5 Lessons I Learned This Week About Art or Life.

This week I had the opportunity to go to an art class with J. Kirk Richards. I wanted to share some of the things I learned this week with you.

Monday- Look at art! If you want to be good at making art you have to understand what others have done with it before you. 

Since I like to try to tie art things to life I am going to tell you this applies to everything! You want to be a good parent? Look at what other good parents have done! You want to become an amazing singer? You have to look (Maybe listen...) at what other singers have done. Do you want to become the best web developer out there? Look at what other web developers have done. Do you get the idea? Take a look at who has come before you!

Study what they have done and really see how you could apply it to your own work or if you want to go in a different direction at least you will know what they tried to do.

Notice color patterns, shape patterns, and all the other patterns you can see. It is really kind of fun.

Tuesday- Day Two! START!!!

When we arrived on Tuesday all I could hear Kirk say was, "Just start!" I think people in general are blessed with some inspirational thought or plan or something and all they have to do is put some action in to it, but so many people fail to start! I am not saying that a magical painting will appear if you start painting, but at least you will have something on the canvas and that is better than what was there yesterday.

I believe Thomas Edison attempted over 1,000 different materials before he discovered tungsten to be the magical key to making the lightbulb work. Then when he was asked about it he didn't say he failed 1,000 times, but rather he had discovered 1,000 different ways to not have the lightbulb work! It is a mind set thing. We just have to START!!!

Wednesday- Good Music always helps. I think this one is self explanatory. Find some music you like to listen to and that will help you get into the groove and then go! I mean Start!

Thursday- I learned about modeling today. This is where you start to do little cross hatching lines to make the details in the form of something you are painting that turns it from a side in light to a side in shadow. This also applies to life. You have to take some time in your life to see the little details. Some of the subtle things in life make the biggest difference. This also means that if you don't have the big picture all together then your little details will be out of place. Think about this one for a minute. It is definitely tied to my last blog post.

Friday- Endure to the end. If you want a good painting you have to keep pushing it and never give up.  The only way an artist fails is when he or she...

I think the of the tortoise and the hare story. The hare is very prideful and fast and the tortoise says he thinks he could beat him at a race. So they put together a race and off they go. The hare is definitely winning, but stops to take a nap! The tortoise is slow and steady and wins the race!

Be steady and keep going! I think that is the key to success.  

(Maybe someday I will talk about not measuring your success against others as well...)

Thanks for reading!