NEW! Round Dog Birthday cards!

Poll: Are blank cards better than cards that come with messages inside?

New Youtube promotional video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V2MHP8QgNs

Round Room

I thought to envision a room where everything is round or circular in some fashion, what would such a room look like? This was a fun project, and helped me introduce a new character: round dog. Well round dog is his temporary name until I can discover a better one. You can see more of round room greeting cards, post cards and more at my site shapesandvisions.com. Thanks.

Finding inspiration and your artistic voice

A while back I was reading a painting book titled “Finding Your Visual Voice: A Painter’s Guide to Developing an Artistic Style” by Dakota Mitchell and Lee Haroun (I highly recommend it!) and it really reignited a flame within me to discover and explore the voice within me.  I decided to start simple, going back to the very fundamentals of art and design.  I feel by choosing simple shapes to work with (circles, squares, triangles and the like)  I am taking something that everyone already knows and then discovering what I have to say about it.

A visual voice is personal, but it is also interdependent.  It is good sometimes to get away from the flashy Hollywood productions and media driven entertainment, and just listen to yourself and the world around you.  In an interview with Michael Jackson concerning his legendary record breaking album Thriller, the King of Pop revealed that he was deeply frustrated with the album during its recording.

 

I stormed out of the room and said, ‘We’re not releasing this’.”
But a visit to a local school playground convinced Jackson to change his mind.
He added, “One of the maintenance crew in the studio had a bicycle and so I took it and rode up to the schoolyard. I just watched the children play. When I came back I was ready to rule the world. I went into the studio and I turned them songs out.” Source.

I found this very interesting because Michael has been a musical genius since he was a small boy. He intensely studied legends like James Brown, Jackie Wilson, Fred Astaire and Sammy Davis Jr. Michael grew up amongst the entire Motown family, performing with Diana Ross and covering songs by Smokey Robinson and Stevie Wonder. Yet when he needed to be inspired, when he needed to be reenergized to improve his album, this brilliant entertainer did not research any of the great stars, nor did he pull from his own experience. Instead Michael went outside of the music industry entirely to enjoy the vicarious thrill of being a carefree child playing on the playground with his friends and peers, a joy he was denied in his youth.

Yet the feelings from just imagining that experience and watching others enjoy it was enough to lift him back to his feet and maximize his artistic genius to create the greatest selling album in the history of the world. For Michael, his artistic voice was directly tied to his childhood. And it’s my belief that the same is true for all of us. That is, we can have experience in our respected fields, and we might have studied and been inspired by the artistic works of others, but our deepest inspiration comes from within. It comes from the simple pleasures and pains, hardships and joys of our personal lives. Something as simple as hot tea on a cold winter day can feed the imagination for an artwork.

So their are many many how to tutorials out there (how to draw Anime, how to draw Disney style, how to model a robot, how to model a knight or elf, how to paint a forest and waterfall, etc.) and they do have value. But nothing is more valuable or importamt than your own personal artistic voice. Listen to it, nurture it, embrace it and use it.