Fossicking Friday

Twice a year in Brisbane, Life Line has a charity Bookfest, the largest second hand book sale in world.  Bookfest is my idea of heaven on earth - hours and days rooting around in mountains of dusty pre-loved books. I was sharing my enthusiasm for this event with a friend who replied, "Gross!! All that dust and grime! I am just not a fossicker!"

Well I am.

When I am not fossicking at book sales or rummaging through charity shops, I am foraging on the web. Patiently wading through site after site, looking for the good stuff! And there certainly is a lot of good stuff out there.

Here are this week's gems:

• In my previous post, Turn a good painting idea into a great one, I used onions as an example. In that post, I linked to several onion paintings, but have since discovered another example on a fabulous oil painting site by artist, Delmus Phelps. The oil painting demonstration of onions is done in layers, in the tradition of the Old Masters. This link will take you to the first page of the demonstration then follow his links to see the rest.

• Click on this link to read about Planning a painting, a list of the essential decisions to make before you start. This advice would be particularly helpful for the novice painter, but I will be following it myself. 

• Annabel Candy of Get in the Hot Spot says about writer's block:

"Have you heard of writer’s block? But builders don’t get blocked and unable to lay another brick. Teachers don’t run out of things to teach. I can’t think of any other job where people make excuses for not doing their work. If you’re having trouble writing forget everything else I told you in the Blog Writing Magic series and just write what comes into your head. You can worry later about if you can make a blog post out of it, if anyone would want to read it or what your colleagues will think when they find out about your quirks and quibbles. Just write."

I think this is equally fitting for artists experiencing a creative slump.

• Click on The Ross Fountain, miniature watercolour painting to see a beautiful painting by Tracy Hall, that's only 3.25" x 2.25" in size! Such gorgeous detail, I love it - I think I might try a miniature myself soon!

• Alyson B Stanfield of the excellent Artbizblog  writes this about motivation:

WHY do you want to show at this or that gallery?
WHY do you want to sell more art?
WHY do you want to register for a class?

Motivation requires motive.

If you don’t know why you want to accomplish certain things, you’re going to have a hard time prioritizing and moving forward.

• It seems so obvious when she writes it out like that. I struggle with motivation, and have never asked myself these kinds of questions.

• Wildlife artist, Kalon Baughan's paintings are a real feast for the eye. I particularly like the way he paints fur!

• 8 bad habits that crush your creativity and stifle your success is a great post by Dean Rieck on the influential Copyblogger site.  Advice for writers that artists would do well to heed.

I hope you find much pleasure fossicking through these fascinating sites.