Artist Conversation and "Stealing Like an Artist..."

October 16th. oil and acrylic on canvas. sold.

I wanted to pass along two things today, the first being a new Artist Conversation over at the Finding Fine Art blog. This interview is between Martha Marshall (who everyone will remember inspired my new studies) and Rebecca Dresser of Knee Deep Originals on Etsy. The post features an interesting conversation that touches on a variety of things, from their painting practices to rural living and nature. A great read, so stop by.

Also a nice post that is definitely worth checking out is from Austin Kleon with "How to Steal Like an Artist and 9 Other Things Nobody Told Me" He states that it's "a simple list of 10 things I wish I’d heard when I was in college". I really enjoyed points #2, 4, 9, and 10. Oh heck, I liked them all!

New Paintings - Works on paper - studies

Study 2. acrylic on canvas.

Last week, artist Martha Marshall wrote a post titled Art for the In Between Times, where she discusses an art journal. I have never been the kind of artist to keep one. I paint in a very direct way and I don't do a lot of sketching, planning, etc. But lately, I've found myself needing not just to explore, but to explore quickly. This is hard to do when you are confined to a canvas all the time. A canvas takes a lot of time and preparation - building a stretcher, stretching it and priming it. So this weekend, with the art journal idea in my head, I picked up some canvas paper. It's easy. It's primed and ready to go, for oil paint or acrylic. Yesterday I cut it to size (4 1/2 x 6") and created 8 little acrylic works. Eight! It was wonderful. While technically not an art journal, it is the closest I think I will get to one. I hope to do many more studies in the future. Thanks, Martha!

Here are a selection of the works:

Study 4. acrylic on canvas.

Study 6. acrylic on canvas.

Study 8. acrylic on canvas.

Study 7. acrylic on canvas.

Study 1. acrylic on canvas.

I will pose the same question that Martha did - to my fab artist readers - Do you keep an art journal? Or create preparatory works?