The Artist's Eyes by Jenn Lee

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…

I was sitting here late this evening surfing one of my favorite sites…Flickr. What is Flickr? Well Flickr is an online community where people share their photography or art via photographs. It is a community that spans across the entire world.

The addiction to Flickr for me comes in the ability to see so many talented photographers/artists compositions. Seeing the world and what’s in it through others eyes is quite amazing. Whether you are an amateur photographer, professional photographer, artist of any level…you can share your creative art with the rest of the world.

Every month Flickr shares a collection of the most popular entries shared. This is seen via their Flickr Explore page. You can view past months or follow along the current month as it progresses.

You can share your photos or photos of your art through your own page as well as adding them into various groups of various themes or styles. Doing so allows you also to view a more directed collection of work shared by other members that are into the same themes, styles or type of work you are.

Whether you are an artist or a photographer or even an artistic photographer of any level, this is an online community worth checking out. What a vast collection of creativity and inspiration right at your fingertips.

So if you have some spare time where you feel like vegging out in front of your computer….check out flickr, it’s full of art…in this artist’s eyes.

For those of you who already enjoy flickr, please feel free to share some of your favorite pages below!

Last week I became a Grandmother for the first time. My eldest daughter gave birth to her own daughter…Angel. She fits her name perfectly…a real angel.

I have to admit that this has been the most difficult challenge to overcome when it comes to work distractions. It is difficult to focus or work when you have a new baby in the house.

Since I can’t share with you new paintings I have…err should be completing, I thought I would share my precious distraction…please say hello to my grand baby, Angel Lee. Isn’t she beautiful? She is a distraction worth being distracted for…in this artist’s eyes.

©Photo by Jenn Lee

©Photo by Jenn Lee

©Photo by Jenn Lee

©Photo by Jenn Lee

When we bought our home, I was absolutely excited about this project…creating a Koi pond. I had always said when I had a house that I owned I wanted one. Thankfully John was in total agreement with me!

It took us awhile to get to this project but in the end it was the artistic vision we had imagined. We slowly collected the rock from various places around our city which served dual purpose in doing so. It was an ECO friendly way to re-purpose a natural resource, as well as giving us something that meant more to us than a trip to the local rock quarry.  Being able to say “That came from the riverbed by Johns parents.” or “That came from that spot we love to take environmental photography.” personalized it way more for us.

Our good friends let us have their old pond liner, the rocks came only with sweat equity and the little long finned goldfish were also donated. In the end we paid for the waterfall pump equipment to the tune of $200, a few small succulents planted around the edges $35, and the small Japanese Maple we picked out for it’s character $20. Every bit of the energy and time put into the creation of this small artistic project, will forever imprint on us memories personal to us.

As an artist and John, a photographer, the enjoyment we get from visual stimulation is as good as gold. We enjoy going out every evening to watch our little fish and listen to the waterfall as we sit and talk about the days events…..pure heaven and priceless….in this artist’s eyes.