by admin | Apr 2, 2015 | Uncategorized
I am a little reluctant to write this post today. It has been two weeks since my last post. You see… although I made the goal to write a weekly blog this entire year, I missed a week. It was spring break, and I had an entire week off from my day job as a High School art teacher. I decided it wouldn’t hurt to skip just one week, besides I was spending time with my family on vacation. What I didn’t realize is that over the past few months I had established a routine which made it much easier to write blog posts. Now I have broken that routine and I have found that it is much harder to do it than it was before. And to think what would have happened if I had missed more than just one post!
This happens to be the only picture of me taken during my entire spring break vacation. I guess it is hard to get pictures of yourself when you are the one behind the camera. We were at a family members house roasting marshmallows.
Routines have pros and cons in art just as much as in any other aspect of life. Today I want to make an argument how routine can help your artwork, or any other aspect of your life for that matter. Maybe in a future post I will talk about how breaking from routine can be beneficial but that is for another post and another time.
How can routine help your artwork? Just like my blog writing having an established routine helps you form habits that make you more productive. If you set aside a specific time each day or week to work on your art you will find that the routine will develop into a habit. Once creating artwork becomes habitual then you will no longer waste time with getting in the right frame of mind. Your body and mind will adjust to your routine and will get prepared for the schedule you have set. And because it is a habit you will naturally be thinking of Ideas during the times you are not creating, so when you sit down to do art you aren’t stumped on what to do.
Keeping a routine helps minimize distractions. This world is full of more distractions then there have ever been. If you keep to a firm routine and you let others know about it they will be less likely to be distracting you. Your family will respect your routine and it will be easier to say no when someone tries to pull you away from what you should be doing. Not to mention the distractions that go on within your own head, If you have a schedule set out you will be less likely to waist your time checking your phone or worrying about other things that can wait. If you don’t set aside a specific time to create then creating artwork will feel like a distraction from something else you should be doing. I used to feel this way a lot. I knew I needed to make artwork a priority, my wife knew also and supported me. But if I didn’t set aside specific time to make art I would feel like I was being selfish and I should be helping around the house and with the kids. The truth is, during the summer time, me being at home trying to help around the house was a distraction to everyone else, and everyone would get more done if I would just stick to a routine.
Routines help you be more productive. One routine I fall in and out of is apply to public art calls. Applying to calls is a lot of work and can be very time consuming. When I make a routine of applying to calls I find that I am able to get through each application much quicker. Much of the material needed for each application can be reused on future applications. But if I haven’t applied for a call in a while I tend to loose or forget where the information is. I am now in the process to establish that routine again. I have applied to a couple public art calls recently. One of which I procrastinated for a long time. I finally got it together the day before it was due. Because I had fallen out of my routine and procrastinated I ended up having to pay shipping for next day delivery. Another call I was working on which needed to be submitted online never got submitted. I was working on it the day it was due and what happened. My computer crashed and I lost everything I had written. At that point I didn’t have the time or drive to finish the application. No routine resulted in lost opportunities. There have also been many instances where because I had a routine and I was able to take advantage of opportunities which helped me in my art career.
Now I’m in no way perfect at keeping to my routines but I sure am trying and I know established routines help me a lot.
I hope you are able to glean some inspiration from my experiences on routines that you can apply to your own art creation and life.
What do you think? What routines have you established that help you get things done?
by admin | Mar 20, 2015 | Artist weekly Log
This week has been full of Art Exhibitions! On Monday I delivered my sculpture “Sanctuary” in Bonded Bronze to the Idaho Falls Arts Council for this years National Exhibition. This show is always fantastic and if you are in the area I highly recommend going to see it. Thursday was opening night and when I walked in to the gallery to find my piece I was delighted to see a little sticker on the tag that said sold! Within the first half hour of the show opening my piece had already sold. Here is a picture of me next to my piece.
It was also a special evening because one of my current students A’menae Hillam was in the show. It makes me proud to see my students who I have been teaching for the last four years do such amazing work and be in art shows with me. Here I am with A’menae next to her awesome and really big painting.
In addition to this art show I have also been in charge of the Shelley High School Art Show. It was a lot of work setting up and making sure it all was displayed nicely. My students did some fantastic work this year. To top off my week I just got this letter from The Church History Museum Telling me I made it into the second round of the International LDS Art Competition.
Overall A pretty exciting week.
I hope your weeks was equally exciting.
by admin | Mar 12, 2015 | Artist weekly Log
It’s hard to beat a week like last week as far as excitement and how much work I was able to get done. Although much of this week has been recuperating after wearing my body out, it has also been one that I have tried to keep the momentum going.
The end of my Artist Residency was filled sculpting one more sculpture entitled Blessings. I like this title because it can be interpreted in different ways depending on the person or the time of your life. These hands could be either the giver of blessings or the receiver.
On Saturday I gave a public demonstration about the Anatomy of facial expression. It went really well. We first went over basic proportions of the head. then we talked about how muscles work and how skin reacts to muscle contraction. After that we talked specifically about the muscles off expression and which ones are being activated in different facial expressions. Here are some pictures taken from Kara Hidalgo at the Idaho Art Lab during the presentation.
The rest of the week I have been getting back into the swing of teaching while getting ready for a High School art Show I am putting on next week and getting ready to film an instructional sculpture video. I have many of these videos planned. This one will give artists a foundation of sculpting skills and proportions of the head. It will walk you through the steps of making a portrait sculpture from start to finish. It will be very thorough and in my opinion will be filling a need for high quality and information packed sculpture videos. As Daniel Hidalgo said about my public demonstrations recently, “It is like information you would receive in a whole entire college course packed into a few hours.” I will be making my sculpture videos just as informative and well taught.
The videos I plan on making in the near future are:
Sculpting the Human Head Foundational Course
Sculpting an upper body Écorché
Sculpting Facial Expressions
Sculpting Ethnic Differences
Sculpting a likeness of your model
Sculpting Age & Gender
Sculpting Fabric
Sculpting Hands and Feet
Relief Sculpting
There are others that I am planning that have more to do with the whole figure but I’m not exactly sure how I am going to break them up yet. What are some instructional sculpture videos you might like to see?
by admin | Feb 26, 2015 | Artist weekly Log, Contest, Progress Pictures
Busy here as an artist. Between trying to finish my Good Samaritan sculpture and entered into a contest, apply for some summer art festivals who’s deadlines are coming up really soon, getting ready for next weeks artist residency, holding a sculpture giveaway, all while working a full time job as an art teacher, I have had plenty to keep me busy.
Here is a picture of me with my brand new J-Mac clay I got from American Fine Arts Supplies. 150 pounds of clay for my artist residency. I gotta tell you AFA supplies has been so awesome to work with. When I told them what I was ordering the clay for, they decided to send the clay with a little surprise for everyone who visits me next week at the art lab. So if you live in Eastern Idaho here is what you do. You go to this link: www.afasupplies.com, look through all the awesome sculpting supplies they have, pick stuff out you wish you had, and then come visit me at the art lab to get your surprise. I will be at the art lab starting Saturday the 28th during the Big Art Expo and I will stay until Saturday March 7th. On that day I will be doing a public presentation on sculpting Facial Expression from 10:00-2:00.
Working as an Art teacher isn’t all work. I do get to do some awesome artwork while I teacher. Here is a kiln full of pottery I unloaded this week. Most of the work is my students work but the 2 bowls you see are mine. It’s always exciting to pop open that kiln lid and see what treasures 2000 degrees has turned you work into.
I was also in the news reciently in an article about the Idaho Art Labs Big Art Expo. Feel free to read that article HERE. This is a picture of me sculpting my good Samaritan Sculpture and was featured in the article.
Tomorrow is the deadline for the International LDS Art Competition. I will be entering this sculpture into the show. But first I need to finish making the mold and cast it in bonded sand. I will also be making this sculpture available to purchase on my website.
Here is a picture of my sculpture under the first layer of silicone. It is a very nervous process. no matter how many molds I make I am always afraid that for some reason it might not work.
Among all of this fun I have also been runing a sculpture giveaway. You have until Tuesday March 2nd to enter. If you haven’t entered already please do. You can enter at this link: http://woobox.com/huu97t
If you have already entered remember that you can share the contest and get 2 more entries every time a friend enters. To share simply go to the link above and use the share buttons at the bottom of the contest. You can share on facebook, Twitter, or email. Shares usually work a little better if you make sure to include a personal note with the link. If all you do is post the link people will look on past. But if you include a personal message like “Hey guess what? my favorite artist in the whole world is giving away one of his sculptures. You should enter” you will probably get a much better response.
Lastly, I just want to say thank you for your support. I have been getting so many comments and messages lately. I really do appreciate it. I will be actively posting updates of my progress all next week during my artist residency. I hope you will follow along and comment on my posts. I will probably also be asking for help naming sculpture and doing other things of that sort.
