Getting back into the swing of things.

After five weeks of staring at my computer and trying to build a website with just the barest of ability, I’m finally finished and now I’m having a heck of a job getting back into the routine of making art.

    I had a really good routine going before I dove into website making, work on sculpture, work on glass, work on a painting. Throw in some household chores, exercise, some reading, some writing, music and I had a pretty full productive day. Now I’m bumping around the studio trying to figure out what to do next, even though I know there’s a ton of stuff that needs to be done. And it’s not like I’m depressed or down in the dumps about anything, matter of fact I’m feeling really good. It’s just that I can’t get my act together to get things back up and rolling again.

      Well hopefully I can get myself rolling again pretty soon. I’ll have to set up schedules and things to do lists again and force myself to follow them, until it becomes habit.

       I was going to cast a bronze today but woke up to 30cm of snow all over the place. I’ll have to wait till that melts off a bit before I can set up the foundry again. Hey, that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it. R.

Did I do the right thing?

      Five weeks ago I decided that to spruce up my artistic career, I should get a better website. This came about because of a book I purchased over the holidays called. “Starving to Successful…” by Jason Horejs. Good book, all about how to approach galleries and how to have the back up for your art. I figured the first thing I should do is re-do my website to make it look a little more up to date. Now I couldn’t afford a website designer and any “free” help had always turned out to be disastrous.  So my question to myself was, should I just leave things as they were or do it myself. I knew it would take time and there’d be one heck of a learning curve. I’ve got Dreamweaver and I’ve messed with it before but I’d never gotten to the point of actually getting anything online. So this time I decided to commit to getting it done and doing nothing else until. Five weeks later it was finally complete. This is where I had to ask myself if it was the right way to go about it. I suppose if I’d had the bucks I would have just hired someone to do it, but that doesn’t always turn out the way you hoped it would. And now I have the ability to update my own site whenever I want to. But that was five weeks I could have spent making art. I always tell people not to do things they can’t do, leave it to someone who can, but I went ahead and did my website on my own. And it took me a couple of times to get it right. I’m happy enough with it, but a website designer could have done a fancier job. It seems to be a trade off.  I suppose all in all I’m happy with the result and the cost, but I’d still recommend to anyone that wanted to try this, to get someone who knows what they’re doing.  R.
http://www.richardsmithart.com

What's an artist?

This was written in response to the question of whether or not using photographs when doing a painting  was alright or if, I assume, you should only work from sketches or life. While I don't approve of someone merely copying a photo, I do believe that using photos for reference material is quite useful.

"But that's what makes the difference between an artist and someone who simply makes note of what they see. Not everyone who has a camera is a photographer. Not everyone who wields a paintbrush is an artist. It's the picking and choosing and the combining of elements that makes a work of art." R.

Opening statement

It's all about communication. There's different kinds, speaking, writing, and the visual arts. The first two are very direct while the third is more elusive and ethereal. As my website deals with my visual communications I thought this would be a good place to do a bit of writing. I find I do my best writing when responding to someone else, a discussion of sorts. I belong to one art group out of the UK and an arts newsletter which encourages postings. I think I'll take those postings, edit them a bit and re-post them here. It does me good to see my thoughts down in print, when you write stuff down you have to be more clear than when you have a bunch of thought just bouncing around in your head. It's like a sketch book for artists. An artist can have all these great ideas for work but unless you get it down on paper you can't really tell if it'll work out exactly the way you think it will. It's a matter of making the insubstantial, concrete. R.