More finished pieces of "a place of Grace" landscape painting project

As I previously promised, here are the rest of the student work examples from the landscape painting project "a place of Grace." The original positing discussing the lesson and showing the first round of student work was HERE.

creating art for Him

In the past it's debatable (at least I think so) of whether or not I am a Christian artist. I mean... what does that mean anyway? Does it mean that I create distinctively Christian artwork? OK, then what is distinctively Christian artwork? Perhaps it means that I profess myself to be a Christian and then I, in turn, create artwork and because I professed myself to be Christian in the first place then that automatically makes my artwork distinctively Christian?

I have been thinking about this and discussing it with my fine art department colleagues (at school/work) for quite some time now and none of us have know any of the answers. Something I do know (or at least am figuring out) though, is the fact that while I seek to glorify Christ every day with my life - what I am doing, saying, being motivated by, even how I think and feel - I really have questioned whether or not it all directs people specifically back to Him. 

Years ago when I first discovered my calling to believe in Christ, I also discovered a Christian music artist by the name of Nichole Nordeman. She sings a song called "Legacy" and it talks specifically about what she hopes to leave behind her that tells about her life. (The song is not embedded for playback here because of some youtube restrictions - sorry about that. Click the link above though and you can see it on youtube.) 

The song talks about how she wants to do great and wonderful things in her life that are remembered but what she really wants to do are things that distinctively direct everyone to look to the Lord above as the inspirations, reasons, and purpose of it all. That is pretty much how I feel and want I want for my time spent here CREATING art. I want it all to be for Him, by Him, and pointing to Him. This isn't because I'm trying to "Bible thump" around "draft" people into being Christians before the world is alleged to end or anything. (Seriously.) I do this because of what He has done for me in my life for me to have what I have. 

I know I have alluded to the nature of what I am talking about before but I haven't ever actually really really discussed it in great detail and spelled out some of the intricacies of it all. It's actually not because I don't want to do that it's more because I almost can't. My testimony so hard to explain and it also takes a long LONG time. I think that the Lord is working in me for me to learn how to do this in words but as it is happening, He is showing me and teaching me how I can use my creativity and creation of visual art (in the meanwhile) to explain things best. What it boils down to is this: He took nothing and made it into something. Honestly and truly. 

Before I discovered what is now an unwavering faith in the Lord above, I was doing a whole lot of nothing type things that only begat more nothing type things that only made my life empty as far as the eyes or imagination could see. It's hard for me to even openly acknowledge that here and now and see those words spelling it out as clear as day because I don't want to hurt anyone or anything that was somehow included in all of that that might suggest that they (too) were nothing in my life. (I don't think that's how it works anyway.) What I'm talking about is what I was doing way back then and what I personally had because of it. Even the artwork I was creating in that time was so labored through and (honestly) I don't know that any of it was all that good much less great. It was just... there.  *shrug* Even when people would remark about it, there was nothing all that special or interesting to note of it. That's just how it was. And, for that reason, I questioned myself about whether or not I was worthy enough to even create artwork much less show it to anyone after it was done. 

Things have very much changed since then. I mean, I am about seven years beyond a period of time that was very dark for me so a lot could certainly change for me but even this year? It's going to be ending on perhaps one of the highest notes I have ever known of my whole life. This is despite the fact that this year I have also experienced some of the deepest depths of despair of my life (not talking about art here but personal). Still, I firmly believe that the Lord has delivered me and will keep delivering me because - in the midst of it all - I professed Him as my Lord and savior even when I felt like things were being taken from me. I hailed Him as the sovereign God that He is even when things were happening that I felt like I didn't deserve and definitely didn't understand. I was tested and (I believe) He is affirming to me through my creative inspirations and abilities that I did pretty OK with all of those tests. 

Below is a screenshot of my new website. It's got a new logo and visual branding, it's own very carefully selected custom domain that doesn't include my name, and it is intended to serve as a place where I will openly share the creations of His hand (through mine) for as far and to as many as the worldwide web will allow me to share. 

You can click the image above to access the website

The site is intended to serve as a fine art portfolio for me to show what I am doing for Him. Irony of ironies, I have been working for close to two straight weeks to get a custom domain to work that was myname.com and it would not work!!! I even went in through the backend of the site coding and tried to manually code it. (Didn't know I was such a computer geek with such skills? Ha! You have no idea how geeky I am.) Well... none of it worked. But through it all it occurred to me that perhaps it wasn't what the Lord wanted for what I am doing. So just before midnight some time ago, I registered a NEW custom domain that was creatingartforHim.com. And lo and behold? It WORKED. It actually worked inside of an hour - which is amazing because if you anything about setting up and establishing websites it can sometimes take as long 48 hours for a website to be fully set-up.

Anyway, you will now find this website in the center of the navigational bar of this site if you want to access it and follow the fine art endeavors the Lord is inspiring and enabling me to create. I will share some of it here (of course) but the finished pieces will reside on the creating for Him portfolio site. Please feel free to bookmark it or link to it! Thank you!

How about a hiatus?

As it happened yesterday, I posted a blog posting that should have been more student work from the Place of Grace painting project but was really my version of the Sharpie mugs that have been all the rage all over the interwebs. By the time I realized my snafu it was too late to take it back and I was throwing my hands up anyway because I realized I let such a thing happen because I am spent.

Today I'm taking a trip to one of my favorite studio art supply stores (not arts and crafts superstores like Michaels and the like - no offense to them but they can leave a lot to be desired for a lot of the times for me). I am doing this as a bit of a rite of passage for one of my senior art students who is embarking on a serious project this year to 1) learn how to oil paint and 2) paint a canvas that is easily five times as big as he is. Quite a bold undertaking, no? Well... God will see it through. I am absolutely sure of that!

Anyway, today and tomorrow and the next day and the weekend are going to serve as a nice break for me that I sort of said I might take last week (or something) but didn't. And because I definitely believe that it's never too late to start doing what you should have always been doing, I am letting you know that I will be seeing you next Monday when school is back in session for me!

See you then! God bless and have a wonderful time giving thanks for all of the things you have to be thankful for.

Give Handmade | DIY Sharpie Mugs

So this is kind of unoriginal of me but that isn't the point. You know those Sharpie mug tutorials that are all over pinterest and the DIY crafting blogs? (Perhaps I am behind the times and they were actually all the rage last year or something. Whatever.) Well, last week I made some of them as gratitude gifts (just in time for Thanksgiving!) for the three gals from work who I call my #bffl (best friends for life, if you didn't know).

Some things about us:

• We call ourselves many things including the "Multi-culti Crew" but more often "The Unicorn Club" because it seems so girly and middle/high school-ish and silly.
• We sometimes talk in hashtags to our kids and to each other because it is ridiculous, annoying, and also endlessly entertaining/amusing.
• We are all so fluent in the language of sarcasm that it might as well be our native tongue at this point. 
• Last year we used to do this thing on Thursdays (when we all had a planning together) that we called "Thursdates" where we would skip out and go and get ice creams or smoothies or coffees of whatever. The point was simply for us to just get off of campus for a little bit on a day that was almost Friday.
• We are all so different but at the same time very similar and we have a unique and wonderful bond where we can be somber and (sort of) crying for one another in support as much as we can pray together as much as we can busting our guts and laughing in the next moment. 

I love these ladies like nothing else. I really do. They are such a God-send and I am thankful for their friendship every day!!! And for all of these reasons, last week I made them all some gifts of gratitude where I made some giant Sharpie mugs with personalized designs for each lady. See below...

This was for the original unicorn of the group. On the side of the mug you can't see it says "#unicornstatus"

This was for the original unicorn's little sister. I have mentored this lady in the ways of professional photography and she is an outstanding talent in the way of portrait photography especially! 

This is the mug that actually started it all. I posted the one mug I made for a student on instagram and this lady saw it and showed it to her awesome mom and they laughed for 15 minutes straight and then she told me she had to have one. 

It's hard to tell but these mugs are actually gigantic. I got them all at Michael's and I have been scoping them out for (literally) years. You can't just give a gigantic mug to someone though, y'know? I mean... you can but it can be taken in the wrong way or at least not fully appreciated. For my fellow unicorn ladies though? I knew that they would appreciate them completely AND they would use them!!! It is this reason why I did gigantic mugs and not just standard ones. The point was that they mugs would make a statement and that's why I opted to make them as big as possible. (See below the picture of me holding the one. That's not forced perspective, people. The mug really and truly is that gigantic. HOW AWESOME IS THAT?!!!)

See the giant mug in relation to a standard sized one? I tell you what. Gigantic mugs RULE. 

I might only do Sharpie mugs in extra-large/gigantic size from here on out. Seriously. I mean, they are awesome but (also?) I always automatically enlarge things so the larger surface area was a lot easier for me to work on.

So there you go. The Sharpie mug on the gigantic scale. If you are interested in making some for yourself you can pick them up at your local Michael's or other arts and crafts superstore. I would hyperlink them here but I can't find where to buy them online. They were about $10 in the stores though if that helps you at all.

Lesson Idea: A place of Grace | Landscape painting with Water-miscible oils

So... it's been at least a month and if not more than that since I blogged a lesson idea. It has happened like this not because I have been sitting around twiddling my thumbs but much more because I have been doing this lesson for that long and on Friday was the final day of it!!

I have already blogged about the WiPs stage of doing this landscape painting project with my 2D Design class HERE when I shared about the creative processing related to establishing strong and successful visual composition and then HERE when I showed the students applying color (for underpainting purposes) to their sketched (on canvas panel) pieces. This project was intended to be a very long-term type endeavor both because I wanted the students to do well in painting their selected places of grace landscape paintings as much as I wanted the painting process itself to be a place of grace in the midst of their busy school days. I am happy to report that on both accounts there was major success!!! 

By encouraging and supporting their learning processes of painting techniques and manipulating/working with water-mixable oil paints, they ended up learning not only about how to create some incredible examples of great visual composition not just in the structure of the overall elements of the pieces but also by using color relationships and intentional value work to push and pull the painting in the directions that it needed to go. The students worked from photo reference and they were required to go through a number of stages before they got to the point where they were laying paint to canvas panel. 

If you can believe it, the majority of the student work that I will be showing you was done by students who have never painted in this style/type of painting before. I did a lot of 1:1 consulting with each of them every day to ensure that they would move along swiftly as much as confidently and this project endeavors has turned out the greatest amount of successfully created student artwork examples ever for me!!! I am so incredibly proud of these kids. The below is just a small sampling of what I could have shared with you but I will be doing at least one more round of sharing more examples tomorrow so come back and see me then! 

Each piece was painted on a Blick-brand canvas panel that is 11x14 inches and the brand of paint we used was Reeves class pack of water-mixable oil paints. Also, I went through three entire large tubes of Titanium White (purchased separately) that I distributed/rationed carefully to make sure nobody took more than they needed but everyone got exactly what they wanted.

I just LOVED doing this project and I cannot stress how proud I am of my student artists for turnig out the incredible work they did. Many of them discovered what their personal artistic voices look like and a select few will be embarking on developing what they have discovered and refining it in their own (and mine as well) time. (More about this on another day.)

Anyway, like I said, tomorrow I will share another handful of student samples of this project. Hope you enjoyed the above so far!!