a sacred space to me. I expect anyone entering it to treat it with no less dignity than they would treat a church or holy place.

I am as far from a religious person as anyone could possibly get. My view of religion is that its similar to a library with one book in it where you go in read the wisdom in the book and then turn around to find the door to the library locked and barred with a big sign reading YOU MAY NOT LEAVE! You've eliminated all the wisdom this universe holds because you may only read from that one book for the rest of your life.

Developing a Steady Hand as an Artist

One area in which new artists in particular have a hard time with is developing a steady hand. This was an area I struggled with for some time when I first became an artist. I tried different techniques but I found that working with a stylus was one of the most effective ways for me to gain a steady hand. Unlike a brush, there is little room for messing up when doing stylus work. Its precision taught me a lot.

Unfortunately there are not a lot of art projects that require a stylus unless you are a calligrapher or a mapmaker or something that takes precision. In those cases you probably already have a steady hand. I turned to an area of stylus art that is sometimes overlooked to help me with steadiness. The art of "illumination". 

The Lost & Found Indian - Creating An International Artists Database (ART IDEAS)

In 2014, before I began the Immortal Artist blog, I wrote a short piece on Facebook about lost artists. I've reposted it here before I discuss a follow up to it.

Being an obscure artist, it always bothers me to find art whose creator is lost in the mists of time. On our bathroom walls hang two such artists and I sometimes take a moment to google different search patterns to find out a little of who they were. With only a last name as signatures, I am usually fruitless in my searches. But today I stumbled on the right combination of words to find one of the two artists and at least give myself peace as to who they were. I hope someone will do the same for me some day in the distant future. I am guessing that my mother knew her, as they lived in the same town and had some of the same interests. Here is the artists obituary and the beautiful painting done by her hand. I'll keep working on who the other artist was

#Hashtag Art - Artists Learning the Power of Hashtags

Recently in an online chat we discussed the benefits of hashtags for promoting art. The whole hashtag system can seem perplexing. Why should we bother with them? Isn't it just cluttering up anything I am posting online? 

The answer is "NO". It can in fact push awareness of your art to a much higher level. 

Consider this. When I make a post on Twitter without a hashtag I can expect typically about 120 impressions with that post in the first few hours. This means the number of people that potentially viewed the post are 120. Now if I add a hashtag to that same post the numbers change. 200 impressions in the first few hours is easily achievable. Hashtags allow us a much broader audience who may interact with us. If you are posting your art then you want as high an interaction as you can get with potential viewers. 

A Message in a Bottle - The Art of the Secret Message in Art

Having been born on an island, the stories of messages in bottles thrown from an ancient ship or perhaps a lonely castaway on a desert island has always set my imagination on fire.

As I grew older the concept of secret messages, cyphers and hidden clues in meaningless objects was a constant thrill. 

Art has always been a great medium for this. DaVinci was well known for sticking hidden meaning in much of his work.