Words are powerful. They can create, they can destroy. They can motivate, inspire, offer a bit of comfort to those in need.
I use words in written form because they are almost set in stone.
They leave a trail behind.
It’s such a definitive action, don’t you think?
But it’s not the only reason.
I write because I think we’re all made of stories. I’d like to find out what my story is.
Self-taught artist, Darren Crowley has this to say [from his saatchiart page]:
I am a full time professional artist obsessed with painting and I create art every day of my life. I paint in oils and acrylic on canvas and vintage book pages that have been glued together. The old discolored pages give a sense of history and intrigue. Many of them are from the 1800’s and still have writing, birthday messages, notes, best wishes etc from the original owners. The paintings begin with a base layer of vintage pages onto which the image will begin to emerge. More layers of paper or interesting symbols and fragments are added to give depth and changes in tone. I use acrylic paint, ink, airbrush and whatever I feel is necessary as the piece progresses. I work from my studio in Ireland but I travel a lot and paint everywhere I go. Landscapes, people, objects anything that catches my eye. It is my way of capturing a little of the energy. Dripping paint, fast brush strokes, splattered droplets combined with precise delicate brushwork to conjure the finished work. I hope you will enjoy the paintings as my journey continues. Painting since 2001 but I haven’t even started yet.
Writing a book can be a long and strenuous exercise in creativity, patience, and self-confidence. And even though all it takes is that you sit at your desk and bleed for a few hours every day, sometimes this advice proves to be as useful as a friend telling us that in order to overcome feeling nervous about someone we need to be ourselves.
I don’t want to tell you that all you’ve got to do is punch the damn keys. I want to show you that there is a better way to go about writing a book.
That sounds like a trick, I get it. But I know this works because I have done it. Continue reading How I Wrote Five Books in Five Years
There’s no doubt about it: we have divided our lives into two different parts – offline and online. And the online world provides just as many opportunities, maybe even more, than the offline.
Well, then it should make sense to also sell your art online, right?
It is possible. But can it be done?
Yes, of course.
Selling art online is not only possible, but more and more opportunities are being presented every few months. Art collectors have become more confident towards buying art from online sources, purchasing works without having to see them in person.
It’s an exciting time to be selling art online, and with a bit of creativity and employing various guerrilla marketing techniques, you can do without investing a lot of money in advertising and such.
But before you even think about selling your art online, it’s important to cover a few of the basics.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman, caricaturist, and illustrator whose immersion in the colourful and theatrical life of Paris in the late 19th century allowed him to produce a collection of enticing, elegant, and provocative images of the modern, sometimes decadent, affairs of those times.
“A word after a word after a word is power.” ― Margaret Atwood
There’s this thing called verbal narcissism. It’s pretty much the ability to game a wall, if it comes to that. To sell sand in the Sahara Desert.
It also means to be so in love with your own words that it could mean talking on and on about things that few people ever care about. Or it could happen that you do deliver a strong message, but you’re using so many words to do so, that it’s all distilled to the point of making people want to smack you over the head with their keyboards. Continue reading Are You In Love With Your Own Writing?
I was doing a bit of research into Pablo Picasso for the showcase of his earliest works, and I read that he created some fifty thousand works during his life. Fifty thousand. If you were to do one per day, it would take you some 136 years. A hundred and thirty six years…
Do you understand the level of commitment that is required of one if he desires to become phenomenal? One of the best? To be considered a genius by his peers? You literally have to break yourself in half. To be so obsessed about whatever it is you’re doing that you end up sacrificing a lot of other stuff.
Yes, you can have anything you want, but you’ll have to give up on (almost) everything else to get it.
Now, Leonardo DaVinci.
Areas of interest: invention, painting, sculpting, architecture, science, music, mathematics, engineering, literature, anatomy, geology, astronomy, botany, writing, history, and cartography. The father of paleontology, ichnology, and architecture. One of the greatest painters of all time. Credited with the invention of technology we never properly developed until hundreds of years after his death, such as the helicopter, the parachute, or the tank. Continue reading You’re No Leonardo DaVinci and That’s Okay
