The Calling to Create

What Brings You to The Creative Process

I created this image very late  at night using the deepest and darkest charcoal I could find. I have a lot of emotions connected to my art and this image has a story to tell that I do not yet know how to put into words. 

This morning, before the sun even thought about peeking from behind the mountain I awoke and remembered that today is the day I begin a new course with Gillian Lee Smith titled Drawn To Expression. I adore Gillian. She was my first real art teacher. She was the teacher I decided to trust and allow into my secret world. I'd lived a long time with a terrible hunger to create that I had not allowed myself to satisfy because of fear. There were times I thought I might starve because of my fear and stubbornness. I was fortunate because that desire to create remained strong and was binding it's time for the right moment to come out and into the light.  

Fear is such a crazy thing. Insensible, irrational, incredibly powerful. Gillian was the one who called me to wake up and she helped me find my courage. I will be forever grateful to her for her gentleness and her desire to light the fire of creative passion within her students. I feel so fortunate. 

 AsI listened to Gillian introduce the class by reading a quote from Mary A. Granvo I started to feel that her words were speaking directly to my heart. Here is the Quote:

"I have found that by using very simple art materials we are able to tap into a soft and tender place that is begging for attention. This soft tender place is our connection with our true essence, our spirit and our soul's longings."

I wasn't really planning to write a blog post today but because I felt so moved so excited to begin this course I simply wanted to share. 

Love, Robin

Let's Face It - Open For Registration!

Hello Friends,

The Let's Face It online workshop is OPEN FOR REGISTRATION! I hope you are as excited as I am about this new class on drawing and painting portraits.  The class will be hosted by Kara Bullock of Kara Bullock Art. I will be a guest teacher along with 15 other amazing artists! There will be an amazing amount of content so If you want to improve or learn for the first time how draw and paint faces with confidence go to Kara's registration page to find out the details and to sign up at the early bird price!

Don't forget about my GIVEAWAY!  Go find out how to win a free seat in the classroom. The winner will be announced on Monday October 26th.

I hope you will join me on the exciting journey of learning how to paint the wonderfully unique and complex form of the face! 

xoxo robin

I'm Teaching In Let's Face It! An Online Workshop

Hello My Friends!

There is still time to win a free seat in Let's Face It!

**Here is where you can read more about the class. 

To enter…just leave a comment here on my blog letting me know why you want to win a spot in Let’s Face It 2016 and subscribe to my blog.To increase the number of times I enter your name, you could do any or all of the following to spread the love. (Be sure to pop back and let me know in the comments all the ways you have shared so I can add your name again and again)

* Share about the class on your blog, twitter, pinterest, google, facebook page or other social network platform.

* Like my facebook page or invite friends to like it.

* Follow me on Instagram.

I will announce the winner on Monday October 26th!

I am so excited to announce that I am going to be a part of a brand new, awesome online course titled “Let’s Face It”!

LET’S FACE IT is a course created and hosted by Kara Bullock from Kara Bullock Art.  It is for anyone that wants to practice creating faces and portraits, but is especially designed for those of you that have felt scared or intimidated to do so at some point in your life.   I'm teaching alongside a fanastic group of artists and together, we want to share with you our strategies, tips, and techniques that we use in order to create our faces and portraits.  You will leave this course feeling confident enough in your skills to never feel intimidated again.

Since I will be teaching along side the amazing artists you see above you will have an opportunity to explore the many styles and techniques unique to each of them. Pretty cool I'd say! You can find out a lot more about Let's Face It here. 

I love to draw and paint faces so I'm excited to share my lesson. I will be teaching you how to create a face in profile which is not near as difficult as you may think! Plus I will include a mini bonus lesson that will help you speed up the process of learning how to draw a profile.

Registration is not open quite yet but on October 15th, you can register and If you sign up by December 1st, you will get a great discount on the price! 

Guess what else!?  I get to give away one free spot in this course to one of you!!

To enter…just leave a comment here on my blog letting me know why you want to win a spot in Let’s Face It 2016! To increase the number of times I enter your name, you could do any or all of the following to spread the love. (Be sure to pop back and let me know in the comments all the ways you have shared so I can add your name again and again)

* Subscribe to this blog.

* Share about the class on your blog, twitter, pinterest, google, facebook page or other social network platform.

* Like my facebook page or invite friends to like it.

* Follow me on Instagram.

I will announce the winner on Monday October 26th!

I look forward to seeing you in class! In the meantime here are some examples of profile faces I have created. 

xo robin

So Much Excitement Around Here!!

I have so many things I want to blog about that I can't figure out what to blog about!😏 If you  are new to my  blog...👉honestly everyone is since I just started it👈..... you should know that if emoticons are available on my keyboard I will use them to express my full range of emotions. So please, try not to be overly annoyed at this child like behavior. 

 If you haven't signed up for this class yet be sure to consider doing so. It is rich with content, wisdom and great teaching.

 If you haven't signed up for this class yet be sure to consider doing so. It is rich with content, wisdom and great teaching.

First up is that I am having a major creative breakthrough in my art practice thanks to the uber talented and most excellent of teachers Annie Hammon . I signed up for her Worshop  Creating Soulful Art With a Story just days before our own class, Paint & Pixels launched.  I had time to watch a total of two videos; Annie's intro (which I found endearing)  was equally amusing and  informative but her one on composition just stopped me in my tracks. By the time I finished I had so many feelings at once I had to jump up out of my chair and run around the block before I could think straight.😱 

In Annie's video about composition she describes  her  process for developing a painting with a soulful story which is very much like my own process. She uses an intuitive and open approach as she begins each new piece of art which is similar to how I do everything in my life including art. Annie knows there will be a story because she sees things in story form and from my viewpoint all of life is a story so I naturally paint in stories. Another similarity is that neither of us begins with a preconceived story in our minds. We have storytelling and soulfullness in common but we  approach our artful discoveries in significantly different ways.  

The concepts Annie is teaching are the very same concepts I use in my own art but with one crucial difference. Annie creates a framework for her piece before she begins. I haven't used a framework of any kind ever. My paintings follow a meandering and sometimes convoluted path of trial and error until a piece begins to speak to me. Only when the painting is complete will I discover the hidden story within. Magic is eventually created to be sure but the process is also very very time consuming and fraught with doubts, frustrations and many blind corners.

I truly feel I discovered  compositional gold within Annie's video! I am aware I've had the same information in my head but it sometimes takes a new perspective to see what is right in front of us. When I heard her talk about her ideas my brain just went all calm and the crazy tangled threads in my head relaxed and melted into a beautifully familiar brilliant red thread that led me to a fresh way of seeing and doing things.

paint_and_pixels_composite.jpg

Annie uses a collaging technique rather like the storyboarding approach used by creative writers and film makers.  She has a magnificent store of collage elements that are kept in notebooks. Hundreds of elements are neatly organized so that she can relax and focus on her compositional choices while listening to her intuitive heart. She  select her main subject, a symbolic creature or element will  be chosen, a background that feels right and the additional decorative elements such as patterns or forms become naturally incorporated as the story blooms into a painterly reality!

Above you can see how I did a bit of backwards engineering practicing Annie's approach with a painting I had already completed using my convoluted meandering approach. I pulled all the original elements onto my Procreate canvas and arranged them to see how the elements would have looked had I tried bringing them together ahead of time. I'm really excited to try this storyboarding technique in my next painting.  I'm know my heart  will continue to connect to  my paintings revealing their stories bit by bit just as we have in the past.

 I love that we are all a community of artists who love to share our secrets and gifts with one another! Each and every artist has their our unique artistic magic that no one else can replicate and when we can share our processes to help one another grow the whole world benefits from the glow of beauty and happiness in our hearts. Thank you Annie Hammon for sharing your soulful storytelling!

xo robin bird