Illustration vs Painting

During his lifetime, N.C.Wyeth created over 3,000 paintings and illustrated 112 books!





Wyeth, who was both a painter and an illustrator, understood the difference, said in 1908, "Painting and illustration cannot be mixed—one cannot merge from one into the other."





This is an interesting idea and I'm curious to hear what people think about it. I have to agree that my paintings and my illustrations usually have two different styles as well as different intentions behind them. However I don't always see such a separation in other artist's work. Are illustration and painting truly two different things? I certainly see the pre-raphaelites as illustrators and painters both. I'm just not sure if I fully agree with this statement. Do you?

Dinotopia!!

I was blessed enough to get to see James Gurney in person at the Norton Art Museum in West Palm Beach. His Dinotopia paintings and models are on exhibition there until Sept. 5th. I highly recommend it to any art lovers in the vicinity. I recommend it twice as much to anyone who is a dinosaur fan as well. It's simply amazing to see his work in person! I was rather shocked to see how many of my friends aren't familiar with his work though! I had thought that the Dinotopia books were as well-known as the Star Wars movies or Where the Wild Things are. I guess not. I'm sort of happy about this actually. It means that I get to introduce people to an amazing artist's work that is worth getting to know.
Here are a few of his pieces for you to enjoy. If you are anywhere in the West Palm Beach, FL area or have the means to visit for a day... Check out this exhibition! His work is 10x better in person!

To see more of his work, visit http://www.dinotopia.com.

My finished piece for Frank.

This whole project has inspired me to begin an etsy store called Flowers4Frank. A percentage of the sales will go towards either Hugs and Kisses or the Chronic Disease Fund. Originally I wanted to use my art to help people with cancer pay for their treatment. Hugs and Kisses does just that. However, the Chronic Disease Fund is also good because it helps people with any chronic or life-altering disease. I'm still trying to determine which organization is better for what I am trying to do. I'm open to anyone's input or advice. My goal is to get other artists involved and dedicate a section in the store to each artist. In this way each artist would only need to produce 8-10 pieces max. Less burden on each artist and more items available to purchase which means more money for this cause. Still trying to work out the kinks and get others involved so that it really gets started with a bang.

Flowers for Frank

Every now and then you meet truly kind, amazing people. Sometimes in the most unlikely of places. My job usually consists of me catering to the whims of extremely entitled, narcissistic and wealthy people. Occasionally I'll meet truly kind and humble people and I see these encounters as blessings from God. These are the people that help me to maintain my faith in humanity. One of these blessings is Frank. He and his partner come in every other Saturday and put a smile on my face each and every time. It started years ago when they discovered through a colleague that I enjoyed Andrew Wyeth's work. They were fortunate enough to be able to see an exhibition in Atlanta and surprised me with a beautiful book of his work. Over the years I have learned more and more about them. Frank is an educator who spends his spare time performing as a clown and ventriloquist at kid's parties. He is also an avid gardener and has often surprised me with gorgeous blooms that he's clipped from his garden. Recently it was discovered that he has cancer. He has endured months of radiation and is now suffering terribly from the aftermath of this treatment. Only time will tell whether this treatment has worked or not. During these months I hadn't seen or heard anything from them and feared the worse. However, after the treatment was completed and Frank was well enough to go out, they came to visit again bearing yet another bloom from their garden. They've always been so kind to me that I have often wondered how I can repay them for their many thoughtful kindnesses. Recently it was brought to my attention that Frank is going to be celebrating his birthday at the end of this upcoming week. It's the perfect excuse for me to give them something and I've finally realized what I can give them. One time Frank had given me a gorgeous day lily and I had taken a million pictures of it as it opened. I've decided to do a painting of it for him. Hopefully it will be a lovely reminder of our friendship as well as a nice way for him to have his garden with him when he's not feeling well enough to go outside.

Day One of Operation Clean Studio

So after the shock of my disasterous studio had worn off I tackled the task at hand by first rolling up my sleeves and hauling my bookcase into the closet. I wanted to be able to fully utilize the closet space while also freeing up some space in my work area. (It's always felt rather snug in there) I also took the wheels off of my drawer storage and was able to fit one of them underneath my work table so that I am
fully utilizing the entire space. Already I am happier with the feeling in my studio and am looking forward to cleaning out a lot of the junk to free up even more space.

Does anyone know of a place that might sell paper storage fairly inexpensively? I would like better storage for my watercolor paper but am finding it hard to locate paper storage for sheets that size that don't break the bank. Has anyone else organized their art studio or craft area? Any items that you just couldn't live without? Despite my apparent lack of organization, organizational supplies are
one of my all-time favorites.

I woke up to a disaster on a post apocalyptic scale.

The following photos are horrifying and disturbing so please brace yourself. Please don't ask me how I allowed this to happen or when it happened or how I could live with things this way for so long. I have NO IDEA.
I literally woke up from an artistic reverie and discovered that some sort of bomb had gone off while I was in my own personal candy land. It was quite a shock I assure you. I realized that my studio had long since
become nothing but a storage space and the rest of my house had been assimilated into makeshift work spaces. Beading in the office, polymer work on the dining room table, mosaics in the living room, etc. The list goes on
and on. Rather than all of my art being kept nicely in one space (as originally intended) my entire house had been overcome with it! So I am beginning the enormous task of doing over my studio so that all of my art projects can be comfortably worked on in it. It basically comes down to organization and my studio's extreme lack of anything remotely resembling it. Well, that's not ENTIRELY true. Over the years I have spent large quantities of time labeling random boxes and attempting to keep everything tidy. It just seems as if my ever expanding interests have outgrown my current space.








Any craft/art organizational tips and advice would be
greatly appreciated as I tackle this behemoth of a project. I will be keeping photos of my progress as I work on it.