art

Your painted voice signals through millenia

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Your art has travelled the globe yet you wouldn’t know. You are long gone in history yet your voice lives on. 

I hum a tune and imagine you there with your paints and easel. I imagine you contemplating with your hand on your chin. Then your skilled hand caresses the canvas. With a laden brush you apply paint and a masterpiece is born.

If only you knew how your work has traversed through time. Your painted voice signals through millenia.

Today I become lost in the chambers of the art gallery as art blends and my heart soars. Thank you for creating a masterpiece that continues on.

#Poetry – Elevate from noisy spheres

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It is in silence I create, I can decipher, I can relate
Random gems of unknown purity, bubble up from deep obscurity
Bubbling up clear unfettered, not encased in tunes so lettered

I know the silence that you seek, a place to ponder a place to speak
Not with words that close your mind, but open pathways all entwined 
For in this place you can create, you can reflect, you can debate

And when all thoughts have quietened down, and questions lose their tensioned frown 
You elevate from noisy spheres, and find that space set free from fear
A masterpiece is what you paint, random sketches of a saint. 

DEE GRANT 2021

Photo by Simon Migaj on Pexels

As the tide of information dissipates thumbnail sketches appear like cocktails at a resort

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After many years of university study, words become scrawl. Scrawl becomes a treasure trove of inspiration. Text turns into it’s own motif. The greater the need to focus the more text becomes a rhythm. A rhythmic sea of text that appears and disappears like waves on the beach.

Unexpected words from a speaker cause a flurry of scrawl barely readable. Then, as the tide of information dissipates, thumbnail sketches appear like cocktails at a resort. 

Discerning the message – Dee Grant – 2002

Drawn at a professional development weekend on teaching ethics. Discerning the Message was drawn on a Best Western notepad while listening to a keynote speaker.

BY DEE GRANT

Art Yoga – Warm Up

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BY DEE GRANT(with audio) I have a great treat to get your mind thinking outside the box. This sketching warm up exercise is about giving a bit of a yoga stretch for your mind. Are you ready?

Equipment

  • Pencil
  • A4 pieces of paper (4 pieces)
  • Pencil sharpener
  • Capsicum (I am using a capsicum. Capsicums have an interesting shape)

1st sketch

  1. Sketch the vegetable how you normally would. (5-10 min)
Sketch as you normally would

2nd sketch

  1. Sketch the vegetable again but this time without lifting the pencil off the page.
  2. Without lifting the pencil off the page, draw an outline of the vegetable so it takes up most of the page. (3 minutes)
Outline without taking the pencil off the paper

How did you go?

OK, lets challenge your brain a bit.

3rd sketch

  1. This time put the pencil in the hand you don’t normally use, your least dominant hand. You know what comes next!
  2. Without lifting the pencil off the page, draw an outline of the vegetable so it takes up most of the page. (3 minutes)

I’m always intrigued by this exercise. There is a totally different feel to each work. It’s almost like it was drawn by another person.

Use your other hand

Game to take it one step further?

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#Art – Create to Frame

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How to choose department store frames to exhibit your student artwork. If you are doing art school save money. Get savvy. Create to frame!

The goal for this post is for you to try out creating your artwork so that it will easily fit into a standard frame. A frame from a department store. The example here is framing a 12 x 12 painting.

Department store frame with custom mat

I could cry when I think of the amount of expensive custom frames I’ve had made up in my days as an art student. This was all because I created artworks that didn’t look right in standard size frames. For an art student that’s ‘flat out rubbing two sticks together’ framing is a necessity rather than a luxury.

Think neat and tidy.

Think neutral tones so that you can use and reuse the frame/s for various presentations.

Think about something that scrubs up well in your student exhibition. Are you better to have 3 or 4 the same size and colour so that they can be grouped together?

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#Art -Watching Pencil Muddy the Paint

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(with audio) “Every artwork is a potential masterpiece” but you don’t always know what will look good, especially when you are starting out. I never want to set up people for failure so today I am sharing some tips on life drawing when you’re starting out.

Difficulty spells disinterest

My students one year were given a 12 inch square canvas to paint a picture of themselves and something that identifies them. One student showed me her detailed pencil drawing drawn directly onto the canvas.

In my mind all I could see was the frustration she would be setting herself up for. Having to paint such detailed information onto that small canvas. Watching the pencil muddy the paint or the paint beading over the graphite. Watching the paint go in spaces not intended. Alarm bells as difficulty spells disinterest at the early stages of artmaking in my books.

You live and learn as a art teacher. I bet the next lot of students were bored to tears when I advised on keeping it simple and not too detailed.

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