art book coming soon

I'm awaiting a proof copy of a book I put together containing many of my best paintings [might be a couple weeks until it arrives]. It'll be called "Leaning Toward Abstract," and if all looks good, I'll put it up for sale at that time [just in time for Christmas!]. It will be a small, 7x7" full-color 36 page (or somewhere around there) book available in softcover or hardcover, price to be determined. I wrote a bunch of words and stuff in it just to fill some space, but it's got a bunch of paintings and should make a good coffee table type book. Anyway, more on that later.

On Viewing Artwork

It never fails to irk me to hear someone say upon viewing one of my paintings, "oh, I could never do anything like that - I'm not creative." It bothers me because I believe that a creative spark is in all of us: it's just a matter of digging it out and bringing it to the top. For some it may be a matter of several art classes taught by just the right teacher, for others maybe a simple word of encouragement is all that is needed. This self-deprecating, defeatist attitude - spoken in jest or otherwise - may be part of the reason many people can't appreciate art or don't know how to view art: they have already decided that art is something foreign to themselves, something unknown and therefore too difficult.

It could be that it is the artist in me that when faced with a piece of artwork that is challenging - a masterpiece, made by some god of creativity, unparalleled perhaps to anything in my own artwork - my first reaction is to study it further. To locate the lesser brush strokes, to see the stuff it is made of, the spark of creativity behind it - if not to see how it was created, at least to prove that it was painted by a mere mortal and thus a possibility. All artwork, seen in this light, is something to study deeper, something to admire on a technical plane and perhaps to spur one's own creativity onward. I'm not saying we should all become artists, just that connecting with our own creativity is an essential component in viewing artwork. So, step one: connect with our own creativity. Got it. What else?

I suppose the next thing to address is how one feels about a painting. Do you like it? Simple question, but not a bad place to start. If the answer is no - you don't get off that easy - you might try to determine why you don't like it, what aspects don't you like. This is an essential skill when viewing artwork: the critical eye. What is it about the painting that is not quite right? What can be improved? Moving a shape here or there, punching up the center of interest, a color change, perhaps? Sometimes a painting requires closer inspection and more time. I call these paintings, "difficult paintings." Sometimes, after closer study, I come to appreciate the creativity behind a difficult painting. Sometimes it just eludes me, and I must admit I still don't like it and don't know what the so-called artist was thinking. That's all right. Move on.

So what if you do like the painting? Same process. What do you like about it? What works? For that matter, what doesn't? The critical eye. Is it the color choice, the subject matter, the simple mood of the painting? Again, studying a painting, one can come to appreciate and connect with a painting all the more. One can also change one's mind about a painting: why not?

Connecting with our own creativity and developing a critical eye are both broad subjects - veritable rabbit holes waiting to be explored - and I encourage you to explore the subject in greater detail [the Internet is a good place to start]. It is interesting to note that these two steps are intimately connected to one another. When being critical of a painting, you are delving into your own creativity and seeing the possibilities in your mind's eye. This also allows you to identify those things that don't quite measure up to the better ideas you may be imagining.

a few design considerations

This is a longish post about one or two aspects of design - good for any aspiring artist or backyard photographer to know [could even make your digital snapshots into masterpieces . . . maybe it could.] To read more, click

This is the still unnamed painting that will serve as our demonstration painting. As it stands right now, I'm pretty happy with the design aspects of it, although there is a delicate balance to it with no real center of interest.

Center of interest, or focal point, is a very important principle of design. To put it simply, the center of interest is where the eye of the viewer is drawn to the most in a work of art. This can be achieved easily enough by putting a big red blob of paint in the center of an otherwise white canvas - and that would work [and probably has been done before] - but by adding some more principles of design, we can make a much more interesting painting.

Step one: squint. I'll do it for you:

There. I will often squint at my paintings to "blur away" the details and get to the heart of the matter when it comes to center of interest. Now, looking at the blurry painting, we can agree there are a few places toward which the eye is drawn [this can be a bit subjective, of course, but bare with me]. There are three points of interest that I can see:

The first is the point on the left, then my eye travels to the right, and then to the top - lather, rinse, repeat. The fact that the viewers' eye moves around the painting is a great thing when it comes to design - if this were just a blob of red in the center of a white canvas, it would take me a second or two to see everything there is to see of the painting . . . in other words, letting the eye travel around the painting gives the painting more depth, more interest.

One thing I considered, was adding more interest to the lower right side of the painting [I don't know, I guess I didn't like the left side getting the first of my eyes' attention]. So, many times when considering the center of interest "balance" of a painting, I will squint and hold up my brush [in this case where the yellow square is, in the above picture] to get a sense of what it would look like with something in this spot or anywhere else I may be considering. One reason I considered this spot in particular, is that this is one of four "sweet spots" in a painting, as far as design is concerned. Here is how you find the "sweet spots" in a painting:

Mentally, draw a tic-tac-toe grid over the image, and everywhere the lines intersect . . . well, there's yer sweet spots. [By the way, this works great for photography as well, so listen up!] The reason these are the sweet spots in a painting, has something to do with the inner workings of the human brain and perception and the like - matters I do not understand completely, but here's the way I see it: Consider the red blob in the center of a painting scenario . . . boring, right? Why? Because it's like a bullseye, a target - might as well be the logo for a national department store. Too static.

Well, what would make a more dynamic design? put something off to one side or the other, right? Right. Same goes for top to bottom - it's more dynamic if it's higher or lower than dead center. But put something all the way to the edge and you get decreasing returns. Anyway, that's the way I see it. I don't think about all that, of course - it's just built into how I see the world as an artist. [I thought of all that already during many an art class]

One final note about the principles of design. These "rules" are something that is crucial for every artist to know - there are no downsides to knowing them, at any rate - but it's also, in my opinion, crucial for every artist to know how and when to break these rules. That's what's great about these principles of design. Meant to be broken - there I said it. In my unnamed painting, for instance: although there is no bullseye effect, there also are no obvious points of interest in any of the four sweet spots either. But it's still an interesting, enjoyable painting for me.

Well, that's all for this little lesson. It's a pretty basic concept. And it works:

1. Squint.


2. Find the points of interest.


3. Does your eye travel around the painting?


4. Would adding anything in the sweet spots help?

Robot Graveyard fiction

I dabble in many things - painting, songwriting, computers, humor, gardening, cooking - and this story is just one of those things. The name of this series came from a series of paintings I painted under the moniker, Robot Graveyard. Presently, I do not know where “Robot Graveyard” the story will lead, but I will dutifully follow for as long as I can stay interested in it. No guarantees. I’m just dabbling afterall.

What is it? Robot Graveyard is an episodic Science Fiction story of robots and humans and space travel and . . . oh, whatever comes to mind as the story unfolds. I will be releasing one episode a week for now (every Monday, I believe), unless something changes. Here's the link: robotgraveyard.wordpress.com (first episode is currently online as I write this)

I have been getting some help from a friend of mine, Steve Murphy, as well as a few of my brothers. Thanks guys! Anyway, check it out, if you're interested.

a marathon, not a sprint

Some paintings are sprints, some are marathons. I've been facing this issue head-on for the past few months now. In the past, the majority of my paintings have been landscapes, with pet portraits coming in at the number two spot. And these type paintings, combined with my painting style -- throwing down paint, haphazardly, and then changing it until it's finished -- usually make for a quick and satisfactory painting process. A sprint. Not much room for second guessing, complaining, complicated emotions, or feelings of utter despair and resentment. You know: quick and clean. That's a sprint.

But commissioned portraits, that's another story for me. Here you have a person asking for a faithful, albeit artful, reproduction of [usually] a loved one -- a son or daughter, a husband or wife -- someone important to the person. That's a lot to consider when addressing the canvas [does one address a canvas?]. These commissioned portraits -- as opposed to portraits I've painted just for the fun and practice of it, which are themselves usually sprints -- more often than not become long drawn-out affairs. What's worse: many times I find myself three-fourths of the way into the painting process staring at a stiff, lifeless figure with a stilted smile and eyes too stern to be looked upon with affection. Disaster. That's about the time I put the painting away for a weekend and work on something else. I tell myself it's a marathon painting. I've seen this before, and I'll see it again. A marathon, not a sprint.

I know I'm not a portrait painter, and that's part of it. I have not devoted all my time to perfecting the human form on canvas; the nuanced facial features and lifelike realism achieved by such artists can be a stunning thing indeed. I'm no slouch, of course: I can and do eventually get to a point of satisfaction in a commissioned portrait -- and some don't actually stretch that far into the realm of marathon. Those that do, however, give me pause; make me take a step back and readjust my perception of the thing. This is a marathon, now. Not a sprint. I guess that's just the way things are [is it just me? I don't know] at any rate, I've learned not to see this as a lack of motivation or creativity on my part [which I have, wrongly, thought in the past] but as a perception issue. Could it be that there is a link between perception and motivation? Could be . . .

Anyway, that's what has been on my mind lately. Do you have anything to add? If so, leave a comment [comments can be quite motivating for me].

GTD update

This year I started organizing my life a little more (motivated by David Allen's "Getting Things Done" system), and I thought I'd post a quick update for anyone interested. I am still on track with it all - even though the geek-fueled, initial motivation has faded away, I am left with a daily system that consistantly satisfies the geek within. Perhaps this sytem wouldn't work with everyone, but surely many aspects of it are compatible with every personality type. The best part about it that I've observed is that when I procrastinate (yes, it still happens frequently), instead of wasting mindless hours of [insert favorite time wasting activity here], I tend to switch to another task on my list . . . busy work, perhaps, but something that needed to get done anyway (that's why I put it on the list, afterall).

Go figure: if throughout the day I find myself doing a lot of housework it's usually (ironically) because I'm being a slacker.

ubuntu

So I just thought I'd take a moment to show off my geeky side and talk about how much I've been enjoying playing around with ubuntu. I've been dual-booting along with XP, and I've just about got it configured to where it's quite usable on a daily basis [I'm typing this blog post from within ubuntu].

Backing up for a moment [and keeping things as simple as possible]: linux is an operating system [like MS Windows is an OS] and ubuntu is a distribution of linux [like Windows XP is a distribution of MS Windows]. Unlike Windows, most linux distributions are free to dowload and install [...and alter and customize and share with friends and even sell to others] - and so it is with ubuntu. Dual-booting means I've got both ubuntu and windows on my computer [on different partitions of my hard drive] and I can choose which one I want to use on boot-up.

Bottom line: I wouldn't hesitate to suggest this as a daily operating system for my mom [how's that for confidence?] - though she is fairly adept around computers... One caveat, however: I would need to spend a little extra configuration time upfront so that everything works as it should. That said, it's rock-solid, full-featured and open source.

wessforeman.com version 1.7 is complete

I've finished the gallery portion of wessforeman.com, giving the website a much more polished look and making it easier to find, read about, and purchase paintings. Check it out and let me know what you think of it.

renovation continues

The road to wessforeman.com version 2 is going swimmingly [that means good] - in fact, with this next phase, "the gallery overhaul", the site will be skipping from version 1.2 directly to version 1.7 [that's how big a jump this will be].

Stay tuned to this channel for more...

wessforeman.com version 1.2

I've just completed the first phase of renovation of the website [wessforeman.com version 1.2], and it looks fantastic if I do say so myself. Among other things, I made the simple menu along the top look cleaner [the links change colors as the pointer hovers over them]. The other obvious addition is the right hand sidebar where I've added a place for news and for links of interest, as well as a few photos [which I hope to change out from month to month].

Overall I'm happy with what I've got, though I may tweak it a little. Phase two will be an overhaul of the gallery - showing available paintings first, adding sizes and prices, etcetera. In phase three I will tackle the guestbook - I'm not totally sure what happened, but I think my web host, VizaWeb, updated the guestbook module which threw it into a default template which does not match the rest of wessforeman.com . . . anyway, this is what I will be addressing.

renovation work

I'm working on a renovation of the website [wessforeman.com]. I need a way to show the paintings I have available [and for sale] in my studio right now. As it stands the gallery shows some of my better paintings of the past - some are in the studio, some are at the Louisiana Furniture Gallery in Ponchatoula and a great percentage of them are already sold . . . not to mention the fact that I don't have titles, sizes and prices listed.

Another thing I'm considering is adding some short videos - studio tours, painting how-to's, etcetera - I've just purchased a larger memory card for my digital camera so I can now take useable videos.

Check back often for these changes, and let me know if you have any ideas for me.

paintings with poetry

I've had this idea for years now but have only now gotten around to it: juxtaposing my paintings with short clips of poetry, or poetic-like prose [call it what you want]. The idea being that viewing one might add something to the other and vice versa. Our paradigms - how we see the world - are hardwired into our lives, and I think this combination of words and images has the tasty potential of adding deeper layers to the simple act of viewing a painting.

Appearing high in my scattershot list of hobbies - almost as high as painting - is songwriting, accompanied by passable guitar chords. A few of these recent song lyrics have made for a nice grab-bag of sorts for these first "paintings-with-poetry"s I'll be posting over the next week or two. These "lyrics" are not meant to be great literary masterpiecs, mind you - quite the contrary, they are not meant to stand on their own at all but simply add another layer to the painting being viewed.

Enjoy, and please leave a comment!

art is about the art

Sometimes it's okay to create something because you like it - that's all - you just like it. There is no deeper meaning, no heartfelt emotional or philosophical underpinnings; none of that. You just like it. And that's perfectly okay.

I've heard it said that some artwork is harder to view than other artwork, and I guess I agree with that. I can see that in movies for instance. There are some movies, though violent and perhaps bloody [i.e. hard to view], that still manage to draw me in as a viewer because of the craftmanship of the art . . . be it the scripting, the acting or directing. Whatever that something is, I perceive those movies as art. And that's what it is: perception. Art, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

Art is about the art. And in creating that art, an artist puts some of himself there on the canvas. And that part is not necessarily a logical process. Sometimes it just happens.

"Any artist should be grateful for a naive grace which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately." - Saul Bellow

Reading Van Gogh

I've begun reading from "Theories of Modern Art" in order to broaden my knowledge of artists and the major art movements of history. The book is a six-hundred-plus page Juggernaut used as textbooks in college art classes apparently [I may have had a class that required this book, but that's beyond my memory - and was undoubtedly beyond my interest to read at the time].

Anyway, it has been interesting reading letters from [the now-famous artist] Vincent van Gogh writing about his artwork and thoughts on art in general. The letters - written mostly to his brother Theo after leaving the bustling art scene of Paris for the solitude of Arles - create a sort of diary of creative investigation. Amid his rants on subject matter and the specific color choices he's made in paintings as well as his admiration of Japanese painting. I see the same electric yearning of creativity that I often experience when I delve into my own artwork and discover this simple but elusive thing called style.

"When the thing represented is, in point of character, absolutely in agreement and one with manner of representing it, isn't it just that which gives a work of art its quality?" - Vincent van Gogh

Pandora

Those with broadband who like to listen to music from your computer should check out pandora. It's a customizable streaming radio station. You can create "stations" based on songs or musical artists - just put in your favorite song and pandora will create a station of musically equivilent songs. It's very impressive. And it's free.

Starvation

Dieting is not complicated: eat less calories than you can burn in a day and then repeat daily. Counting calories, though not very hard with all the prepackaged/properly labeled foods available, always seemed to me too much of a hassle to contemplate. I am now, however, counting calories with the best of them and loving every minute of it. It's the logical [aka nerdly] part of my brain that loves keeping track of numbers, and when I serindipitously stumbled upon "The Hacker's Diet" online book I was hooked. Here's the premise: eat less calories than you can burn in a day and then repeat daily . . . and keep track of it all . . . "Programmer, hack thyself."

Some people will not like this diet: there's no tricks or taboo foods or 8 step process. If you're the type of person who loves keeping track of things [as in experiment data], this diet will motivate you to keep going . . . because you're keeping track of yourself.

Side note: the salad pictured is what I had for lunch today - I was pretty proud of it because of the great food to calorie ratio and general enjoyment I had in eating it - here's how I made it:

• create tortilla bowl in microwave [two minutes or so]


• add lettuce


• sauerkraut, 4 Tbls


• a little salsa


• homus


• and top with yogurt

Yummy. And only 246 calories! [that's a pretty low calorie count]

Between Inspiration

Inspiration - definition 1a: "Stimulation of the mind or emotions to a high level of feeling or activity." *

This is the definition I normally use when making such statements as: I've got no inspiration, I lack any inspiration, or I ain't got no more inspiration. Today I'm doing a lot of busy work, avoiding the reality that I am uninspired, unmotivated to do anything painting related. That said, I've learned not to let this bother me too much; there are plenty of other things that need to be done around here, and a person can't be inspired all the time. This is the theory I'm going with anyway, and I have some thoughts to back this theory.

First, if a person is always inspired, is that person inspired or is that just the norm? Hmmm. Second, inspiration comes out of those times when we're uninspired; downtime is the ground crew that maintains the launchpad . . . and inspiration is the rocket preparing to launch, of course. ["cringe" what a horrible analogy] Finally, looking at definition 6:

Inspiration - definition 6. "The act of drawing in, especially the inhalation of air into the lungs." *

Inspiration is dependant upon expiration, and vice versa. In and out. Going up and going down. Inspiration and . . . expiration [uninspiration?]. Linguistics aside, there is much to be said for balance. Balance is good. [too much of a good thing, and all that] We need to be inspired and motivated, yes, but we also need times of reflection, times for sharpening the saw, times for rest.

Ecclesiastes 3 TNIV

¹ There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:

² a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,

³ a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,

⁴ a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,

⁵ a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,

⁶ a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,

⁷ a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,

⁸ a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

* The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. (2003). Retrieved March 17 2006

Motivation Revisited

Creativity Week is almost here -- three days away, in fact. I'm excited. So excited I find myself thinking of creative things and having to reign in that creative spark, saving it for next week [can a person bottle-up creativity? is it safe to do so?]. But can I overcome my tendencies toward procrastination and pull off a full, action-packed week of creativity? Stay tuned . . .

Motivation is admittedly elusive in my day to day life. I tend to have many hobbies -- many, many things I love to do [and so little time]. More often than not, I end up getting nothing done. So, I am a little concerned about Creativity Week.

However. The show must go on. Creativity Week will be a success.

Motivation. One of my main goals for Creativity Week is to get an insight into the processes involved in motivation. That's really my main reason for establishing this whole creativity week thing: self analysis. If I were more motivated, I would be unstoppable in whatever I wanted to do with my life. That is a fact. [luckily, I would only use my powers for good]

There is a point, however, when motivation, creativity, and procrastination are just empty words -- what counts is action. Get up and do something.

“Do or do not . . . there is no try.� -Yoda

Creativity Week: Feb. 26th - Mar. 4th -- what are you planning to do?

Creativity Week

It's not a very . . . creative title, I'll give you that, and the only references I found with Google were elementary school projects [you know, paper-mache masks, sculptures, et cetera]. But this is what I had in mind: a week of creativity overload, multiple instances of creative projects throughout each day of one particular week, documented on this blog as the week progresses. Original? Maybe not [those elementary schools beat me to it, for one], but it sure sounded like a good idea.

Now, I know many when confronted with a creative task throw up their hands in defeat before giving it a try -- forgive the mockery, "...ooooh, I'm not a creative person..." -- I just thought I'd invite you to join me in giving this creativity-week-thing a try. What can you do, you ask? I'll tell you:

• post a comment below: I need ideas [you know, creative ideas -- lots!]


• prepare yourself for creativity week -- get any supplies you might need ahead of time


• have some way of documenting your creative projects during the week -- this can be a simple log of events on paper


• if you'd like to share, email me a brief run-through and any photos you took -- I'll post them here along with my own report

That's it. Oh, and I need to decide on a week . . . next week -- there! So, February 26th through March 4th [my birthday] will be my Creativity Week. Okay, I've got a week to prepare for this so I'll really need your help. Please post a comment below, giving me ideas on some creative things I could do and, of course, encouragement -- it's gonna be a long week.

Reward Awaiting Accomplishment

Several years ago I built this very computer on which I'm typing. Since then I built one for my mother and one for my brother and assisted my cousin in building his own. I've tinkered with three or four older models around the house, trading parts and trying different operating systems, never satisfied with leaving "well enough" alone in regards to computers. So all of this I've disclosed as background information to my present dilemma: I'm itching to upgrade once again.

I've thought it all out -- a four-phase roll out plan, each stage following the next in logical order, the first phase being the most expensive but offering the greatest increase in performance [a triple bypass operation concerning the motherboard, ram and cpu].

So here I am, the situation clear: I need a goal to reach, something just lofty enough to warrent a phase-one reward [that's all I ask]. For the reward is waiting; it cannot be ignored for long. The reward is waiting.