What Does An Artist Need To Know In Today’s Technological World?

DweezelJazz — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 14:46:29 +0000

This seems to be the time when ebook readers and very small portable computers are starting to really catch on, not to mention all the ways it’s possible to read content on smart phones.

I recently read an article, The End of Book Publishing As We Know It, on Michael Hyatt’s blog. In the article there’s a video showing a slim, portable, color-format reading device Time Inc has developed for magazine content. It allows for audio, video and normal text print content to be accessed very easily all in one place at the touch of a finger.

Time (no pun intended) will tell just how much these new devices and combinations of media will affect the conventional publishing industry, but it is already true that the publishing industry is experiencing tremendous changes.

There are many new opportunities available for the individual in this evolving technical environment. Software applications at relatively low prices have made it possible for individuals to learn how to accomplish things that used to only be possible for experts with very costly equipment. One such area is the ability to print a book using, for example, Adobe InDesign or even one of the applications made freely available by online book printers such as Blurb.

The tricky part that comes with having direct access to performing these highly specialised tasks is that in order to create quality products there’s a great deal for an individual to learn. It’s crucial to assess which facets will be important to forwarding one’s own work. There are a variety of reasons for limiting just how much you intend trying to learn to do:

learning a little of everything results in doing most things in a mediocre manner because there just isn’t enough time to truly develop more than two or three things fully and deeply
time spent on one thing means less time spent on another which could be more important in achieving your goal
you might end up spending much more time than you intended doing something you really don’t enjoy very much

So it’s really important to pick and choose what to learn, finding the balance that allows you to move forward with your goals, but doesn’t drain too much from your primary ambition and passion.

My primary passion is stories. I think I could do without many things, but not stories, and stories with pictures, well, I just think that’s the ultimate. I love movies, but have no interest in being directly involved in the film industry. So I’ve been concentrating on understanding what it is about the visual elements that go into art that make it successfully communicative, and what elements are important to a story to make it really interesting and exciting.

I’m still experimenting with just how my passion will express itself in my art. To try to get closer to this, I’ve been delving more deeply into color theory, composition, technique, and all types of art from fine art to illustration, cartoons, animation — everything I can set eyes on. I’ve experimented with digital painting, and more watercolor and egg tempera painting techniques.

I have also been studying writing, visual storytelling and story-boarding, and am writing a couple of fiction stories to see where they go. For the more practical side of how to communicate the art, and possibly stories, during the last year I have completed courses in all of the Adobe Creative Suite applications. My year’s subscription with Total Training will end on January 1st and so this spurred me to complete the InDesign and Illustrator courses during these last few weeks. I have also studied web design, print design, composition, layout, and a little about typography.

So that’s it for the heavy-duty studying for me, thank goodness! Now I need to develop my artwork so that it expresses my passion – and I’m not quite sure what that is yet in terms of style or subject. I think it might be bound up in expectation, and if I can let that loose, my style should just be there. When I write I have no expectation and my writing style seems to be there just simple and unsophisticated, for better or worse. I haven’t yet reached that with the art.

So here’s to the New Year, bringing new discoveries and challenges. If you have any comments on what you think it’s important to learn in today’s environment, and/or if you have any advice on reaching your own style, I’d love to hear them.

Tackling a Difficult Task

DweezelJazz — Tue, 29 May 2007 07:00:00 +0000

Have you ever stalled when youâ€™ve had lots of things to do, knowing that one of these tasks needs to be done before the others? This can be more of a problem if that particular task is more difficult to accomplish than many of the others on the list. The temptation is to get on with all the other things that need doing, hoping that something will occur to you about how to make a start on the first one. Sometimes this is helpful, but very often it simply puts off the moment of attack to accomplish the deed.Before long it is no longer even possible to do the other things that are on the list because it is clear that something ought to be done about the first. This dilemma can feel a bit like being frozen in the headlights of some big truck, time ticking away, pressure building up, and the mind a complete void of thought about how to go about starting. Enough of this and fog builds up in the brain and soon nothing gets done.It is, of course, much easier to just get on and do the thing! But thatâ€™s often the real problem: waiting for inspiration about where to start. A good way to jump start the mind is to brainstorm. If it is a one-person task this can be done very effectively by writing down ideas. The action of actually writing something, no matter how ridiculous it might seem, triggers more ideas and starts the creative juices flowing. Once that happens, it is much more likely that a solution will present itself, and much more quickly than simply waiting for an idea to pop out of the blue, or the truck headlights.An effective way to trigger some thoughts is to ask some questions and write down the answers: What exactly needs to be done? Why? What is important about the way it gets done? What is the long-term and/or short-term goal of doing it? Why is it important to you to do it?Before long, ideas will be flowing. After the main flurry of questions and answers, it is then possible to arrange and order them according to task flow and relevance. This can be done by creating a list of activities based on the brainstorming results, or, if the task is more complicated, it can be beneficial to create a diagram showing visually the relation of items to one another.Often the hardest part of doing anything is starting it, jumping into the seemingly unknown and trying to move forward. Pushing a pen or pressing the keys on a keyboard to get those thoughts going, often clears the path and shows we really do know how. When I remember it, approaching things this way can save me a tremendous amount of time and hassle.

DweezelJazz Art Blog » goals

What Does An Artist Need To Know In Today’s Technological World?

Tackling a Difficult Task