Basset Hound.
A proud Basset Hound finished today!
Titled: ” My Best Side” .
Monthly Archives: June 2013
Exeter Inspirations – Cathedral, Museum and Art Galleries
Exeter Cathedral
Samurai Armour RAMM
Botanical Painting RAMM
Late 1800’s Bag – Stag Beetle wings
I visited Exeter earlier in the week and visited the local museum (RAMM -Royal Albert Memorial Museum). I love the variety to be inspired by in places full of collections such as Museums. It is a different sort of inspiration than that of visiting art galleries and looking at other artists. Different senses, memories, and interests are triggered by the range of objects from clothing, to fossils, and fragments of different eras. The image of Exeter Cathedral features Richard Hooker a 16C theologian and priest, the other items are in the RAMM.
Accessing your Creativity by Watching TV?
Chewing the Pencil or More Washing Up?
Sometimes it feels hard to be creative and other times it comes quite easily. The barometer for this may be the number of teeth marks in the pencil end as you sit there chomping away with not very much else happening. I recently saw a program by the BBC where it was surmised that mundane tasks or doing something that requires minimal thinking like taking a shower, or washing up allows the brain to be more creative. Whilst solving a creative problem or trying to come up with new ideas or solutions a mundane task allows the brain to meander around the thousands of kilometres of connections. Under pressure to be on task to do a job in hand, whilst sitting chewing the pencil in an attempt to be creative, forces the brain to concentrate and fast forward on the most direct route to the supposed answer, without paying attention to any other possible junctions along the way. In this instance if no solution comes to mind this presumably is the equivalent of writers block. In its simplest form less brain efficiency means more creativity.
Barely Legible……but A Good Reason to Watch TV
I subscribe to this theory as ideas come more readily to me when I am watching TV in the evenings and I will just scribble them down for another time. Of course I do not mean whilst watching a film where it is critical to pay attention, and definitely not where subtitles are concerned! Even if the ideas are hardly legible, they at least have been captured and logged ready to work on properly in the morning. In the morning the need for that elusive idea forming creativity gives way to a more strategic approach and putting the idea to good use. Here the brain can concentrate fully and hopefully without too much distraction (except for the odd blog write up of course!).
BBC Article – Five Ways To Be More Creative
Purest Green
Green Fingers
I once told an illustrator friend of mine that “green was best left to nature” I think she thought I was serious at the time, but for me it was probably true. The reason I said it was because I did not enjoy using green, or rather using green was not easy. On the other hand she uses green alot. Being a landscape artist using fine detail down to the smallest blade of grass she is a green expert. She is also good at growing plants so maybe the green fingers help.
Shades
There seems to be so many variations of green, is there any more shades of green than that of any other colour? I cannot imagine how one might find this out, I mean what is defined as a shade, I guess it must be more about spectrums? Information welcome, drop me an email.
Suits You (sir)
Some people may believe that a certain colour does not suit them, but really what it is is they have not discovered the shade of that colour which will suit them. The problem with the usual clothes shops is that the colours on offer is limited to what is economic for them to produce. Settling for the nearest thing to the colour we would really like as a sometimes works for us, and sometimes it doesn’t, but don’t worry I wont say anything if you don’t!
Strategy
Nowadays I have found the shades of green that I like. The strategy that works for me is to use colour mixing books such as The Art of Colour Mixing (John Lidzey etc) and identify the shades that I like and use them. This avoids the hazards of the subtleties of mixing an individual green and saves on alot of time with a fairly certain result. There are probably other books out there which have more variety on shades of a colour but this one suffices for me.
Purest Green or is it Gold?
All those green pics I have included all from my garden just now, all outside, no part of my house interior is green so I stick to my original statement, that for me (if there is a choice) green is best left to nature!
And finally, brighten your day with a couple of minutes of BlackAdder’s Purest Green a favourite funny moment of mine where Lord Percy Percy discovers “a nugget of purest Green”.
Diane Young Artist 