Am I an Artist? / Inspirations

~ ~ ~ ~ Am I an Artist? ~ ~ ~ ~

I must admit, at first I never considered myself an artist. In school, it was just a hobby. It started in elementary, art was always my favorite. I loved craft time. In high school, I doodled on all my notes but would get distracted by my doodles and forget about taking notes. I took one art class in the tenth grade. (I went to a private school and it was the only time it was offered and it was mandatory and only for a semester) It was fun. I was pretty good. My grandfather gave me a oil painting set when he saw some of my projects, encouraging the gift. I played around but never got serious. In college, people expected me to take art classes but I didn't take a single one.

See, I knew I wasn't the best. But I liked art, a lot. I never wanted to be told I was bad at it. I didn't want to be criticized.

Then I went to a program in Oklahoma City called Master's Commission. There, among other things, I realized that if I love it..it doesn't matter what people think. If I like to create things, then I am an artist. We even took personality tests, and "artist" came up in my results. I still don't have the money to take classes, nor do I want a 'degree' that tells me I am an artist. I don't need one. And neither do you, if you like to do art - any kind of art- whether its painting, sketching, writing, dancing, photography, sculpting, music, etc, you are an artist. Accept it. Embrace it. Claim it.

~ ~ ~ ~ Inspiration ~ ~ ~ ~

I was thrown back into the world of art during Master's Commission as I mentioned above. There, mostly I painted and danced. When I came back home, it was harder to find an outlet. It was also harder to find inspiration. One thing I did do was search Youtube. I used that little site for hours of entertainment, and for tips on hair and make up, why not use it for inspiration on art?

When roaming the lovely little website of no end, I came across a certain video. The channel was RachO113 and the title was 'Mixed Media Art- French Connections' Link is here --> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqvawkrRAB4&feature=plcp

I was fascinated by all the different techniques and media she used. So I went to her channel and watched several more videos. Then randomly found other channels through watching hers. Among them, my favorites are mybutterflykisses12 (Arlene), jenniebellie, rangerInd, timholtz, followthepapertrail (laura), limor1278, and yoliebean. I subscribed to them all and watch them often. Then, I realized they had blogs so I put it in the back of my mind that maybe I should get back into mine and find them. Which I am still currently tracking them all down.

Because of these inspiring people and their bravery to video their process I became inspired and found a new love of this kind of art. A few of the above channels got into this by scrapbooking by the looks of it. (a guess, not a known fact at this point) But the items they use to scrapbook inspired me to do other things with them. And then jenniebellie uses recycled items a lot and I enjoyed a lot of the knowledge she passed along on her videos about items to use around the house. And in Rachel's videos I learned about art journals. So I started one of my own as well.

I started creating things a few weeks ago. My next few posts will be highlighting some of those. At that point I didn't really plan on doing a blog about it, so there aren't any before photos of some of the projects. But I will do my best with descriptions and then try to narrate my process of how I transformed some of the items and did some of the art. I don't know if I will ever do videos of my art, but pictures are a start right? :) I think if I inspire just one other person with some of my work, then this blog will be worth it.