How to Save the World: the originals

As the holidays approach, I’ve been working away in my Etsy shop to get all of my art in there. I just added the remaining eight framed originals from my How to Save the World series. I’ve shown these pieces in a couple of local shops, but this is the first time I’ve made these original drawings available online, so I’m pretty excited.

I spent yesterday afternoon searching my house for good lighting to photograph in. As I’ve mentioned before, I think photographing my art is one of the hardest parts of selling online. I’ve begun to realize that the number one thing that makes photos look good is good lighting. Natural filtered sunlight seems to work best.

I live in a duplex that could also be known as a cave, so I have often resorted to going outside to try and get hold of good lighting. This proves difficult when you are trying to show how a drawing will add to someone’s interior. Also, my yard space is not so beautiful—we rent our home, and don’t plan to make this our permanent residence, so we haven’t spent the time and money to beautify the yard.

Complaints about my house aside, I’m pretty happy with the photos I took yesterday. I ended up working in my bedroom with a little folding table as my “set.” I’m getting to the point where photographing the work is becoming even a little fun—big improvement from how I’ve dreaded it in the past. Now, I have the urge to go back and retry many old photos (perhaps even the very recent ones I took of my new miniature white framed drawings), now that I’ve found a lighting sweet-spot in my house. Ah, if only there were more hours in the day!

Here’s a peek at some of my favorite photos from yesterday. All of these pieces are available in this section of my shop, if you’d like to browse.

Eat Well & Slowly

Grow Your Own Food

Try to Understand Other People

Value Your Time More Than Your Money

Although I couldn’t think of something for all of the pieces, I tried to add some other items to the photos. I’ve found that the photos are more interesting if they put the drawing in some sort of context. I am thankful that my artwork scans well because most of the images I put online are just direct scans that are really able to show the artwork itself, but again and again I see and hear people say how important pictures are for selling online. The more good photos, the better. This makes sense because people can’t touch and see the items in person.
Slowly, as with everything, I’m learning how to do this part of my job. It’s a great learning experience, and I’m glad to be having a little fun with it.

Do you have any great tips about photographing artwork? I’d love to hear them! Post them here!

Respect

Looking through some old drawings and sketches last week, I flipped through the original mini sketchbook for my Saving the World drawings, and I just couldn’t help myself, I had to do one more large one. I thought I had finished with them, but I couldn’t quite understand why I never did an 8 x 10 version of this one about respect, and so got out a bigger sheet of paper and went to work. Here is the final product, and I have a print version available in my shop.

8 x 10 inches, pen and ink

This print is a reminder to me how important it is to respect yourself—I think respecting yourself is perhaps even more important than respecting others. It seems that most of the time, we treat other people better than we treat ourselves—constantly berating ourselves for every mistake or mishap.

Imagine if we all treated ourselves with complete respect—we never beat ourselves up, we supported ourselves completely, let ourselves off the hook even when we wanted to spend the day lounging around eating ice cream. If we treated ourselves with this much care, how would we treat other people? Probably with the same care. If we could see ourselves for the good people we are, how would we view other people? Probably with the same consideration and love.

The bottom line is that everything starts really small and close to home—our internal universe works like a test lab for the rest of our lives. Frustrations with yourself often spiral into frustrations with your friends and family. We could all benefit from testing some of the good stuff on ourselves instead of all of the reprimanding and berating. Respect yourself.

Living Well

I just wanted to let you all know that I just put another set of mini prints/postcards in my shop. I call them the “Living Well” set and they are kind of a greatest hits from my “Saving the World Series”, including a mini version of “Ride Bikes,” “Value Your Time More than Your Money,” “Eat Well & Slowly,” and “Slow Down.” I have to say, printing these up at 3.5 x 5 inches really made them look completely new for me—I think I just love small things.

You can check out all of the pictures in my shop, but here are a couple:

Understanding

You may remember a series I was working on a while back about “How to Save the World.” Well, I finally finished the last piece I intended to do for that series—it had been sitting on my desk unfinished for quite a few weeks while I dashed back and forth between other projects.

You can see the final 8 x 10 below, with a print of it for sale in my shop, and you can see the complete series on my flickr page.

“Try to Understand Other People,” 8 x 10 inches, pen and ink.

These pieces are not exactly subtle, so you can probably guess what this is about. Mainly, I think that a lot of the big and small problems in this world are caused by not understanding other people—either mis-communications or an unwillingness to try to understand what someone else is experiencing or doing.

It is so hard sometimes to put in that effort (I, for one, am pretty stubborn), but if we could all just take that little extra time to think and empathize, we could do a lot of good.

Roses

Here’s another one of my Saving the World drawing series. It is pretty self-explanatory, but how often have you actually stopped and smelled the roses, in the literal sense?

The roses are all on their last leg in my neighborhood, but out and about a couple months ago, the scent of roses would be so strong in places that I found it hard not to stop. I highly encourage it. The following drawing is available as a print in my shop, along with several other sensational signs and drawings.

“Stop and Smell the Roses,” 8×10, pen and ink, and now also, to make the blacks even blacker, Copic marker! Hooray for new tools!

Have you got any exciting new art tools/materials or life tools/materials? I’d love to hear about them.

Grow Your Own Food

The drawing I just finished for my Saving the World Series seems particularly relevant this time of year – and specifically today – as I just picked another basket-full of zucchini and tomatoes from my garden.

We pretty much have zucchini coming out of our ears. If anyone’s got any extremely creative ideas, I would love to hear them. We’ve been sneaking zucchini in wherever possible: zucchini on pizza, zucchini wraps, zucchini sandwiches, zucchini bread, zucchini lasagna. My dad suggested zucchini jam (jokingly, I think), but I can’t quite wrap my head around that one.

Anyway, here it is; my ode to the miracle of growing your own food– the only way you’ll ever completely know where your food came from, and get to literally eat the fruits of your labor:

“Grow Your Own Food,” 8 x 10, pen and ink, prints available in my shop

Mission Accomplished

My How to Save the World Sketchbook is done and on it’s way to the Arthouse Co-op for their sketchbook show! The opening is on August 22 from 7-10. Now, I’m just crossing my fingers that mine actually gets there! I wish I was able to go see them, but sadly it’s not in the budget right now. If you live near Atlanta, Georgia, stop on by and tell me what the show is like. Here is a picture of my finished sketchbook:

I may be finished with the 30 small sketches that make up my little book, but I am still working on enlarging my favorite ones. Here is one that I did today:

“Value Your Time More Than Your Money,” 8 x 10, pen and ink

I wanted to create a drawing about appreciating time instead of stressing about money, because a shortage of money always seems to be rolling around in my head. Money always seems to be a problem– whether you have a lot or a little, but sometimes you have to make a choice to have less money, so you can have the time to do what you love, spend time with people you love, and live the good life (which I think really has less to do with owning objects and more to do with quality time spent). Prints of this drawing will be available over at my shop momentarily.

Keep an eye out for more peeks at my sketchbook. I will be posting larger drawings and possibly, some scans of the small pages.

Also, I have heard that people might be having some difficulties leaving comments on my blog. If you could, drop a comment here, and then I can see if they’re going through. Thanks for looking.

Open Up

“Open Up,” 8×10, pen and ink

Another drawing from my How to Save the World series, hot off the drawing board. I also put the print version for sale in my Shop.

As you may have guessed, this one is about opening up– not in the dentist sense, but in the “open your heart and mind” sense. I don’t necessarily mean you need to start sharing your deepest, darkest secrets- I am trying to say how important it is to open your heart and mind, not even to people, but to the world in general.

So often, we all go along with tunnel vision (I am a compulsive “to do” list writer), thinking only of what we need to accomplish next, what we need to do now, how we can maximize our efficiency. But for me, when I start really thinking of what I want to make my life about, it is not about money or big accomplishments, or being the best at anything– I want to make my life about appreciation: appreciation of this world, of the people in it, of the miracles of being human, of those small moments and things that make everything worth it, of laughter about being alive.

I know it’s a cliche to say we should appreciate each moment, but cliches are often based in truth. Those moments when my heart laughs itself open in the sheer pleasure of being alive, are worth building a life around.

This theme seems to be developing through all of these “How to Save the World” drawings, so I apologize if it seems like my explanation for each one seems the same, but I’m beginning to think I can’t hear these things enough. I suppose I am making these drawings to define and remind myself how I want to live.

I may have said this in my first explanation of this drawing project, but I think that Saving the World starts with saving yourself. That may sound egotistical–it may be egotistical, but it seems to me, that the only person you can really change is yourself, and when we are able to be the best version of ourselves, we are able to really give.

Writing Practice

As you may have noticed by now, if you have been reading my blog for a while, I like to write. It’s funny, I picked up blogging not really thinking about the writing aspect of it, but more for a place to put my art. It’s not until recently that I’ve realized that, maybe subconsciously, the idea of writing random thoughts for a wider audience than myself was really appealing to me. But I’m here today to talk about another type of writing I do, more like meditation than communication to other people: journaling.

“Keep a Journal” 8×10 inches, pen and ink

Journaling can have a bad reputation as some daily duty to get down everything you’ve done that day– like trying to keep a journal while on a vacation, but I got serious about journaling a couple years ago when I read a very well-known book called The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. This is a pretty serious self-help book, but what is wrong with self-help? If we don’t help ourselves, who will?

Anyway, I will admit, this book changed my life, and I really mean it. I’m not a religious person, but beyond the spiritual aspect of this book, Cameron gives creative people concrete practices to tap into and trust their creativity and develop a life that supports their creative pursuits (instead of strangling them).

One of Cameron’s methods is daily journal writing, which she refers to as “morning pages.” She requires that anyone who makes a serious commitment to following the book (for the allotted 3 months) must write 3 pages, long-hand, every morning. I’ve been doing it ever since, with some small lapses in the year and a half since I picked the book up, and this practice continues to deepen my understanding of myself and help me deal with anything that comes my way. These pages are not about writing, they’re about dumping all of your worries out of your brain to make room for the good stuff. For me, this writing has become increasingly about choosing how I want to live each day.

Not surprisingly, I have included “Keep a Journal” as one of my How to Save the World series. I think that if we really take the time to know ourselves, we will be better able to create meaningful relationships and a meaningful life. I have put the print of this drawing up for sale in my shop too. Thanks for looking!

Life in the Fast Lane

This here’s my newest 8×10 drawing from my Saving the World series. I am an addictive multi-tasker, so this drawing needs to be tatooed on my arm to remind me to stop doing so many things at once. It’s one thing to try and expedite the process of cooking dinner, but the other night, I was chopping vegetables, grilling peppers, and refilling the dog’s water bowl, all at the same time. My boyfriend said quite plainly, “you’re trying to do too many things at once.”

What is it about the world we live in that makes us feel like we aren’t working hard enough if we aren’t trying to do ten things? Maybe it’s just me, but there never seems to be enough time, so I end up trying to cram in a bunch of activities or tasks at once. What I’m beginning to learn is that this behavior leads to many half-done or half-appreciated things. But learning is a slow process, so I need to make many notes and signs to remind myself!

Prints of this “Slow Down” drawing are now available in my Etsy Shop as well as the lovely set of 5 x 7 prints of my Dream drawings/paintings below.