Waiting for Spring

Oh, I am so ready for Spring! I want to paint all the bright and pretty colors, but outside my window the snowflakes are falling. Oh well, soon it will be summer and I will be complaining that I am too hot, so I guess I should learn to appreciate the moment.

 

I have been thinking about how technology has changed my life since my college days. When I was in art school, the school only had three computers, and there was only one small class to teach how to use them. Then I graduated and went to work at Hallmark. Computer art was in it's infancy then. I was trained in using them (reluctantly) and we had to save everything on these giant discs called Bernoullis, that were about the size of an ipad today. They could only store one piece of art. (Do I sound like a dinosaur yet? You must think I learned how to draw by chiseling my art on rocks!)

 

Fast forward to today. I still paint the traditional way, but I simply must have my photoshop programs to manipulate the art afterwards. The painting above can now be placed on all sorts of different backgrounds and products with (practically) a touch of a button. And if I accidentally splash some paint, whoosh, I can erase it, just like that. But a worrying trend in the outside world seems to be that the actual skills of drawing and painting are being neglected because it is just so easy to whip something up with the computer. There are some people who create the most amazing art with the computer, and I do admire them so, but there is also a lot of slapped together work.

 

When I go for a few days without actually drawing or painting, I get a bit irritable, do you? I need the tactile feel of the brush or pencil in my hand. I need to escape to the art planet and pour out my heart onto the page. So I would encourage you, for the benefit of your heart, your soul, and your skills, to draw, draw, draw!