A Day with Grammy

Jenna spent the night with us on Monday, and on Tuesday her first day of summer vacation as a third grader entailed a visit to my digital photography show and a fine juried exhibition of the Western Ohio Watercolor Society (WOWS)at the Town & Country Fine Art Center in Kettering. She loves to look at art and point out what she likes--she has a discerning eye. In her suitcase she had packed a picture she drew over the weekend--a big, juicy apple and a bunch of bananas, life-size and in color. I was astonished. An artist at the gallery recognized her from the watercolor I included in The New Creative Artist>. She's used to that. We ran a few errands, then picked up a kit from JoAnn Fabrics so I could begin teaching her to sew. She made a monkey and named him "Banana-Split."

Ben is at it again

Ben Rayman, the publisher of Art-to-Art-Palette, has republished a collection of reviews of The New Creative Artist. (Scroll down to the bottom of the page to read the reviews.) Ben and his associates have continued developing the online magazine after a disastrous fire that burned his house and office and his wife, artist Pat Rayman's art studio to the ground last year. After building a new house and replacing three computers, printers and other electronics, Ben now focuses on the online Palette, a compendium of art news, features, and artist's profiles primarily centered around Ohio and the Midwest. Ben's ongoing support of the arts is greatly appreciated, as well as his enthusiasm for my books and teaching. Thanks, Ben.

Book Reviews

Google Alerts notified me of a book review of The New Creative Artist and Confident Color. Thanks, Brenda Thebeau. I enjoyed reading Brenda's blog eSynergy and have added it to my blog list.

Way cool

My son sent me these images from Denver International Airport just a few minutes ago. He took them on his iPhone. I'm psyched. I don't suppose the Mosaic shop will mind getting free publicity from this. Now I'm wondering where this book will turn up next. Where's Waldo? I'm over the moon.

Airport Books

Today I had an email from a teacher who found The New Creative Artist in an airport bookstore. That is so amazing to me. I saw the original Creative Artist once in an airport, maybe 15 years ago, but I rarely see art-instruction books there, let alone oversize books like the new one. This made my day, which hasn't been all that exciting, with laundry as the main event.

The New Creative Artist South of the Border

In Central America, actually. Margarita Hernandez (on the right) of Honduras, who attended my workshop in Plantation, Florida, in March, spent nearly a year working at her home with a group of eleven women artists using the activities in my book. First, she had to translate the activities into Spanish so they could understand them. (I wish I knew Spanish as well as she knows English.) At the end of the class, she presented each woman with a certificate of completion. Here are a few photos she sent me of her class. I asked permission to put them on my blog--she says they will be delighted to be internationally "famous" on the Web.

Great day to start a workshop

It's sunny and bright here in Florida, not humid, just right. The workshop begins a little later this morning, so I have some time to relax. My aching bones are enjoying the warm air. Last night we sat out on a restaurant patio and ate pizza with one of the workshop students, a woman from Honduras. She told me she had formed a group to work through The New Creative Artist, which she translated into Spanish to teach them how to do the exercises. They worked every week for 36 weeks, straight through the book. That blows my mind. Can't wait to get started with the class this morning.

Creative Flow on Psychology Today blog

Susan Perry, a writer for Psychology Today blog, interviewed me a short while ago and has posted the interview on "Inspire Your Creative Brain Via the Visual Arts". Susan was inspired by my book, The New Creative Artist. While you're at it, add her to your blog links, if you're interested in creativity.

A Butterfly Mandala

Taos artist Jerry Walter has been Photoshopping with The New Creative Artist again: "This morning I was in the garden with the digital camera and this butterfly was working hard in the larkspur and it really wanted to pose for me. So I thought "What a wonderful subject for a torn edge mandala" (Page 70). So about 20 pictures later, here it is."

The color contrast of the blue larkspur and yellow butterfly is really effective. Although we usually think of blue and orange as being the complementary colors, that's in reference to color mixing. Hilary Page lists blue and yellow as "visual complements," which have more impact when juxtaposed. I love it!

Photoshopping with The New Creative Artist

Several days ago I received email from Jerry Walter that brought a big smile to my face. Here is the content of his three emails, along with pictures that he and his friends, Rick Finney and Bev Teagle in Taos, New Mexico, have created using my book as their source of ideas:

"We want you to know how we are using your book. The three of us get together once each week for 4 or 5 hours (!) in front of a computer and work at Photoshop. One of us ran across the 1990 edition of The Creative Artist at a used book store, and we decided your guidance would stimulate us and lead us along the path to artistic Photoshop endeavors. So we each bought copies of The New Creative Artist. We're taking it slowly -- maybe 10 pages per week. During the week we each work at our own computers to create images, develop ideas, and face roadblocks. At our mutual sessions we "Share the Ride", discuss unique situations, solve problems, and work out tutorials. So far we are only on page 41, but we already know the path you are laying out is the right one. We find that so many of your words and thoughts apply directly to Photoshop. This would be a good example of experimenting with techniques and tools we've been afraid to use on something "good". We'll check in again to share our progress. Thanks for this wonderful book!"

"That first image I sent was my creation. Here is one of Bev's, which is just about as autobiographical as you can get, inspired by the earlier part of The New Creative Artist. I think we decided we were going too fast in your book, because each page gets each of us thinking about a new idea we'd like to explore. Each of us is somewhat proficient in Photoshop; it is the artistic guidance that we are looking for, and we think we found it."


"Okay, just one more. This is Rick's piece, combining the same image multiple times. Rick is the most playful of the three of us in our little Photoshop group. He takes your suggestion to the limits, and if we don't have differences, variations and patterns, we create them."

"I recently took a short writing class from author Natalie Goldberg. She helps her students to ignore criticism (often imagined) from the outside world, and also ignore the inner critic, which she calls "Monkey Mind" -- that little person sitting on your shoulder that tells you you can't do it, you can't write, you can't create, you can't be introspective and write about what's inside you. But with her writing exercises, and practice, practice practice, you find that indeed you can do it. So far I've seen that same philosophy reflected in your book, frequently."

Thanks for writing and sending the images, Jerry. It means so much to me when people write me about how they're using my books. This makes it all worthwhile. These images are so exciting. Now I'm wondering if I could do more with Photoshop by using my own book to generate ideas to get started. Hmm.

Generating ideas for artwork

Recently I had an email from a fan of The New Creative Artist, Mark Spall of Vancouver, B.C., Canada. He has a nifty idea for working up ideas for new watercolors. Mark says, "I filled my cork board with little 5 inch square pieces of paper. I have 24 in total, and what I wanna do is make a sketch one at a time on each of them from a vision in my mind of what I would like to watercolor. Then when my board is full of sketches I can choose which ones to design color schemes for on watercolor paper, and then after that stage have one break-though after the other. Hope it works." Sounds like a great idea to me. Mark describes his creative process in three phases. "The first one is to do many thumbnail sketches on 5 inch square pieces of paper. I chose to do up to 24 for my project. All you're focusing on at this stage is the proportion, light, and shadow. I have put my sketches up side by side on my cork board but you can store them in whichever way works best for you. Then in the second phase I decide which thumbnails I would like to design a color scheme for. I select one of my sketches and decide which colors to use and how to use them. I begin painting from my reference sketch. This stage may take more then one try, but once I am satisfied with the proportions I worked out in the first stage and my colors are successful, I'm ready to choose the size I want the final painting to be and proceed to create my masterpiece from my second phase. Once I've completed my painting I'm ready to choose another idea from the cork board to work on." Sounds like a good process to me. Thanks for sharing, Mark.

This made my day

I received this email a couple of days ago. I'm excited to know that teachers are finding The New Creative Artist so helpful. Quoted with permission:

"I wanted to drop a note and let you know that your book is my bible for teaching art. I have 4 children that are in college so I have gone back to teaching. One of my assignments is 8th grade art. After being away from teaching for the past 24 years or so I wasn’t sure how effective I would be or where to start. Then I found and read your book and have developed a wonderful creative and exciting program to teach the principles and elements of art in a highly innovative way. The classes I have are excited about art and are truly enjoying their assignments. I have read through the book a few times now and have developed even more lessons. The colorful artwork and the activities in the book are amazing."

Thank You,
Marian Kuban
Tremont Jr. High School
Tremont, IL

Whatever happened to Nita Leland?

I'm still around. The sinusitis knocked me out for weeks and I'm still a little hung over from it, but at least functioning better now. I've been baby-sitting Daniel four days a week and what a cute little guy he is. I'll try to catch up with the blog over the next few days and see if I can get back to daily blogging. I'm still picking away at some book tasks, but nearly ready to wind them up.

The big news is that The New Creative Artist has been translated into Dutch and published in Holland. I didn't realize it had been acquired, so it was a surprise several days ago to receive a box with five copies. The cover is by Delda Skinner, a Texas artist whose work appears in the book. Foreign publishers often select different art for their book covers. This is always an exciting development. Three of my previous books have also been translated: Exploring Color (German); Creative Collage Techniques (French); the original Creative Artist (Chinese).

New Book Review

Check out this review on Karla's blog "PInK dOtTiEs". Karla has a fun and creative blog, so stay and browse for awhile. She describes her blog as "Craft, Art and life style of a self taught artist." Scroll through her recent blogs to view some clever crafts she discovered on a handcrafted showcase site named Etsy.com.

Charley Parker reviews The New Creative Artist

One of the blogs I read on a regular basis is lines and colors. Charley Parker writes in depth of contemporary art, artists and illustrators and also of museum exhibits and master painters. His reviews include links to many images and references. I learn a great deal from his blog and have linked to it often.

Charley has reviewed The New Creative Artist. His blog audience is probably an edgier group of artists than I wrote the book for, but he nevertheless found it to be worthwhile. It takes a lot of time to do a book review. Thanks to Charley for taking a good look and writing about my book.

The final task for The New Creative Artist

Closing the book on The Book, so to speak. North Light returned all the artwork for the book several weeks ago, but I was in the middle of an attack of shingles that seriously hampered my productivity for nearly a month. Meanwhile, everything else piled up, as well, including bills to pay, my student exhibit at Hithergreen and preparation for a creativity workshop coming up next week in Dallas. Everything seemed to pale in comparison to the job of returning the slides and transparencies to contributing artists. They have been so patient, not nagging me to return their slides. Even though I turned the book in to the editors in September of 2005, we were still juggling illustrations for space and suitability up until the book went to the printer in January or February, 2006. The production people needed the originals for comparison during production. But I finally decided last week to put everything else aside and get the slides returned. More than 400 slides were submitted by 65 artists. I had requested no more than five from each artist. Some artists sent as many as 38 and 29. My policy is to select five of those and ignore the rest. (Please remember, there isn't any advantage to overloading the author, in case you're asked to submit a specific number. It's just an extra burden for the author, who may not appreciate it.) I haven't counted how many were actually in the book, but every artist who submitted had at least one and several had two, three and four. I checked in every slide or transparency against the Art Log I had submitted with the manuscript. Then I sorted them and put them in my alphabetical files. I checked each artist's slides against the permission form they had signed to be sure all the slides were there. Then I printed an insert to place in every package. (I had too many left over, so I guess some didn't get into the packages.) I had already printed mailing labels, so I processed each envelope, selecting one of two sizes of envelope and cutting pieces of cardboard to protect the envelopes from folding in the mail. I stamped each one "Do Not Bend," put on a return address label, weighed it, applied postage and sealed it. Three from Canada and several oversize pieces had to be processed at the post office. The job took me two-and-a-half days of continuous work. It's nerve-wracking work. You might ask why I didn't get help to do this, but I did that once and a slide I had checked in personally turned up missing. I hate it when that happens. Well, it's done, now I hope the PO doesn't lose any of them!

Quilter's Muse Virtual Museum

Thanks to Pat Cummings for her online review of The New Creative Artist. Be sure to bookmark her site for links to quilting and other fiber-arts sites and much more.

And, finally, the Watermark Gallery booksigning.

Small World Department

Ben Rayman, publisher and online webmaster of Art-to-Art Palette tells me he has created a new page for book reviews online. Katrina Exposed by Steven McClansky and Alternative Kilns and Firing Techniques:Raku by James C. Watkins are both reviewed, as well as The New Creative Artist.

Commenting on my upcoming workshop in Manahawkin, New Jersey, for the Pine Shores Art Association, Ben remarked that his wife, Pat, is from the East coast, born and reared in the Passaic-Upper Saddle River area. After college, she ventured West, and took a teaching job with the Delphos, Ohio, City schools some years ago. Ben says Pat soon starts her fall classes at the Wassenburg Art Center. She told him, "Nita's book is really going to come in handy, and become part of my classes and workshops." Pat also teaches occasionally at Wright State University--Lake Campus.

Here is more information on Pat Rayman.

New Creative Artist Reviews

I'm deeply appreciative of the people who've posted reviews on the Art-to-Art Palette Online and on Amazon.com. Palette publisher and editor Ben Rayman suggested that I might want to thank them on my blog. Sounds like a good idea. Thanks to these people for Palette Online reviews: Joan Crawford Barnes, artist, Lima, Ohio; Kate Eglan-Garton, (Indiana) senior editor, Art-to-Art Palette; Dr. Ralph Stuckman, educator, potter, editor, Celina, Ohio; Ben Rayman, editor and publisher, Art-to-Art Palette, print edition; Kay R. Sluterbeck, artist, writer, Van Wert, Ohio; Suzanne Kinstle Nocera, artist, Lima, Ohio; Janet Ravas, artist, Scotia, New York; Patricia Rayman, Ohio artist, educator, founder of Art-to-Art school program.

Many thanks, too, for five-star reviews on Amazon.com by Judy Galford, Sharon, Massachusetts; Pauline H. Healey, Fort Myers, Florida; Joan Barnes, Lima, Ohio; Kate Eglan-Garton, Indiana; and Roy Boston, New Zealand.

To all who are reading these words, please take the time to send an email to your favorite author or write a review on a book that has meant a lot to you. You have no idea how much it means to an author to read these reviews and know that his or her book has become an influence in the life of another person. This is what keeps us going. Thanks a thousand times.