Once in a while I thought I would share with you some nifty finds – like an Artist who’s work caught my eye…, some Inspiration or the what, when and where that caught my eye and got my creative juices flowing, and Tools & Techniques I am currently digging like a new way to use a material or an application that I’m taking away. Hope you enjoy this.

In the book, I talk below as Inspiration, I was pointed to Ben Shahn.

“Liberation”

“Unemployment”

Illustrations above and below

I was especially curious to learn that Ben Shahn was a huge inspiration for Andy Warhol – and if you look at Warhols dotted line drawings you can actually see that. I always find it interesting to learn or see which other artist have been an inspiration for some well known artist.

I did enjoy reading “Old in Art School” by artist Nell Irvin Painter.

Painter, who is a Princeton historian, writes about her view and experience of going to art school at the age of 64 to become an artist. I enjoyed reading about her experiences in school, her challenges of seeing art with 20th century eyes and of letting go of the idea that if she follows her dream to be an artist, something she truly loves and wants to do, it doesn’t mean she has to be as good and successful in this new adventure as she was in her profession as an historian. “Old In Art School” challenges you to think about the role of race in the art world as well as the role of women but …on top of it all…the role of age as well. There were some areas in the book which I didn’t like that much as I felt she was getting a bit too much on about how accomplished and successful she is as an historian but I tried to get over that and also thought -well – why should she not brag about it, it is pretty cool. The book is a thought provoking read with passages that truly resonated as well with some references to artists which I enjoyed learning about.

A couple weeks ago I bought some new acrylic paint colors by Golden and I cannot get enough of them!

It is a pretty unusual color combo for me and yet I cannot stop using them:

You might recognize me using them in this art journal spread

and in this painting “Behind the Museum”

and more…I love mixing them with other colors or making tints, tones and shades with them. Especially the Titan paints are a bit challenging but I enjoy just getting it to a point where I like the mixture. I think I would like to do this more often -going into the store to buy certain colors that look great as a palette and then just roll with it for a while and make a lot of stuff in the same scheme.

What do you think about these Currently Digging finds?

Nat