My First Book Cover

This was the first book cover that I made for my Miro study handmade book.  The image was too large for the cover so I had to start over again with another image.  I really enjoyed working with line and images to create this Miro influenced book cover.  It was also designed while listening to A Small Blue Thing.

I consider this art therapy for dealing with the feelings of being an only child and feeling bullied by adults.  "When are you going to grow up" was a constant theme.  And then the nit pick that would find the tiny ways that I didn't fit in and try to get me to fit.  I just couldn't spend all my energy pleasing people and grow up at the same time.  It made me feel shattered.

Miro's Study Journal Page 6

"I subjected myself to the Cubist discipline in order to train my muscles.  To me, painting is like the dance before executing  'entrechats,'(*) one must have good leg muscles.  It was in this senses that Cubism could be useful to me....Since at that time I had the impression that I could not see form.  I thought Cubism would help me learn to see."
Some believe that the roots of cubism are to be found in the two distinct tendencies of Paul Cézanne's later work: firstly to break the painted surface into small multifaceted areas of paint, thereby emphasizing the plural viewpoint given by binocular vision, and secondly his interest in the simplification of natural forms into cylinders, spheres, and cones.

Win a Bike or Help me Win a Bike!!!

14 Secrets to a Happy Artist's Life

1. Find 3 good things every day, whether they are experiences, or objects, or both. Find a way to use them in art.
2. Make everything special. Embellish your life.
3. Look for Fairy God-mothers and Angels. Be ready for experiences that will delight and surprise you.
4. Play more often.
5. Look for the smiling faces.
6. Wish everyone a happy life.
7. Find something to love about where you are everyday.
8. Make art everyday.
9. Create time for yourself.
10. Honor thy grandmothers as much as possible. (Of course grandfathers need honor too, but historically       and  culturally we are a little weaker in the honoring grandmother side of things.)
11. Play with the grandchildren as much as possible.
12. Create beauty with what you have on hand.
13. Make art with friends. Make art as gifts.
14. Create a list of secrets for a happy life and pass it on.

I got this from a wonderfully inspiring blog called:
14 Secrets to a Happy Artist's Life..

Just had to try this cool feature.

1. Arlee,s page, 2. new zig zag necklaces5, 3. Valentine-all-mothers, 4. Penny Rug

http://bighugelabs.com/mosaic.php

Miro's Study Journal Page 5

Why should someone decide to do a style study of an artist?  When my children saw me drawing and coloring the works of Joan Miro they thought his wook was childish.  They wondered why I wanted to "waste" my time draing like a child.  At first I thought it might be a waste of time but if so it was a fun waste of time.  It was hard to really do it wrong since it was child like.  I enjoyed the freedom that this allowed me to explore composition and color without feeling hung up because I didn't have good perception....or even stress over details in concerning color.. 

Here is an aritlce on developing you own style by trying on a few different artist. 
 
It reminds me of the AA saying.  "Keep what you want and forget the rest."  That is what I have done in drawing the Miro Study Journal.  These pages are not to be rendered as copies but they simply contain the elements and arrangement that I like.  Sometimes I would like one thing about a painting.  I would draw a collection of these favorite details on a page till I had a picture..  I tried to arrange these things in ways that pleased me.

I have been using what I have learned from this study journal to create a book cover for this journal.  I am presently working on the book cover.  The first one that I made for it was too big.    I really like translating my interpretation of Miro Style into my embroidery and thus making it my own.  I will be posting pictures of my first attempt at making an embroidery book cover soon. 

Miro Study Journal Page 4

Miro's issue with seeing only subjectively was helped by a teacher, Francisco Gali.  He advised Miro to learn to feel or touch objects such as clay, then draw.  So Miro would manipulate the clay into a shape and then he would draw from "memory" that the clay left him.  Miro claimed that these exercises were crucial to his development as an artist.

"Even today, thirty years after, the effect of this touch-drawing experience returns in my interest in scuplture:  the need to mold with my hands - to pickup a ball of wet clay like a child and squeeze it.  From this I get a physical satisfaction that I cannot get from drawing or painting."

I think that Miro shows us the value of trying different mediums as they help us to see things in different ways.

Kristin Andreassen - Crayola Doesn't Make A Color For Your Eyes

An Extrodinary Artist Award!!

Mr. Wigan, a 52-year-old Briton, is dyslexic and did poorly in school. Even today, he can barely read or write. Yet, he creates some of the smallest sculptures in the world, relying on nothing more than a scalpel and a microscope to see what he's carving.

His entire piece of Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin standing on the moon fits on the head of a pin. His Statue of Liberty is made from a speck of gold. A recent carving of the Obama family is mounted inside the eye of a needle. Mr. Wigan says he used an eyelash to insert the president into the right slot. Mr. Wigan has made about 160 of these sculptures.

I love stories that defy popular notion that to get ahead you have to do well in school.  Some of the most creative minds don't have a chance.

Miro study journal page 3

Miro could not "see" objectively.  When looking at  still life's or models, he could record them as he "felt" them, emotionally, but not 'objectively', as others saw them.  Miro saw thing like a child, subjectively.  He didn't distinguish between animate and inanimate objects.  All were animated by his vision.  Nor did he distinguish between the appearance and the emotional resonance of his models.