STREET ART TUTORIAL

This was my experimental project in street art.

I had never tried street art before, so I entered a street art festival contest just for the fun of it.  I ended up with best in show for this whimsical Alice in Wonderland piece and was invited back to the event this year as a paid professional street artist. I am going to document last year’s project the best I can along with this year's. I am sure I will do a few things differently this time to refine the process.

Keep checking back. This Month and next I will be writing up tutorials for creating vibrant and exciting street art.  Next week I will begin covering concept art (what you plan and what really happens), materials and technique experiments (what works and what doesn’t)  

FOR FREEDOM IN ART!

Larger than life 17"x24" color pencel portrait.

Why this blog?

When I went to art school I was hoping to learn something. The majority of what I learned was that artists don’t like to share their knowledge.  The art industry is very competitive, cutthroat and snobbish. Although I had one or two nice teachers, I found most of my teachers were happy to give information about the history of art, but were rather tight lipped when it came to techniques and methods.   While working in pastel for the first time I specifically remember asking my professor how I could improve my work.  My professor looked at me and said, “Figure it out, you are the artist.” If you have felt this same frustration with instruction then you are going to love this blog. 

I am a professional artist with over 10 years of experience. I love to draw, paint, sculpt, and carve in a multitude of mediums, styles and sizes.  During my college years, my professors were constantly on me to pin myself down to one medium and one style.  They thought I was spreading myself too thin and rendering my work unrecognizable.  “You must find who you are and stick to it.”   The only problem for me is I am an artist with an over active mind and I get bored rather quickly.  If I do a clean pencil sketch my next piece needs to be a messy texture filled painting with dripping chunks of paint, otherwise I won’t feel satisfied with my creativity. I have no interest in a monotonous existence and thus have chosen to define myself by my non-definability.   I am always trying something new with every art project and have learned a great deal over the years.   

Because a lot of my work is experimental I decided that I needed a place to catalog my research, my projects and my methods.  I gave it some thought and decided a blog would work twofold. Not only do I get to record my ideas and experiments for my own benefit, but I get to freely share the knowledge with others.  I wish someone would have shared with me all the things I am about to in this blog/ personal record cabinet.   

In the next few weeks I will be quickly adding tons of posts full of information. There will be posts on my past and current projects, tips on mediums, tools, and techniques along with, posts on other art and artist I find interesting and inspirational.