I found this video in my searches on Artbistro.com and this photographer is amazing, the pictures have such beautiful colors and depth, and depict a very intimate look at the faces of these people.

As quoted from the ArtBistro online article, “Photographer Hans Silvester spent several years in Ethopia documenting the art and lives of the Omo River Valley inhabitants. The Omo people decorate their faces and bodies with natural pigments, plants, and feathers.”

Everyone knows as a child they used to play with the Etch-a-Sketch. My problem was trying to transport the image to show off, by the time I reached my destination most if not all of the image was gone. Regardless, I think even to this day I could have so much fun if someone put one of those in front of me.

I found this blog today with 37 Super Cool Etch-a-Sketch Drawings. Just a little nostalgic throwback for everyone and also a chance to see…a good artist can use ANYTHING!

I read this tutorial on VECTORTUTS today about How to Create a Three Color Wolf Skull in Illustrator (the link to it is below). More and more I have been coming to the realization that some of the best artwork is not always out of thin air. So many people use reference points, pictures, models, etc to make their base like they want it. Then when you have the base drawings you can ad your own personal style to how the final product is presented. So many great grunge illustrations I have seen all started with a picture, that the artist then took to the next level and made it their own.

CHALLENGE: Take a picture of anything you see in the outside world; could be a tree, a person, or an animal, etc. Load that picture onto your computer and see what type of illustration you come up with after “tracing” the base.

Email me what you come up with I would love to see!

Oh by the way here is the link to that tutorial:

How to Create a Three Color Wolf Skull in Illustrator

I’m a huge music geek. I love getting suggestions on new bands to listen to and check out. But more than that I love seeing the album artwork that these bands use. Some of it is so simple but really profound

I was listening to this band called Nouvelle Vague (a band based out of europe that covers the rarely covered early 80’s post-punk songs in a very unique and personal way) that came up on my pandora mix and decided to look up their album artwork. I absolutely fell in love. Not only did their musical style fit my tastes, but their album artwork is right up my alley. Their style is really simple almost like watercolor paintings, and flat colors, but my biggest thing was the subtle textures they use just to shake the artwork up a bit.

Although it’s sometimes hard for me in my work (however I am working very hard to incorporate more), I love the simplistic yet profound impact of artwork done in this fashion. Sometimes the simple designs are the hardest to come up with.  A lot of artists, no matter how good they are, struggle with seeing things simply just because the creative mind is already so complex.

I have to challenge myself sometimes to make a design or painting based on 2 colors as if that is all I have to work with. I like to see how to solve problems using limited means as opposed to having everything at my disposal. It is nice to challenge yourself to design out of the box.