m. p i l g r i m (art)

Art school is so very different from taking community art classes. Community art:   Hi, I'm your teacher, and I want you to come up here and watch me do this thing or technique....Now, here's a list of art supplies.  Don't spend too much, just go to Hobby Lobby or Michael's and get whatever is on sale.  Get student paints, like the ones Liquitex makes.  They're cheapest. Oh, and bring in some photos of what you'd like to paint!  What's that? How many? Oh gosh, that's up to you.  How many paintings do you want to do in our six weeks together? We're going to have such  fun!! Art School:   Hi, I'm your art instructor.  Now watch what I do, and this is how you should do it too.  I'm not saying you have to do it this way...just saying that if your art instructor says to do it, then do it.  Also, here's a list of supplies you'll need DO NOT LET ME SEE A SINGLE TUBE OF LIQUITEX BASICS IN THIS ROOM you need to get qual...

final painting: mornings without you. i think the most important lesson I've learned so far in the past 12 months is that sometimes art, in its process, looks really, really, really crappy.  shitty even.  until it doesn't.  until that happens, i tolerate the awful until it become unbearable. then i close up my paints, clean out my brushes, and walk away for a while. it  always  looks horrible close up  during .  i finally know why paint brushes can come in such long lengths - so you can back up as far as possible from a painting which, for me, looks really, just, well,  awful  close up. case and point: the current work.  a friend send me a link to a fundraiser to end homelessness.  a local nonprofit invites local artists to submit works to be auctioned off.  "we respectfully ask that the work be worth at least $25" the theme is to be, what makes home  home?   i had just recently been moved one morning to...

I have fallen behind on my blogging because blogger isn't terribly iPhone friendly.  I tried downloading an app called "Blogo" on the mac.  It sucks.  I wrote the developers and told them so.  There's a decent little IOS app on my iPhone, but I suck on those tiny little keyboards.  Don't even get me started on the autocorrect debacle.   Seriously?   Acrid lickers ? No, autocorrect, clearly I meant  acrylics .  Dude.  Seriously.   Now, for a while I've had an idea in my head of something I wanted to create.  A canvas divided into fourths, with a closeup of a cactus in each.  This past week I finally started working on it. I have no shortage of cactus pictures, or pictures of things close up - it's one of my favorite subjects.   Internal questions:  1) I'd like to line between the quarters to be sharper. 2) What will go in the fourth quarter? 2) The cholla flowers need to be pinker.   In unrelated news th...