John Michael Morehead

Little Peek of Artist Blogs

jmichm — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 19:48:54 +0000

Art Blog 4 U provide lists of artist blogs that you can check out to get an idea of how an artist blog would look like. I have only checked out several artist blog links but hope to go through rest to give me an idea on how to begin my new art blog portfolio through either TypePad or MSNspace with a link to my portfolio web site that I’ve been working on. Who knows maybe having both blog and website might have a better chance of improving my goal of either sell art pieces or getting them into galleries than having either one of blog or website.

Good Information On Artist Blogs

jmichm — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 16:22:12 +0000

Only if I came cross this Artist Blogs: Why Every Artist Needs a Blog several months ago, I probably would have done my blog a little different or chose blog over website as my portfolio. Not only that, the website, The ARTrepreneur where I came cross the bog, also provide good resources such as knowledges, marketing, self-help, financial planning, as career for all kind of artists.

Also, check out How to Increase Traffic to your Artist Blog which explain steps on submitting to Blog Directories, to “ping” your blog that allow search engines to know your blogs have been updated, how to optimize each blog posts, building your links, creating RSS feeder and so on.

Your Everyday Sketchbook

jmichm — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 19:41:20 +0000

I’ve been hearing this from all my former Art teachers about the importance of keeping sketchbook or art journal handy. I never really see the point of keeping sketchbook with me everywhere till recently whenever I came up with ideas, I’m always trying to find a pen and piece of paper whether it’s on post-it or napkin, and sketch my ideas then they end up missing somewhere. I’ve been keeping my sketchbook handy, not necessary chain to my wrist 24/7 but where I can easily grab it and sketch my ideas in it.

Reasons for sketchbook is to sketch your ideas, write down names of artist whose work caught your attention, print out their work and insert in sketchbook, write a note to yourself, make list of ideas, inspirational quotes, etc in case you ever run into ‘Artist Block’, I don’t know if there’s a term for that, but you can go through your sketchbook, who knows it might helps with new ideas.

Get Creative With Shredded Paper

jmichm — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 04:28:31 +0000

After two long months of putting one of my art project on hold, I finally made time to finish the project. The art piece is measured at 72″ by 48″ with shredded yellow pages and white pages phone books. Why let these books go to waste if I rarely need the phone books when there’s yellowpages.com and whitepages.com?

Creating Successful Portfolio

jmichm — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 15:26:05 +0000

I came cross couple resources explaining how to create a successful art/photography portfolio, and how to present your portfolio to galleries, buyers, collectors, or anyone in art business. Not only portfolio should contain artist’s best works, but artist should also carefully select the best work that represent his or her vision as an artist. Artists should understand the importance of art business with galleries, collectors, and buyers. Artists should be familiar with how each galleries do their business, what they look for in a portfolio, and what type of art do they show, so artists can know how best to approach them when creating and presenting portfolio.

Here are couple resources with more information on creating and presenting portfolio:

Artist Portfolio Guideline
Getting Your Art Into A Gallery

Air Show Not For Serious Photographer

jmichm — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 21:14:08 +0000

I was invite to go to Fort Worth Alliance Air Show this past weekend and it was my first time. I’ve always been fascinated by warplanes such as Apache, F-22 Raptor, and B-52 Stratofortress, but unfortunate, the event itself wasn’t what I was hoping for. The main reason I attended was for photography. I’ve always visualize the finished photos of warplanes for the past couple years but didn’t get the opportunity for photos till this past weekend. Due to how the planes were arranged for the show and especially the visitors surrounding the planes kept me from accomplish that goal. Hopefully I’ll get another chance but definitely not at the Air Show. On the positive side of the event, I got to see them up close, and check out the interior of small planes as well as walk inside the B-52 Stratofortress. The air show where performers such as US Navy Blue Angels showed off their tricks with the plane in the sky was pretty electrify. Here are couple photos that I took and played with to give them an interest looking images.

Re-creating a Narrative

jmichm — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 20:27:46 +0000

It has been said that all photographs have some form of narrative in them. We look at photos and try to detect a ‘story’ imagining the moments before and after the image was created. Inspired by David Levinthal’s work, I use photography to re-create a story of a knight and the dragon. I tried to carefully approach the subjects to make it look more realistic by using candle as only lighting source. I moved the candle around as well as shot pictures from different angles and distance between camera and the subject; this one came out the closest to realistic. Only thing need to work on is the background, probably should have add some rocks to reflect cave-like.

Artist Statement Not That Easy

jmichm — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 18:10:24 +0000

Writing an Artist Statement is not as easy as I was hoping because as an artist, it is not easy to describe the painting or photo in words. I spent time looking at several of artist’s statements and on-line resources to try to come up with something, yet I still am looking at a blank white page. I thought to myself that the purpose of Artist Statement is to allow these people to get to know about an artist behind his/her works, and that’s when I realized that I already did an ‘artist statement’ with these two earlier posts (‘Art Within Me‘ and ‘Seeing Through Lens‘), now all I need to do is put these two together and then I got myself an Artist Statement.

Here are couple resources on how to write an Artist Statement:

Artist Foundation.org
About.com

Key Progress On Being Good Artist

jmichm — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 17:26:40 +0000

I came cross this post ‘Personal Coach for Artist‘ with a link to a full newsletter by Robert Genn which provided a list on steps a person would take to make a progress on becoming a good artist. I took a look at those list to see where I am at this point; it appears that I’m a long way from successfully all these steps. A huge working space would be nice since I’m using apartment balcony as studio because some of materials I use contain some chemical that shouldn’t be use indoor without a venting system. Between work, school and two spoiled kids, I meant dogs, and with so many ideas running through my mind; only if I have extra time to do some art works. It would be nice to have more than enough supplies at hand, but I always make sure I got enough of everything needed just for the next project. I always think of my work as an exercise and experiment to get creative with different materials or style in order to improve on upcoming art projects. Hopefully I’ll be able to improve some of these steps in the near future.

Food Coloring Not Just for Food

jmichm — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 18:23:27 +0000

I’ve been experimenting with different materials to create interesting art piece and this time was with food coloring. All it took was food coloring in 4 different colors (red, yellow, green and blue), two flat glasses and a digital camera. On a clean glass sitting on top of white surface, squeeze several drops of each food coloring (also suggest try several drops of water between colors which I did not do with image shown below) around the center of a glass, then lightly put a second glass on top and you’ll notice that all 4 colors will start to spread around to the edge of both glasses creating interesting art effect. Use digital camera to shoot some pictures and then print on a photo sheet, you just created your own art pieces. It can be repeat by cleaning both glasses, repeat the process above which will give a different results.