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 Tuesday, November 11, 2008
For animal lovers
By Grace Dobush | Cool Web sites
11/11/2008 5:17:53 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00) 
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Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Urban sketching
By Grace Dobush | Cool Web sites
11/5/2008 4:34:28 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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Friday, October 31, 2008
DIY Polaroids
Already mourning the death of Polaroid instant film? You can make your own vintage-looking shots with Poladroid, a free software program. After installation, all you have to do is drag-and-drop your photos and wait for the mini-Polaroid to pop out. (The pictures show up as a muddy brown for a minute or two before the picture comes through—cute feature!) The final products show up in your Pictures folder as JPGs. Right now, the software's only available for Macs, but a Windows version is coming soon. You can see a bunch of other people's Poladroids on Flickr. Here's one I did, with the original picture:  And the Poladroid version: 
By Grace Dobush | Cool Web sites | Free Stuff | Photography
10/31/2008 4:38:43 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Friday, October 17, 2008
Quick Link: Artist a Day
Get art delivered to you daily at Artist A Day. Every morning, the website highlights an artist's work and includes biographical information and links. You can get it delivered any way you like: Sign up for the RSS feed, iGoogle gadget or Facebook application. You can even nominate yourself.
By Grace Dobush | Cool Web sites
10/17/2008 4:38:14 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Thursday, September 25, 2008
Go Figure!
If you think you don't have time for the drawing-a-day regimen, check out Kyle T. Webster's blog, www.TheDailyFigure.com. Webster says that his "figurative doodles" are "meant to inspire people to loosen up and appreciate the beauty that is possible with a few well chosen strokes of a brush or pen." 'Nuf said—I'm off to grab a pen.    left to right: Thursday (August 21, 2008) The Weight of Wednesday (September 17, 2008) Friday Fun (August 29, 2008)
By Holly Davis | Cool Web sites
9/25/2008 5:09:09 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Friday, September 19, 2008
Looks Punny
 Shoe Horns (ball point pen) by Donald Stewart Donald Stewart, trained surgeon who gave up the medical profession
because he preferred art over scalpels for helping people feel better, dropped
us a line at The Artist's Magazine the other day to let us know about his interview with his local Fox affiliate. Do watch it—it'll only take a few minutes and you'll come away smiling and—feeling better.
That's what happened to me, anyway. Stewart creates what he calls composite
drawings—renderings of objects made up of other objects. Some works, like
Shoe Horns (above), are single visual puns, and some pile one
visual pun on top of another so thickly that Stewart provides a list of
"ingredients," for those who want to be sure they don't miss anything.
I was so intrigued, I did a some deep investigating (at least 10 minutes worth) and discovered that The Artist's Magazine ran a piece on Stewart in our column, The Artist's Life,
back in January 1988. Sorry, that issue isn't available for sale
anymore, but all you longtime loyal subscribers can look it up. (You knew there was a reason you kept those old issues!)
If your old issues don't go back that far (or even if they do) you can see more of Stewart's art on his website at www.dsart.com.
By Holly Davis | Cool Web sites | Notable Artists | Videos
9/19/2008 4:06:41 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Don't Fall Prey to Internet Frauds!
 We've all heard those terrible stories about artists being scammed out of
hundreds, even thousands, of dollars—and sometimes losing their artwork as well. The website www.artscams.com gives you tips for protecting yourself
and descriptions of the latest Internet frauds. Be smart; be informed—don't be a victim.
Advice | By Chris McHugh | Cool Web sites | Tips
9/10/2008 3:40:52 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Tuesday, September 02, 2008
Salt Evaporation Ponds?
Isn't this amazing? These vivid colors and interesting patterns are the result of harvesting salt in evaporation ponds. The different colors occur because micro-organisms' hues change with the degree of salinity of the water. Read the entire article here on www.colourlovers.com. It may take a minute for the article to download, but it will be worth the read and the gorgeous photos. All the images are collected from Google Earth by landsmiths. 
By Chris McHugh | Cool Web sites | News
9/2/2008 2:43:37 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Friday, August 01, 2008 Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Color Inspiration from the Masters
Here’s a great blog article from COLOURLovers.com, a fantastic site for professionals who work with color—and those of us who crave color like chocolate. In this article, one contributor has taken famous paintings and illustrates for us the color palettes that inspired the masters who painted them. You'll see The Water Lily Pond by Monet, Marilyn Monroe by Warhol, Persistence of Memory by Dali, just to mention a few. See the article here.
By Chris McHugh | Cool Web sites | Notable Artists
7/30/2008 9:28:00 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Save Your Junk Mail!
Those flyers, print ads, greeting cards and postcards are valuable art materials! At least they are in the hands of S.A. Schimmel Gold, who cuts them into bits and pieces for her mosaic portraits. Why use paper? As she puts it, “ink colors are far more diverse than glass or tile.”   Metallic Venus (18x24) and detail, by S.A. Schimmel Gold Turning Leaf by S.A. Schimmel GoldTo be wowed by more of Schimmel Gold’s work, visit her website at http://schimmelart.com/index.htm. Most of Schimmel Gold’s portraits have a decidedly contemporary glam about them, yet the basic method of assembling tiny pieces of color to create a picture dates back 4000 years. To see mosaics of every age and style (plus learn just about everything there is to know about the art) take a cyberspace stroll through www.thejoyofshards.co.uk. Thinking about mosaics sent me on a nostalgic journey recalling other mosaics I’ve encountered (including the candy dish my sister made in early school years). Suddenly I remembered the mosaic on the outside front wall of the church I attended through much of my childhood. The church is on Cedar Road in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. Have any of you ever seen the mosaic? Let me know—or tell me about another mosaic that’s special to you.
By Holly Davis | Cool Web sites | Notable Artists
7/29/2008 3:17:52 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Friday, July 25, 2008
Eye-Opener
I’ve been intrigued by optical illusions since I was a kid. Here’s a striking painting by Victor Vasarely titled Vega-Nor, 1969 (oil on canvas). The exhibition “Op Art Revisited: Selections from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery” will be showcased at the Albright-Knox in Buffalo, New York, July 18 through January 25, 2009.  By the way, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery has a truly fantastic collection of modern and contemporary art. Click here to read a history of Op art by Associate Curator Holly E. Hughes. To enjoy a fun visual feast, check out Michael Bach’s website featuring 78 Optical Illusions & Visual Phenomena.
By Chris McHugh | Cool Web sites
7/25/2008 10:28:59 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Thursday, July 17, 2008
Shape and Space
If you’ve ever driven a companion (or yourself) crazy by pacing back and forth and all around to get the best camera or easel angle for a landscape, you’ll appreciate this exercise I found about shape and space. Here’s the idea: Imagine traveling in a large circle and taking four photographs along the way. After developing the photos, you get them out of order. Could you put them back in sequence on the basis of the spatial relationship of the structures you had passed? Okay, now that you have the idea, check out “I Took a Trip on a Train” and see how you do. (Go to http://www.learner.org/teacherslab/math/geometry/space/train/index.html.)
By Holly Davis | Cool Web sites
7/17/2008 11:59:45 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Thursday, July 10, 2008
Name that painting
Think you know your artists and their paintings? Artists Network forum member Terry (user name tstone) came up with this link to a great interactive Web game that tests your ability to match artists with their paintings. The game takes a minute or two to load, so be patient. Once you’re in, the game moves as quickly (or slowly) as you want. What’s more, it’s addictive. One of about 150 paintings appears on your monitor, and you choose which of the 75 or so listed artists created the work. If you get the correct artist, you get to choose the correct painting title. Then on to the next painting. This beats solitaire any day. Try it and let me know what you think.
By Holly Davis | Cool Web sites | Downloads
7/10/2008 3:20:29 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Tuesday, June 24, 2008
So long for now...
 Hey everyone! I just got word I'm going to be filling in as the production assistant for The Artist's Magazine's video workshop site, ArtistsNetwork.TV. I'm way excited to get my hands on this project, but, unfortunately, it means that I'll have to say goodbye to this blog for a while. But don't go away! The folks on the fine art team here will keep this blog alive in my absence. (And if they don't, I've got a pica stick to prod them with.) Au revoir!
By Grace Dobush | Cool Web sites | News | Videos
6/24/2008 9:30:21 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Friday, June 20, 2008
The latest art links
By Grace Dobush | Cool Web sites | News
6/20/2008 3:10:00 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Monday, June 16, 2008
Face Your Pockets
 Via It's Nice That, a fun photo project in which people scanned the contents of their pockets—and their faces: Face Your Pockets
Above is Nadia Camila Barrera's stuff, including ChapStick, strawberry candy, cellphone, electronic sudoku, Colombian pesos, purple bracelet,
USB, colored
pencils, dental floss and a dotted wallet.
By Grace Dobush | Cool Web sites
6/16/2008 4:01:07 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Friday, June 13, 2008
All about Flickr
If you're trying to promote yourself as an artist, you gotta have a website. Or if you don't have a website, set up a blog you regularly update. But if you can't commit to posting frequently and HTML makes you dizzy, there is another option: the photo-sharing site Flickr. The site is great for casual photographers—uploading party pics or snapshots of family members has never been easier—but it also can work as a networking tool for artists and other creative types. As long as you have digital images and internet access you can make use of Flickr. You create a username and homepage for yourself on your site (your "photostream") that displays your most recent pictures. (Or not—you can make pictures you want to keep to yourself private, or share them only with users you allow.) Having a photostream is a great way to show your latest work, or even your works in progress. Some artists like to share pictures of their palettes, or of their studios. When you upload a picture, Flickr automatically resizes it, and you can add "tags" to it—words to describe the image and its content. For example, the artist has tagged this painting with terms
such as "daily painting," "acrylic," "dinosaur" and "wood." You can also add your photos to groups, which is great way to get more traffic on your photostream. I also like using Flickr as an image host—by linking to the resized image in my photostream, I don't have to worry about having the actual files on the computer I'm using to post images on my blogs. (Including this one!) You can also think of it as an external hard drive—when you upload images, you're creating a backup file. Very good in case of computer meltdown! A basic account on Flickr is free, or you can pay $24.95 a year for a pro account that ups your storage limits and removes ads from the website. I've had a pro account for about three years now, and it's been well worth it.
Advice | By Grace Dobush | Cool Web sites | Free Stuff | Tips
6/13/2008 3:17:31 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Thursday, June 12, 2008
Keep up with art law news
By Grace Dobush | Cool Web sites | News
6/12/2008 4:34:53 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Tuesday, June 10, 2008 Friday, May 30, 2008
Beautiful sketchbooks
By Grace Dobush | Cool Web sites
5/30/2008 2:07:37 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Wednesday, May 28, 2008
The name game
As I take part in judging our Annual Competition, something that often snags my attention is the title of the artwork. This might be a good thing—such as a title that adds meaning to a piece—or a bad thing, such as a really awful pun. When I was in art classes in high school and college, coming up with titles was my favorite thing to do. I usually opted for intentionally vague, overly pretentious kinds of names. But another thing I loved to do was take a phrase and run it through the Internet Anagram Server. This great tool finds all the possible combinations for the words you enter. You can limit the output (such as limiting the results to only two words, or to words of at least three letters) by using the advanced search, which I highly recommend. For a letterpress class I took in college, we had an assignment to play with the letters of our names. I used the search to come up with some great anagrams of my name, including: • Brocade Hugs • Badgers, Ouch! • Bodega Crush • Obscured Hag I went with Bodega Crush for the assignment. To me, it invokes this feeling of being young and infatuated at a corner store in the Upper East Side, sipping a lime agua fresca. I think you could use the anagram search even to come up with prompts for painting or writing. For example, entering The Artist's Magazine into the search comes up with Amaranth Zeitgeist and
Metastasizing Earth. What great words! So, blog readers, I'm really curious—how do you title your works? Maybe you have certain rituals, or maybe you absolutely hate doing it! Post a comment and let me know.
By Grace Dobush | Cool Web sites | Random Thoughts
5/28/2008 10:16:51 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Thursday, May 22, 2008 Thursday, May 15, 2008
ArtistsNetwork.tv is live!
 We just launched ArtistsNetwork.tv, a site chockablock with instructional videos from leading contemporary artists, such as recent Artist's Magazine contributors M. Katherine Hurley and Costa Vavagiakis.
Members can view videos 24/7 from any computer with a high-speed internet connection—no software downloads required. You can buy access to a single workshop video, or if you want an all-access pass, you can subscribe to all ArtistsNetwork.tv video workshops for
six months. You can preview the videos for free before you buy, so check out the site today!
By Grace Dobush | Cool Web sites | News | Tips | Videos
5/15/2008 11:06:19 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Tuesday, May 13, 2008
A Sisyphean sketching project
Jason Polan wants to draw every person in New York. In his words: If you would like to increase the chances of a portrait of YOU
appearing on this blog please email me (art@jasonpolan.com) a street
corner or other public place that you will be standing at for a
duration of two minutes (I will be on the corner of 14th street and 8th
avenue on the North-east corner of the street from 2:42-2:44pm this
Thursday wearing a bright yellow jacket and navy rubber boots, for
example). Please give me more than a 24 hour warning and please make it
a scenario that is not too difficult for you to accomplish (the corner
outside of the store you work at during lunch time, or in front of a
museum you were going to go to on a Saturday) because I may
unfortunately miss you and do not want you to have to invest more than
2 minutes of your time in case I cannot make it. You may or may not see
me drawing you during this time. If I do draw you, you will see
yourself (or rather, a drawing that hopefully somewhat resembles you)
on this blog that evening.
When the project is completed we will all have a get together.
Awesome! Somebody better order sandwiches for 8 million ASAP. Via Emdashes
By Grace Dobush | Cool Web sites | Projects
5/13/2008 11:21:44 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Thursday, May 08, 2008 Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Be our friend!
By Grace Dobush | Cool Web sites | News | Random Thoughts
5/7/2008 2:49:52 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Art (maybe) good enough to eat
Art News Blog pointed us in the direction of Pizza Hut's art competition. Never thought I'd say those things in the same sentence. At the site, Pizzaboxidea.com, artists can upload their pizza box image, and each month one is picked to win $1,000. The winning designs won't necessarily be printed up, but there is already a Flickr group dedicated to the images. (The whole concept reminds me quite a bit of MyStarbucksIdea.com. Who needs consultants when the general public is more than willing to give you ideas for free?)
By Grace Dobush | Cool Web sites | Random Thoughts
4/29/2008 2:20:42 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Monday, April 28, 2008
Should art museum admission be free?
This article in London's Sunday Times begs that question, making the argument that scrapping the ticket system lowers the museum's standards of quality. Apparently, free admission isn't enough to get the people in the doors—the Imperial War Museum has put Halle Berry's bikini from "Die Another Day" on display. The article reminded me of an infographic I saw recently in GOOD magazine. " Who Pays For Museum Tickets?" compares the cost of admission for the 20 biggest US museums with each museum's cost per visitor. It's very interesting to look at how the museums compare. The largest museum, the Getty, has free admission—and the cost to the museum per visitor is a whopping $177.92. Knowing that makes me consider donating! Click here to see the graphic.
By Grace Dobush | Cool Web sites | Random Thoughts
4/28/2008 2:28:45 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Awesomely weird art supplies
Hey all! Sorry about being a lame blogger lately! (It's funny how when you return from a vacation, everything seems normal and then BAM! you're hit with a ton of things to do.) So to make it up to you, I share this link: American Science & Surplus, the weirdest, wackiest mail order catalog you'll ever receive. I don't know where or how they obtain all the weird things they sell, but I highly recommend them. (Reading the descriptions of the products is half the fun.) I ordered a bunch of stuff from them for making Christmas presents last year—I gave coworkers sets of organic loose tea in glass test tubes! They have art supplies, too. Need a pencil torch for etching things? Dental tools for your pottery? A brush holder for your brushes? Fabric dye for batiking? Geodes just for the heck of it? You are totally set. If you live in the Chicago or Milwaukee area, you can go to one of their stores in person. And if you do, you must report back and tell me about it!
Advice | By Grace Dobush | Cool Web sites
4/23/2008 11:13:10 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Thursday, April 10, 2008
Online image editing options
For the July issue of The Artist's Magazine, I edited a feature on the best software for artists, including everything from inventory trackers to model manipulators. As far as image editing goes, the gold standard is Photoshop. (If you haven't used the full-blown version, you've likely come across its less expensive sibling, Photoshop Elements.)
Now, a free version of the software is available online, with 2 GB of storage thrown in. Adobe Photoshop Express offers many of the features included with Elements, such as cropping, color correction and some fun filter and distortion options. (Be aware, though, that agreeing to the terms of service gives other users the rights to display, print and distribute your shared images. If you don't want your pictures to go public, don't opt to share them through the site.)
Photo sharing site Flickr also recently rolled out photo editing abilities in partnership with Picnik. All Flickr users can access the basic editing options, and becoming a premium member unlocks more features. Both Picnik and Photoshop Express have some integrated functionality with other websites, like Facebook and Picasa.
Both Photoshop Express and Flickr are good options for artists who don't want to put down a big chunk of change for a program they'll use only to resize or crop their pictures.
(And speaking of pictures, I'll be uploading phot | |