Graphic designer and partner @etcgraphics. I wanted to be a physicist when I grew up, but I'm hopelessly right brained and easily distrac
Carlisle, IA
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A little "ballotta". Makes voting sound almost cute doesn't it? Please go cast your ballotta. It's not a little thing at all.
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Expresses the zeitgeist for sure. That's why you need to get out and VOTE today, so we can keep a few brain cells.
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No matter what you do today, do it to make the world a little bit brighter. You can do anything as an art form. Anything you put your hand to today, do it the way you want the world to be.
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And before it becomes a butterfly, it becomes a pile of liquid goo, reimagines itself, crawls out through a knot-hole, which engages it's circulatory system. What once was earth bound, can now fly, and fly with exquisite form. If you are being reimagined right now, and you are feeling like a big pile of goo, just give it some time. God's not done yet.
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When I was a young mother, I asked myself this question frequently: "Do I have more money? Or do I have more time?" Now that I am older I know the answer, and it's always been the same. I always have more money than time, no matter how poor I perceive may myself to be.
Money only exists in our collective imagination as a fiction made from words. We can make more money and we can make less money, but we cannot buy more time.
Watch the whole talk here: bit.ly/YNH-LF
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Everyone tells you to pay attention to your intuition. But how do you do that exactly?
@EntryLevelRebel
inc.com/jessica-stillman/how…
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What good is a belly with no fire? An interesting question. The world can beat it out of us. The fire wanes, or completely fizzles out. We can get burned out doing the wrong things. Or we can get worn out by things that are just so 'daily'. We can get discouraged by the way the world works––or doesn't work, as the case may be. Time to put on your imagination hat. What kind of world would you rather live in? What kinds of changes would improve your world? Perhaps for another person right in front of you? Find other like-minded people who wish to do the same. Collab together around these ideas. The fire will return when we see the work that will make the future a bit brighter.
“What good is having a belly if there’s no fire in it?”
It’s a question that we pose in DIARY OF A BRILLIANT KID that applies to adults too
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We sisters need to stick together. Praying we come out in droves. The League of Women Voters was created with great sacrifice. Let’s not let all their sweat, blood, and tears be taken in vain. VOTE.
Artist: Lynell Ingram
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A beautiful story. . . about the power of ART.
Early in his career, after a disastrous night on stage in Chicago, Bill Murray walked out into the street ready to end his life, and headed for the lake, thinking he might as well "float for a while" once he was gone...
Instead, he turned up Michigan Avenue and found himself in front of the Art Institute of Chicago. He walked inside without even stopping to pay, because, in his words, he felt he was already "pretty much dead," and there, in front of him, was a painting he had always loved:
The Song of the Lark, painted by the French artist Jules Breton in 1884. A young peasant woman stands barefoot in an empty field at dawn, a sickle in her hand, pausing in her work to listen to a lark somewhere above her, while behind her a huge orange sun is just rising over the horizon.
Murray looked at her and saw a girl with very little to hope for, and yet, as he put it, "the sun’s coming up anyway and she’s got another chance at it." That simple thought was enough to bring him back because it made him feel that he too was a person, with "another chance every day the sun comes up."
For every writer, creator and dreamer here on X, I want to leave you with this: think of this story the next time you feel your art is futile, or that your creative pursuit isn’t worth the effort. Somewhere, someday, someone may stand in front of what you made at the lowest moment of their life, and find in it a reason to see the sun come up one more time...
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Hokusai was also a book illustrator, and drew comic book prototypes. He also created drawing manuals, like the ones below, to teach other people how to draw.
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Here is Hokusai's drawing of someone getting hit by lightening. He knew what that felt like after being struck by lightening in 1810 himself.
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It's the Birthday of Katsushika HOKUSAI
November 1, 1760 (some record it as Oct 31) – May 10, 1849
I would have loved to know this man. He seems like such a fun guy! But I can really relate to his experience, his method, and eccentric creativity:
His career spanned 7 decades, in which he produced over 30,000 works. He had a very strong work ethic, and frequently painted from dawn to dusk.
Hokusai created this magnum opus when we was in his 70's.
IMHO, one of the most inspiring things about Katsushika, is that at age 70, he created aspirations and goals for every decade of his life to age 110: "Until the age of 70, nothing I drew was worthy of notice. ... When I reach 80 years I hope to have made increasing progress, and at 90 to see further into the underlying principles of things, so that at 100 years I will have achieved a divine state in my art and at 110 every dot and every stroke will be as though alive."
His studio was a terrible mess. He did not like to clean. He disliked cleaning so much that when his studio became unmanageable, he would MOVE. He did so 93 times.
He would create street art performances with a bucket of black ink and a broom. He would paint portraits 100' wide.
He once entered an art competition where he painted a sweeping blue mark on paper. He then dipped the feet of a chicken in red paint, and chased it across the work, returning a design that looked like maple leaves on a river. He won the competition.
He was struck by lightening in 1810, and lived to tell the tale.
He had a stroke in 1828 and had to teach himself to paint again, which he did.
He inspired many other artists through 'Japonisme'. . the French term used to describe the popularity of Japanese art on Western Europ in the 19th century. These artists include Monet, Degas, Cassatt, Loutrec, Mucha, Klimt, and van Gogh to name just a few.
I could say so much more about this painting, but lack the time. BUT- You know you've made it big, when almost everyone on planet earth has seen your art, parodies it, prints it everywhere, and makes it into an emoji.
The Great Wave off Kanagawa, Hokusai's most famous print, the first in the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, c. 1829–1832
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