Jumpstart Three - Ideas For Jumpstarting Your Art

 

1. If I could paint the moment between exhale and inhale, what colors would appear?

2. What do I wish someone had told me ten years ago and how can I show that visually?

3. What happens when I create from rest instead of striving?

The 60/30/10 Split in Art

I have been a photographer and mixed media artist for many years. I just naturally seem to create with a 60/30/10 split in my art.  In my image Salsa you can see that about 60% of the image is yellow, 30% is red and 10% green. Most artists do this intuitively, without thinking about it too much. It just feels "right."

The 60/30/10 split evolved from the 70/30 compositional principle that creates visual harmony and interest through asymmetrical balance. The 60/30/10 split moves the viewer's eye through dominant, secondary and accent elements. Most often it is divided by color, but also can be split by texture and composition.

You can see the split in many famous paintings.

Van Gogh's "Starry Night" (1889) is 60% deep blue to black, 30% swirling lighter blues, white stars and clouds and 10% yellow accents. The blue sets the mood. The clouds and stars add movement and the yellow provides some emotional intensity. I especially like how the yellow is repeated in the village windows.

The "Girl with a Pearl Earring" (1665) by Johannes Vermeer is another example. 60% is the dark background. 30% are the skin tones and blouse. 10% is the earring, white collar and highlights on her face.

Clause Monet's "Water Lilies" series (early 1900s) makes the reflective water surface about 60% of the image. 30% are the flowers and waterlilies and 10% are the bright pink, purples and white accents.

Pablo Picasso's "Les Demoiselle d'Avignon" (1907) is 60% flesh tones. The background blues and browns are about 30% of the painting. The black outlines are about 10%.

Georgia O'Keefe's "Red Canna" (1924) red petals are the dominant color. The secondary colors are the oranges and pinks. The yellow highlights are the remaining 10%.

How about your art? Look at a piece you have created in the past. Have you intuitively used the 60/30/10 split? Is there a piece you are currently working on that might be more powerful with a 60/30/10 split?

"Campbell's Magnolia" by botanical illustrator Walter Hood Fitch is another example. Whites take up about 60% of the image, pinks 30% and green/golds 10%.

Do You Make Art When You Can't Sleep?

The Starry Night - Vincent van Gogh

 It's 4 a.m. and I am wide awake. It doesn't make any difference if I go to bed at 10 p.m. or midnight. I am wide awake at 4.  My mother and grandmother would do the same thing. Mom would get up, make herself toast and then meditate or read. My grandmother would write letters. 

I sometimes get up and make art. However I know as soon as I throw my legs over the side of the bed I am up for good. This morning I was wondering if famous artists got up to create in the middle of the night. I was awake anyway, so decided to do a bit of research.

Vincent van Gogh often worked until 3 or 4 in the morning while he was in an asylum.  He created some of his most famous pieces in the middle of the  night like The Starry Night.

Lee Krasner, one of the most important Abstract Expressionists had insomnia after the death of her husband Jackson Pollock. It was during this period that she created her "Night Journeys" series. 

The French author Coletter said that "insomnia is almost an oasis in which those who have to think or suffer darkly take refuge."

There's even a term for it... "Creative Insomnia." It seems that there are a lot of creative folks awake in the middle of the night. It is common for people in creative fields to not be able to turn off their thoughts at night. 

There's good news an bad news about Creative Insomnia. It can lead to new ideas and periods of high productivity. It also can be detrimental to your health and mental well-being.

What about you. Do you have times of Creative Insomnia? Do you get up and create?

Why Make Art During Difficult Times

Did you know that Vincent van Gogh created "Starry Night" while hospitalized at a mental institution?

These are difficult times that sometimes make us want to get back in bed and pull the covers up over our heads. Now, like during COVID and 9/11 makes many of us ask the question "What's the point in making art when the world is turned upside down?"

Creating art is not only a distraction and hobby but is also a way to process, understand and transcend difficult experiences. 

Recent studies show that making art creates new neural pathways. It re-wires our brains. Neuroscientists describe creating as a "bottom up" approach to healing and engaging sensory, motor and emotional systems. It helps with problem solving, pattern recognition and emotional regulation. (In other words it helps to make me less cranky.)

Picasso created "Guernica" in 1937 as an anti-war statement in response to the bombing of the Basque Country town in northern Spain by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.

The research is clear, art-making during difficult times...

• reduces stress hormones

• helps with emotional processing

• creates shared understanding

• often breaks social isolation

• takes internalized chaos and externalizes it into something tangible

• interrupts cycles of worry and anxiety

• transforms feelings of being a victim into being active in ones own healing and growth.

Frida Kahlo created the Two Fridas painting in 1939, shortly after her divorce from Diego Rivera. It shows the two sides of her personality. One is her broken hearted self in a traditional Tehuana costume. The other Frida represents her modern, independent self.

So why are you just sitting there? Get up and go create something. I am working on a new piece about the Explorer Archetype. It's keeping me from watching the news and hopefully is re-wiring those new pathways.

Still Singing. Still Creating. Still Protesting.

At the beginning of chapter one in Rollo May's classic book The Courage to Create, May asks...

"Shall we, as we feel our foundations shaking, withdraw in anxiety and panic?"

Once again 50 years later we are feeling our world turn upside down. Last month as I sat cutting paper up for my latest collage, I was asking myself why bother making art? I decided to get on a plane to the U.S. and march in a protest. As I marched with thousands of other baby boomers I thought we know how to do this. We have done this before. We are meant for these times.

The highlight of that protest was the presence of Joan Baez. She is 84 years old, still marching and still sharing her gifts in song. What an inspiration.

Since coming home I have been searching for what artists and writers are saying about creating during difficult times. I have started a collection of their thoughts to inspire me when the world feels like too much. Hope they inspire you as well.

Toni Morrison: "This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. That is how civilizations heal."

Vincent Van Gogh: "Art is to console those who are broken by life."

A collective of artists: "When people in power try to remove our humanity and our dignity, art and music provide a raison d'être. The simple act of making music in difficult times becomes an act of defiance and self-determination."

Dorthea Tanning, painter: "Art has always been the raft onto which we climb to save our sanity."

Shane Koyczan: "If your heart is broken, make art with the pieces."

Willie Nelson: "I think most art comes out of poverty and hard times."

Are you finding it difficult to create during these dark times?

A Bridge

 

Water Lilies and Japanese Bridge, Claude Monet 1899

Our second exercise is to create an image of a bridge. You can draw it, paint it, collage it, whatever you want. It can be drawn to look like it is made out of steel, wood, or even a swinging rope bridge. You decide.

Monet's bridge over the water lilies is probably the most well known bridge in the world. A bridge is a wonderful subject. It also can be painted as a metaphor. For example, where are you leaving from? What are you leaving behind? Where and what are you going towards?

Are there any obstacles on the bridge that might make crossing it more difficult. Are you on the bridge or look at it from afar? Are other people on the bridge? What's underneath it? Do you have a history with this bridge?

Here are some more artist paintings of bridges to inspire you...

Path of Gold, Jonas Lie, 1914

Booklyn Bridge, NYC Angela Wakefield

Langlois Bridge at Arles, Vincent van Gogh, 1888

I am beginning a mixed media piece of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. It has much history and meaning to me. I have photographed it many many times - on days with clear skies and a view to Alcatraz and on days where the fog has rolled in and you can barely see the car in front of you.

What bridge calls to you? Is it a bridge you know well, made of steel and wood or an imagined bridge?

The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin

When I decided to launch Artists Inspired, I knew what I wanted it to be. I knew I wanted it to be a place where I could turn to my artist friends and say "OMG, you have got to see this, hear this, read this."

Over the years I have read many books on art and creativity. And usually I end up feeling somewhat disappointed. Something's missing. I don't feel like reading the books over and over because I am so inspired. I am not jumping up and down yelling "Read this. Read this. Read this."

Maybe I don't need a library filled with books on creativity. Maybe one will do. And, I think I have found it... The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin. I just finished my third reading and it's bleeding yellow highlighter.

I had never heard of Rick Rubin until I saw him interviewed by Anderson Cooper on 60 minutes. Rubin is a well-known major success story in the music industry. He is a music executive and producer. He was named as Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People In the World.

During the 60 Minutes interview they discuss his just published book. I immediately downloaded it to my iPad and started reading. This is a book I will most likely read over and over again for the rest of my life.

The book begins with a quote from Robert Henri (1865-1929, American painter and teacher)."The object isn't to make art, it's to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable." 

Okay, I thought. That was a great start.

Rubin describes his books as 78 areas of thought. The first thought is Everyone is a Creator. He says, "Creativity is a fundamental aspect of being human. It's our birthright... To live as an artist is a way of being in the world."

The second thought is called Tuning In. "Think of the universe as an eternal creative unfolding," he continues. "Trees blossom cells replicate. Rivers forge new tributaries. Every manifestation of this unfolding is doing its own work on behalf of the universe, each in its own way, true to its own creative impulse."

I was hooked. This book does not disappoint.

The Creative Act on Amazon - click here.

Prolific Picasso

 

Le Rêve, Picasso 1932, Oil on Canvas

Picasso was one of the most prolific artists of all time. It is estimated that he made over 50,000 pieces of art. Yet only about 100 are considered masterpieces today.

I am not sure what that means except create a lot. It seems he worked on his art every day, from his teens to his 90s. You'll have to do the math. It makes my eyes spin.

Do you think creating every day is a reasonable goal?

You Can't Use Up Creativity