"Alien Gate"
Watercolor crayon on paper
9" x 12"
© 2009 Marilyn Fenn

Treasure Chest

Today I'm participating in a collaborative online project with other art bloggers.  We are re-posting one of our favorite posts from our blogs.  I chose to re-post some notes from art school from way back when, because I find these tips personally useful to review every so often, especially this year when I am exploring various other avenues in my creative process.  Perhaps other artists will find some of these tips helpful, too.

I also recommend that you view the post from the organizer of this project, Seth Apter, on his blog The Altered Page.  It's a gorgeous, compelling and inspiring piece.

You can link to all participating artists from the Treasure Chest post on Seth's blog.

Finally, the piece above is a brand new work from my new series, Paintings from the Hot, Hot Summer of 2009.  So here's my Buried Treasure:

Class notes from art camp classes with George Liebert and Dan Gustin, Oxbow, MI, summer 1991.

Make a list of verbs and adjectives about your own work.

When struggling with a work, isolate parts of it and do lots of sketches to come up with a better composition.

What are your personal, specific goals?

Colors: similar vs. somber vs. stronger.

Realism vs. abstraction - both successful, maybe in combination.

Consider excitement of surfaces vs. complex images. Patterns on blanket, individual parts developed, keep to whole color - add pink, red, clear blue, zingier color.

Keep exciting in earlier stages.

Develop through series of big changes to work out issues.

Series of patterns; sincerity, passion.

Beware of making shadows that are a hole to hell (i.e., too dark) - gap in thinking color rather than value.

Take inventory - look at beautiful drawings in museum.

Strange mix of sacred and profane.

Baroque art: look at Poussin, Rubens' sketches, Rembrandt, make drawings about what interests you — movement, etc.

Overlap some things.

Check a variety of approaches; work on sense of design.

Look at Eric Fischl - palette in realistic landscape.

Are you an artist with a body of work you’re ready to display online, but you're not yet ready to make the financial commitment for a custom-designed website? Or are you looking at increasing your online presence as an artist in addition to your custom artist’s website?

Over the next ten days weeks I will be reviewing ten online artist portfolio sites where you can show your work. I have had portfolios on four of these sites for some time, and I will be signing up the remainder over the course of this review period; I’ll let you know how it goes.

1. d-ART: d’Galleries at Fine-Art.com
   
2. AbsoluteArts.com
3. Saatchi Gallery
4. MyArtSpace
5. FineArtAmerica
6. Artist-Listing
7. ArtistPortfolio.net
8. MosaicGlobe
9. 723 - Online Art Community
10. Voodoochilli

Bonus: Flickr

Finally, here is a link to a very good article on “Getting Your Art Portfolio Online.”

Tomorrow: Review of free online artist portfolio site d-ART: d’Galleries at Fine-Art.com.

Marilyn

Cross-posted at my design site and blog: Artist as Designer: Marilyn Fenn Design.

I just learned that Ray Yoshida, one of the Chicago Imagists and one of my painting teachers at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, passed away this week.

I studied with him in an advanced painting studio for one semester: he once told me my work was "too sentimental." (Thank goodness!).

I'm sad and very nearly speechless. So, let me just quote from the NYT article:

“He was very important to a lot of people there,” said Robert Storr, dean of the Yale University School of Art and a student of Mr. Yoshida in the mid-1970s in that school’s master of fine arts program. “As a teacher he was mysterious and witty. The mystery would draw you in, and then he would say something funny but with an edge that would make you think — kind of like his paintings.”

And the Chicago Tribune wrote a nice story on the life of Ray Yoshida (09-30-2010: which they have since removed).

But if you want to really get a sense of what it was like to have Ray for a teacher, artist Laurie Fendrich captured it beautifully.

How true. We'll miss you, Ray.