Tutorial - Making Panels to paint on

Anything can be a canvas for art - paper (graph paper, lined paper, blank paper, junk mail envelopes, cardboard, old blueprints, paperboard (think cereal boxes), index cards...well, you get the picture! But, if you are wanting something hard to make art on, you can use Masonite, which is a thin 1/4" brown board (it also is the same stuff that pegboard is made out of) that comes in 4x8 sheets (sometimes smaller too) and you can find it at Home Depot or Lowes in the lumber area (usually). They will usually cut it into smaller pieces for you - just ask!

I wanted to share a tutorial I just found on how to finish a piece of masonite so that you can use it as a canvas. You'll need gesso, which is white (but also comes in clear) and is an opaque, white, thick paint-like coating. You can find it at arts and crafts stores.

Here's the tutorial, from artist Debbie Miller's blog.

Favorite Artists - Norman Rockwell

So, a great way to learn about new artists is to ask people who their favorite artists are. I posed this question to teachers and parents and others I met and know and I'm going to compile the answers along with links to sites where you can learn more.

The first person to answer this question was Sue Ackley, 4th grade teacher @ LJM. Her favorite artist is Norman Rockwell because "He was a prolific artist who painted vivid yet touching portraits of everyday life in America." I googled his name and found the Norman Rockwell Museum which has so much good stuff! Rockwell's paintings are detailed and on the site you can view lots of his paintings along with reading background on them. He was an illustrator and did many illustrations for the Saturday Evening Post. 

Here are a couple that interested me because of their obvious art themes.

This one is called Triple Self-Portrait, painted in 1960. Here's some background which was interesting! 

"Most observers of the portrait believe the drawing on the easel flatters Rockwell, making him look years younger. But it is an almost exact likeness of the photo taken for reference, with the exception of a wrinkle or two. The more puzzling discrepancy is the use of a paintbrush on the pencil drawing. The only solution, unless we agree that it is intended as a trick, is that although the drawing is not complete, he is about to begin his imprimatura—the glaze of thin color used under oil paint for the purpose of imparting warmth to the skin tones. This would be believable if it were not for the used paintbrushes on the floor. They don’t make chronological sense." Read the rest here

Many of us can relate to this illustration. This one is titled, Deadline (Artist Facing Blank Canvas) painted in 1938. Here's the backstory: "“Meeting deadlines and thinking up ideas,” Rockwell remarked “are the scourges of an illustrator’s life. This is not a caricature of myself; I really look like that.” In addition to deadlines, taboos on subject matter were additional restrictions with which Rockwell had to contend. He wrote that for years the Post would not allow him to show a cigarette. Later they allowed him to show a man smoking, but not a woman. Also, he described how he once painted a man holding a glass of beer, and the Post changed it to a glass of milk." Read more here

Thanks for reading! I'll post more artists as I get them! Who's your favorite artist? Post below and maybe your artist will be featured in a future post!

Inspiration - What can art do?

What can art do? As an artist and a person who is passionate about art in all its forms, this is a question that I can answer in many different ways. One of the most powerful things that art can do is inspire someone; and that inspiration can manifest itself in an unlimited world of ways, as simple as making someone feel good to energizing them to do something creative themselves and art can even change someone's life.


Here's something I found from the National Performing Arts Convention site:

The England Arts Council published a strategic framework titled "Achieving Great Art for Everyone" that seeks to do just that.  In addition to a relatively nuanced definition of "excellence" in it's opening pages, their report contains the responses of several British artists to the question, "What Can Art Do?" 

Tim Etchells, Artistic Director of the acclaimed avant-garde company Forced Entertainment, was one of those artists and his response is complex, clear, passionate, and worth a read:

'You asked what art can do
I wanted to write you that it
can make a spark flames
and a puddle ocean
a river tears
a room a world
a cry song

and it can tell a story of a time
and it can slow time

some love art because it's a really good mirror
in which something - a place or an era perhaps - is naked
or vivid
I mean
seen like it wasn't seen before

others love the art thing
because it brings postcards of the world transformed
redrawn or on its head
strange or stronger
worse or better
and people need those kinds of views on what isn't,
just as much as they need
a good view on what is

I meant to write you that art
can close a wound
and open a legal case
that it can stare further than a telescope
go faster than Internet and
beat like a loved one's heart

it can bring people together and
of equal and not opposite importance -
it can split them up,
make them doubt or wonder who they came in with
or who they live with
sometimes - watching science TV - I think art
it's like the large hadron supercollider of the soul,
other times it's just making people laugh
no shame in that

I wanted to tell you that art is loved as a hammer
because of how well it breaks lies and speaks truths
knocks down obstacles
the Incredible Hulk it is or the Superman, a good thing to have on your side

it can say something
many things
any things
can say much
or little in the best way of things
and I think it has value not always bound up with price

when I was 22 I first moved to Sheffield
and one spring in the high rises near us
someone had sprayed on their window, high up
I LOVE APRIL
and I thought that was art. Very beautiful. Very wise.

And in case anyone is wondering, art is not a servant of any government
nor of any policy, nor of touristicism
nor a servant of money
nor an icing on a cake
it's more the heart of the matter than the wrapping paper
or something to do afterwards
and it does not belong to liars

Some years back, I went to see a Derek Jarman retrospective
at the Serpentine Gallery in London
I came out of that all fired up.
I was alive again and I hadn't even noticed I might have been dead
I was thinking a lot about that special place of both art and reality that he opened up,
how valuable that was
and I was thinking
that in future we might have to be a lot kinder
and a lot angrier.

That's what art can do.
And people should be careful with it.
Otherwise they may wake up one day and have to live alone
With no hammer of change, no truth, no laughs,
No bringing together or wondering apart
With no reflections, no possibility to reflect
Just living alone with only their ghosts and their ideologies muttering at them.'

Tim Etchells, Artist, writer, performance maker, Forced Entertainment

Read more answers to the question 'What can art do?' here.