Faded Paint

Here's today's result of my 30 Day Creative Challenge .  No, its not a beer!  The idea selected from yesterday was Michael's, who simply suggested, "Tea."  So I brewed a pot of tea, poured myself a hot cup, got my oil paints out and painted my hot cup of tea in my favorite clear tea mug.  I like to drink tea out of this mug because I can see how strong or weak i have made it very easily.  This was painted with only Titanium White, Ivory Black, Burnt Sienna, Burnt Umber, and a touch of Yellow Ochre Light.  This is the one I've had the most fun doing but probably only because this is more my style.  Oh well, I did it in under two hours so I am most happy with that fact.  Usually when I have an inspiration for a painting I consider how to go about it, sketch it, plan it out, and then consider all the work its going to take to complete it and I get overwhelmed and never tackle it, let alone finish it.  This little experiment has been very encoura...

Well it has not been consecutive days but here is the result of Day 3 of my 30 Day Art Challange .  Heather's idea was randomly selected.  Her idea was: " Sara Groves writes "I just showed up for my own life....the glory of God is man fully alive." What does it look like to choose to live fully alive. Alive to our longings- met and unmet-, alive to who we were truly created to be, unafraid of ourselves, restored, honest in the struggle of the journey we are on, showing up each day as the best version of ourselves..."     Just Showed Up For My Own Life... Interestingly I have always liked this song myself.  Its really tough to try to produce something with a fairly developed concept in a very short amount of time.  Something like his scene is what I picture when I hear this song and think about this concept.  I have long been intrigued by Van Gogh's " Sower with the Setting Sun " which is about the infinite God and man shown here.   Some...

So the idea for today's 30 Day Art Challenge was Joseph's and it was " the lights at the end of the optics are different colors make up a city."  He also included a link to a picture of some fiber optics lit up similar to the one above.  I wasn't exactly sure what he meant by that but this is what I made.  It was created in Photoshop from a photo of some fiber optic filaments and a night photo of Grand Rapids.  The only other idea i had was to actually create a fiber optic city scene.  You can purchase the filament pretty cheaply and I figured you could use black foam-core to sketch a city on and poke pin holes through to feed the fibers through.  I could  use different colored LEDs to light the fibers and it'd be pretty cool.  Buuuutttt...  obviously I don't have the time to order the filament (they didn't have any at Hobby Lobby, I checked) and figure it all out if I have to do this in an hour or so of my time.  So this is what ya ge...

This is the results of Day 1 of my 30 day experiment .  Ok, so Ken's idea was chosen by random selection from a hat and here is my take.  I have never been too much of a cartoon-type illustrator but this is about stretching  myself so here's a stretch...really.  Its a pretty bad photo of it but if you click on it you can see it a little better.  I hope you at least get the idea.  Ninjas are supposedly always around us, we just don't see them because they're so...uh... ninja-ie.  So here's rush hour in a typical day when everyone in the world is a Ninja.  By the way, that is a dead cat with a throwing star stuck in it, in the road.  I'm not a cat hater, its just what I think a world full of Ninjas would look like.  Ken's Idea, my take. Alright, day 2.  Let's have some good ideas.  Feel free to re-submit any ideas from previous days that didn't get chosen but also feel free to come up with new ones.  They can be things/feel...

30 days, 30 creations.  For 30 days I am going to try and attempt to produce 30 new creations from your ideas.  I have a family, a job, and a life (at least I consider it that) so this is tailored to fit that context.  I have a problem of  taking too long to move a creative idea to artistic completion.  Sometimes its so long the completion never comes.  I need to stretch myself on quickness and creativity.  It's a speed exercise for a an artist who has become too used to running distance.  Its an experiment.  And hopefully it will be fun.  Here's the deal: Each day I will take subject ideas from you (whoever you are) and produce something...er...creative from one of the suggestions.  If there is none, I will ask someone specifically for an Idea.  I will then spend some time in the evening making something related to the subject chosen.  Here's the fun part... Who's-ever's idea I work on, they will get whatever I create ....