The Artist's Eyes by Jenn Lee

This post is a little off the beaten track from my usual posts, but a topic I think is blog worthy. The topic is about overcoming obstacles and keeping momentum even when you are faced with challenges that try to stop you in your tracks.

You always hear someone you know or even yourself say, “This year has been the worst!” or “Could this year be any worse?” Doesn’t it seem like a constant recording that is replayed every year by someone or everyone? Well 2011 has been my personal year of challenges. I’ve spent the whole year dealing with health issues (don’t worry, I’m not going to draw this out into a personal pity party) that have left me in a wheelchair…hopefully temporarily!

My challenges have affected my ability to work with my sculpting or paint at my easel. At first it left me depressed, frustrated and feeling like every ounce of creativity was being drained out of my soul. But you know what? I found an alternative way to challenge my creativity. I’m not giving up on my sculpting, nor my painting, but finding other creative outlets that still challenge me and allow me to still use my creative/artistic energies until I can get back to the others.

The most difficult thing to do for anyone is to find a way to get around our personal challenges. Whether you have a full-time creative job, a part-time creative job or only a few hours a week to designate to your creative side…overcoming challenges of time constraints, family life, personal battles or whatever may be your obstacles can and must be met. As a whole, we find happiness in our lives by doing what we love, our passions, our interests, our outlets.

So I end this short blog post with a challenge for you readers….try and find some time to do something creative. Don’t let the challenges in your life get in your way. Regardless of your artistic or creative outlet, find ways to overcome whatever obstacles or challenges meet you…it’s a creative challenge in itself, but a challenge worth doing….in this artist’s eyes.

Our children grow up so fast, but never so fast as the infant stages. I have been reminded of this recently as I have been watching my first Grandchild go from newborn to 4 and a half months old. How quickly they go from sleeping all the time, to interactive and on the move. In a blink they are a year old, then two years old, then off to school and finally adulthood!

Remembering the cute little expressions or funny little habits or ways they acted becomes a blur as time goes by. This made me think, “I would love to capture and freeze in time, a moment in my child/grandchild’s life.” With that in mind, I have painted portraits and taken a million photos but never sculpted a 3 dimensional keepsake.

This inspired me greatly so…I did a search on the internet one day and found this cute little baby portrait as inspiration. It made me think of my children because every one of my children loved playing peek a boo with blankets. This first test sculpture turned out exactly how I envisioned it so I plan on creating sculptures of all my own children soon. You can view the pictures of my first test keepsake sculpture below. Please let me know what you think! Sculpting our children into adulthood is an art of it’s own…in this artist’s eyes.

“Get your motor running, head out on the highway,
Looking for adventure in whatever comes our way.” ~ Steppenwolf

As I sat here this morning looking back on the year past and thinking about the year just begun, these song lyrics just popped into my head…literally. What an inspirational and motivational quote for the new year!

Each year we sit and ponder new years resolutions…health, careers, relationships, changes of all types in an constant quest to make each year better than the year before. Instead of making new years resolutions this year, I decided I wanted a new year motivation/inspiration. I hear people all the time say “I wish I had stuck to my new years resolutions…” or “I broke my new years resolution…”, myself included. Finding your inspiration or motivation is key to meeting goals or expectations. Each goal requires steps to fulfillment.

While you sit there thinking about the goals or plans you want to complete this new year…think first about what inspires motivation for you. Think about what keys help keep your motor running. Then get out on that highway and find your adventures! On your mark…get set…go! Inspiration and motivation is an art…in this artist’s eyes. Happy new year everyone!

It seems the closer to Christmas we get each year, my childrens Christmas wish list gets longer and longer. All I hear ringing in my ears is, “All I want for Christmas is…” every day. The television commercials blast all the newest and coolest toys and the postmaster delivers mailer after mailer of Christmas deals with tantalizing pictures of colorful tidbits of toy treats. I’m starting to think he’s in on the attack! As we all know, we parents are pounded defenselessly against the brutal attack from the retail barrage coming from every direction. In my nightmares I peek into my wallet seeing cobwebs and lint and credit card statements delivered by men in dark suits looking menacingly like mobsters coming to break my knees in their attempts to collect.

Alright, enough with the dramatics he-he! Honestly though, it does seem to feel more and more difficult to justify the cost of all the wants for Christmas unless your wallet is bursting at its seams.  So with that said, I decided to share with you some ideas for gift giving for the creative youth(s) in your life, that serve dual purpose as educational or creative inspiration wise and are not quite so tasking on the wallet.

1. Every child likes to play with clay. As we adults can remember, we spent hours of fun playing with Play Dough, creating everything under the sun that our young imaginations could come up with. Sculpey is a wonderful clay that not only can they create with, but can be baked in any standard oven or toaster oven to keep as a keepsake. There are tons of how-to instructions on the internet as well as books you can buy from book stores or craft stores for every age group. From jewelry to statues, photo frames to ornaments, the ideas are limitless as are their imaginations.

2. What better way to inspire the young writer in your life than fun tools to grow their skills? Ultimate Writing & Creativity Center is a fun program that lets them create their written dreams and implement them with music, pictures and more. This program teaches them proper spelling, punctuation and the five steps of the writing process. It’s not only entertaining, but chalked full of hours of educational and creative learning.

3. Going along with the same topic, Storybook Weaver is an excellent program that your child can play with, create and even print with ease. Not only can your child add their own pictures or illustrations, but they have a large library of images at their hands in the program. Having the capability to print and hold their own work in their hands will motivate them to develop their writing skills.  What a wonderful way to inspire the young writer in your life?

4. I don’t remember having all the cool electronic games for learning in my life like kids have available to them now…how could a child not want to learn with all these tools..err toys available? Leap Frog and VTech have cornered the market with the almost limitless amounts of products they have designed for 0-8+ age groups. From preschool  learning aids to elementary age, the fun games they create have learning as their focus. Math games, spelling games, even science and history. The games are hours of fun with learning in mind.

5. Do you have a budding photographer? Yes I know, digital cameras can get quite expensive and are fragile. There are several great beginner cameras for kids that can take a beating. The Fisher Price Kid-Tough Digital Camera, VTech KidiZoom Plus Digital Camera, VTech KidiZoom Kids Camera and the LeapFrog Leapster Explorer Camera and Video Recorder are all great cameras that can handle being dropped or knocked around. A few of these are even water resistant.

6. Do you have a Michelangelo in your household? A great idea for your little artist is an artist’s easel. KidKraft makes a great easel you can buy at most local stores like Walmart, Kmart, Target or Toysrus called the KidKraft Artist Easel.  Guidecraft 4 in 1 Flipping Easel is another great childrens easel and available online as well as Sears.

7. Going along with the art easels or if an easel is not in mind for something you have room for, there are a multitude of art sets you can buy that can store in a bookshelf, toy storage or elsewhere. They come complete with all types of mediums for your little artist. One that I recommend is a wooden arts & crafts set on Amazon, but you can find many other alternatives at your local retail stores for crafts or even in the crafts section of major retailers like Target or Walmart.

8. There are many great drawing books available for young and old as well. Amazon has a great list of books that you can purchase or just use for a resource for ideas of types of drawing books. These are inexpensive and great tools for learning in all aspects of art.

These are just a few ideas that came to mind that focus on feeding creativity and imagination in those individuals that are giving you “All I want for Christmas is…” lists. Fun, educational and inspiring…in this artist’s eyes.

My fiance and I decided it was time to upgrade our cell phones. I was upgrading from the LG Vu which was a total touch screen phone and he was upgrading from a Pantech Slate, with qwerty keypad. After a bit of investigating and listening to friends advice, we decided to go with the iPhone 3GS.

The iPhone had won the great debate over which phone was the best phone for us. It may not be the best phone for everyone of course, but that’s why the Cell Phone Companies provide us with so many options. The great debate currently seems to be the iPhone vs the Android. I do have to say I think the Android system is pretty awesome, but currently the amount of applications available is limited vs the iPhone. At some point though…they will definitely compete neck in neck with Apple’s iPhone regarding applications.

With the iPhone 3GS as an artist of photography or drawing, it has so many good applications available for total customization in any interest one wants. My fiance, John Adkins, wrote a great article about  the photography applications he and I like for the iPhone 3Gs. On the arts end, I researched and tested out quite a few applications. I of course started with the free applications (because I am frugal..he-he) and then moved on to the pay applications. Out of my research, I have come up with two art applications that I have to place at the top of my list, Art Studio and Brushes.

With both Art Studio and Brushes, you have complete control over the pencil size, pen size as well as brush size. You have a fully customizable color palette as well as ability to add multiple layers and filters. You wonder how a person draws in detail on such a small canvas? Well you can zoom in to an unbelievable per pixel detail, as well as zoom out so no matter the amount of detail you want in your art, you can zoom into any portion and add the minute details desired. Several other features are smudge, the ability to adjust transparency of colors and line detail as you want. There really are no limits to either of these two applications for your inner artist.

Last but not least in this little review, since my other love besides art is photography, I was pretty happy to see the additional features towards photography, implemented in Art Studio. You can add text, adjust all the same properties of your photos that you can with most photo editors from exposure to contrast, hue to saturation, as well as filters like Gaussian Blur, Emboss, Sepia etc.

I hope you enjoyed my little review of two of my favorite iPhone applications! Below you can see a few screenshots I took of the applications open and a couple of youtube videos that I thought gave good examples of these two apps. As far as I can see, these two apps allow the inner artist to go wherever your eye-phone can see…in this artists eyes.

This first video for Art Studio is primitive in nature. The amount of detail in it’s drawing capabilities is equal to Brushes app. My idea with this video was more intended to show you the features and options in the creation of your masterpiece regardless of the level of the art experience you may have.

This second video is using Brushes. You will want to watch closely as this video is sped up significantly, but I chose it because…well…it’s just awesome! You still get  gist of the features in Brushes, just don’t blink or you might miss them! Oh and as far as the subject matter, yes I admit I am a Star Wars fan…